Jen Swan
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turn to social media to get justice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turned to social media to get justice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turned to social media to get justice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
Everything. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy. The true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turned to social media to get justice.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 159
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Bone Valley, Season 2: Jeremy
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Bone Valley
Introducing - Bone Valley, Season 2: Jeremy
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 21: Because 7 8 9
What happens when we come face to face with death?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 21: Because 7 8 9
What happens when we come face to face with death?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 19: Nineteen Kills and Counting
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 19: Nineteen Kills and Counting
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 19: Nineteen Kills and Counting
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 19: Nineteen Kills and Counting
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 19: Nineteen Kills and Counting
Yeah.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
456 - True & Provable
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
This is exactly right.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I think, well, is it the newest Unsolved Mysteries or the old? I don't know.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Because I looked at, man, those new ones, I feel like I've watched every episode three times.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
It's so sad. Any of these stories that we tell are truly tragic because any time you kind of drill down, it's like you want to say, oh, it's their second anniversary. They just started a life together. This is the saddest version of this story. And it's like, yes, except for then the next story you get where it's like they've been together for 75 years. Now that's the saddest version.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I hope to God that the keys are out of the ignition because that's the difference between a DUI and not a DUI.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Never drink and drive. But if you're chilling and the driver is totally sober and everybody else has a beer, you do not get that beer out of that car before you put the keys in the ignition.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I don't know why I know that.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yeah, drinking a lot, but then also that thing of, like, don't just sit there, like, get all your shit ready just in case something happens.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I mean, it's so we're so L.A. people. It's like, oh, if somebody hits you from behind and they leave, like, God bless and goodbye. Have good insurance. Have good insurance. And like the risk of like rage.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
It's very bad traffic out there. People are already pissed.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Everyone's pissed all day long. And then you make a mistake and it's like, first of all, let people merge. And if somebody makes a mistake, look to yourself and remember all the mistakes you've ever made and move it along. Yep.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
This was a panicked moment of this is how you need to behave in a car as if anyone needs to know any of this shit. Don't do drugs.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
That's Georgia Hartstar.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And we're being flirty and feisty and fun. It's the AM podcast. Hey. We wake up with you. Gotta go to work. So do we. Right now. Let's do this thing. What's going on? How are you? I'm good, thank you. I had one of those bed routing weekends where I just really laid around like that was my job. Nothing's better than that. I felt very lucky to have two days to just post up.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Right. You're chasing a car and then you're... Yeah, I mean, none of it feels like severe... Just what we talked about. Yeah. Severe rationalization.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I mean, that's what it all seems to be, where it's like, I don't know if I believe that his girlfriend said, you should take this for protection. That doesn't make sense. Right. Like chasing a car and the car understanding that you are following it doesn't make sense, where it's like, I bet, I would guess, just separate from all of this, That he cut them off and made them pull over? Yeah. Right?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I mean, it's like the most overt. That is self-defense. It's like, get me out of here.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yes. Right. And obviously in a way where, well, not obviously because this is just a theory, but it's like if you're on the defense like that, you go back and tell your family not, oh, my God, I can't believe we made this horrible mistake or I can't believe whatever. It's his fault.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
It's his fault. It's his fault.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And now someone's son is dead. Right. That's why the mom is in the store right now.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And then you start rationalizing why you're not doing it and why you're not going to do it. Oh, my God. It's like you just need to go down and ship something at, like, the post office. Just do it. It's not a big deal.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
How much you fucking love lip reading videos. That's one of my favorite things on TikTok. They do it a lot with like professional sports. Yeah. Or like if Taylor Swift is in the crowd somewhere.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Right. Well, I mean, it's a good, these days when everything is recorded anyway, zip it until you're in the vault at all times.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Or at least cover your mouth like the sports guy. She says, talking into a microphone for year nine.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
They have a vault? Do they have a secret vault? Right next to lawn chair, Larry's big old chair. Okay, back to the horrible stuff. Okay. Because this is also, sorry, just for a reset. Just trying to think of like it's a small town, the politics, the families, the passion, right? Nobody can be wrong in that situation because it's like, oh, no, we're on this guy's side.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
It's how people get through hard, horrible stuff. It's just like, well, let's just go fully black and white with this. And there's only one way is this. Our guy is completely innocent. He's the true victim.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Like, I get it on like a shoplifting charge. Yeah. It just depends on the person and the situation. But I think clearly there are people in that town, like, or in that courtroom who didn't think it was... That he would have done it if it wasn't that exact situation, maybe. Right.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Can I tell you that that's me with nails now? Because I've never cared about – I mean, it's not like I didn't care about nails.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
But my sister has, like, hand model nails.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yeah, it's a bit thorough for especially two people who are just like, yeah.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Very deep nail beds, always perfect, long, whatever. Whatever. I have my dad's hands, so it truly looks sad and like I'm trying to do something with what I got, which is what I'm doing. Right. So most of the time I just kind of don't pay attention. Yeah. But then recently I'm like, yeah, I don't want to be on camera and go like this and just have like... A broken nail with a little dirt under it.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
That they would weigh themselves down first.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
But if they're trying to seem like they both died by suicide, then that is what, why wouldn't you want to be identified? Right, right.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Look, fast food on the whole gets the job done chemically. Mexican pizza, I mean... Goodbye. That's not the worst. Dude, dude. Yeah. But, yeah, it's kind of pointing toward planning, but not planning for a finale. Right. In my opinion. Right. Because that's...
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Oh, that's a really good point.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
You're not going to fit. Well, and also, would you be allowed to? Like, is that, does he just have to go straight home? Yeah, I don't know. Is there any house for us? I have no idea. Yeah.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
But also, would it have been a skull by then? But also, I think like that, that turn of I was so against them. And like, no way they got away. And then it's like, oh, no, she died. And it just makes me feel so differently. I know. It's like weird. So sad. Yeah. Well, and also just what was she talking about in the courtroom? Like, what was she referencing? What was that all about?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Totally. My raggedy cuticles. Yeah. I get up. But you cannot get me to get down there. Is it because you have gel on? It's gel, but it's this laziness of I'll do it later, I'll do it later.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yes. I mean... Tell me. Tell me. I just am thinking about when I was growing up, my cousins who lived next door, who aren't my real cousins, but they were like my older brother and sisters, the girls had boyfriends that were kind of like dirtbaggy. Sketchy, yeah. And that's kind of what I'm thinking of.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
We're like, when things like this play out, a thing like this plays out, the story of we're just sitting here innocently eating our sandwiches... And drinking some beer and then we're rear-ended. And so then we go, like every way that this story is laid out, like trying to be explained, doesn't make sense in terms of you get rear-ended and you're obsessed with your car. Yeah.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
you're immediately out of your mind furious yeah and this happens when like somebody else is the victim where you're then like well then they didn't do anything wrong but it's like did he do something wrong in the beginning which is like smash a car and freak out and run away was there a reason he freaked out like the guy that got out of the car was so scary and like enraged that he was like i gotta get out of here oh but none of that matters because it wasn't him it wasn't him
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
It's true. And it's also when it's growing out. So like the space where it's just like, ma'am, you simply must by city ordinance go in there.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
But trying to put it together, like the logic of putting that together, which is like clearly there seems to have been a removal of like why would a person run? Why would a person get out of there? Because the way it ended was so scary that it clearly started at least slightly scary. Yeah. Yeah. His favorite thing in the world, his car, was smashed into. Right. And then the car drove away.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yeah. Or she's taking the fall because he's a creep. And then at the very end, he kills her and then gets away. Or she thinks they're both going to do it and he doesn't.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Maybe. Yeah. Like he's like, I was going to run this whole time and I knew if I ran with you, we'd get caught.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I mean, whatever. It's, I mean, so let's make up 55 scenarios because we won't know. Oh my God. Jeez. Yeah. Good one. Thank you. Yeah, that was a good one. Because we don't get an answer, right?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
But the idea that there have been sightings of a person that, aside from being good looking, is just like... And in Italy, that's strange, but... Who knows?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I would just like one answer for that one by the time we're...
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Well, I just don't understand. It feels like if this is, if worst case scenario and this guy's the worst person all the way through, then that would, that would all track of like, he's got an anger problem. He attacked this kid. He was just, and maybe they're on drugs, whatever the thing is that made him like hang on to the car and not get off.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
There's a nice neighbor that sits you down on your porch. I don't know. It just feels like any, it's all of those things are just like. Yeah. It doesn't happen to the average person that they end up on the hood of someone's car trying to reach in maybe with a knife for. Yeah. For their own protection, but probably not. It doesn't. If the knife hadn't been there, everyone would have been.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yeah. Bringing a knife to a car party. Yeah. Why? Yeah. Because also, ultimately, what was it, to max $2,000 of damage? Yeah, right. What are you trying to do? What kind of lesson would you be teaching? Yeah. Yeah.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
I don't think. It's going to start to look like it's a two-tone polish idea. Right. Like it's just creative. It's so nude. It is truly nude. Well, my last one was red. And then I was like. Let's go fall. Let's go like neutral. What are you doing?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
to my story, which when I opened it this weekend, I was like, yeah, that's right. So it starts on October 16th, 1869. Oh dear. Yeah, in the quiet town of Cardiff in New York State. A local farmer named William Newell is digging a well on his property and he's being helped out by a few hired hands. And they dig about three feet down into the dirt when one of their shovels strikes something solid.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
William tells the men it's probably a rock and he goes into his house to get a pickaxe. And while he's gone, the rest of the crew keeps digging. And as they shovel more and more dirt away, they uncover something truly bizarre. Can I guess? Yes. Is it a giant? Yes.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Yeah. The object in the dirt is huge, and it appears to have a massive foot. Can you imagine? I mean, so they keep digging, and before long, they've unearthed what looks to be the body of a very large man, a very large petrified man. The workers estimate that this man is about 10 feet tall and he's lying on his back like a corpse.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
There's no flesh, no hair, but he does have fingernails and Adam's apple, muscle definition and quick listener warning. Very prominent male genitalia. Mom, and although his expression is peaceful, his body is contorted. One hand is crossing towards his very prominent male genitalia. The other is behind his back. His legs are Turn to one side.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Don't draw attention to these weird man hands where it looks like it's a little sausagey, but it's also a little bit like the hands of a person who's had it.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So he's kind of like, seems to be in a state of unrest. When William Newell eventually returns with his pickaxe, he sees what's been uncovered and he's completely dumbfounded. Word spreads throughout Cardiff and within hours, a crowd has gathered at the Newell farm to take a look at the, I mean. Those good old fashioned crowds that gather.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And this would be like Little House on the Prairie costumed crowd. Yeah. They'd bring a picnic. Yeah, they'd be like, Ma. Bring a hunk of cheese and some bread. And sarsaparilla.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
That will ever happen in the entire area. They dug something up. Yeah. The end. It's like, here's what your town's going to be known for for the rest of its life. Could have been two huge rocks and they would have been like, this is amazing.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
This is the story of the so-called Cardiff Giant, a discovery emblematic of the power and pitfalls of American ingenuity, opportunism, and capitalism. Hey, all your favorite things. Those are my top three. So punk. The sources used in today's story are a 2005 article from Archaeology Magazine by a writer named Mark Rose entitled When Giants Roam the Earth, a book by Scott Tribble.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
The title of the book gives it away, so we'll just keep it moving. But thank you to Scott Tribble. And then a 2014 article in the Press and Sun Bulletin newspaper by Gerald R. Smith and George Basler. And again, the title of that article gives it away. The rest of the sources can be found in our show notes. So we're back on William Newell's farm.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
More and more people are showing up to gawk at the buried giant. This is what I love. Picture old-timey Karen there in her beautiful... Calico hand-sewn dress and bonnet. It's made out of flower sacks. Flower sacks. Because I'm very, very poor. I don't know why. But I have a certain je ne sais quoi that's keeping me going. Where did she get that diamond necklace? Oh, my God. She's a stealer.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Do you guys know her? She's a stealer.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So these crowds are getting larger by the hour, but William doesn't like it at all. He claims to be worried that all of this interest is going to disrupt the farm. It's going to make it hard for him to work and provide for his family. And he also tells this crowd of friends and neighbors he has to rebury the giant and just to stop telling people about it because we're just going to bury it back.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
That's when you know you've gone right over the edge. You're ripped in your fingers. It's like, I can't get basic shit done, but I sure can do 25 of these. Man, she's shredded in just her fingers.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
He's essentially like a classic get off my lawn. Yeah. The original. But of course, that only adds to the intrigue. So then more people show up to the Newell farm, this time from outside of town. Outside of town. And then reporters show up.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So suddenly the Cardiff giant is being talked about in newspapers across the region, and crowds of onlookers continue to swell. In response, William basically says, if you can't beat him, join him. So instead of shooing people away, he decides to throw a big tent over the uncovered giant, still lying in the ground where it was first uncovered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And then he starts charging 25 cents admission to go see. That's a lot, right? Yes. Do you have 10 today's money? Uh-huh. Well... A couple days after that, he bumps it up to 50 cents, which is $20 in today's money. That's a lot. It really is, especially for people in 1869. Yeah, you didn't have that kind of... Not unless you owned the, I was going to say... The old mill?
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
The corner store, but yeah, it would have to be the old mill, I think. So people happily pay. In the first week alone, 2,500 people show up to see the Cardiff Giant. And they say that there was something undeniably powerful about the scene at the Newell Farm. An academic who co-founded Cornell University, Andrew White, describes the scene this way. He says, quote,
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
If that, but like you would have only ever heard of this in... Description, yeah. In just in tales and stories. So you're going to see a thing that no one's really ever seen before. Yeah. Well... I mean, yeah. Yeah. So, God, I would have gone. Of course you would have. I would have sold my youngest child.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So as the word of Cardiff Giant continues to spread, people remain mystified as to what this thing actually might be. Theories, of course, begin to swirl. Some believe it's an ancient giant who once lived... In the area, I guess. Sure. Lived and breathed and then turned to stone. He was buried for so long. It's kind of weird, but at the time, petrified objects and giants were kind of zeitgeisty.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So there had been several fossil discoveries in both the 1700s and the 1800s that today we understand belong to extinct species. But at the time, they were just kind of getting uncovered and nobody knew what they were. How fun. U.S. population is not educated in science, let alone the burgeoning field of paleontology, these fossils are sometimes connected to biblical figures.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So that includes the giant Goliath of David and Goliath fame. So it'd be easy to believe that a giant would be found because if they're finding these other creatures and then someone's going, well, this is the whatever. Science. That's science, friend. One person telling you something.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Please don't go close on my hands.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
So there's a decent amount of people who think this oversized human from a prehistoric race has been petrified in the earth. But the same amount of skeptics see the card of giant feel it is not human. They think it's a prehistoric statue. Hmm. And others think it's a more recent creation of a hoaxer. So one of the many people in that latter camp is the writer Andrew White, who I just quoted.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
He immediately dismisses the Cardiff giant as a statue and not even a well-made one. To White, the giant doesn't share the obvious qualities of other prehistoric finds. At the same time, the giant himself, quote, betrays the qualities of a modern performance of a low order. Ouch. That's some fucking old timey shade right there. Andrew White was like, he knew. And another thing.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And he takes his one monocle, his monocle off.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
And he, it's him, Andrew White, that went on to found Monopoly, the board game. So essentially, yeah, White is saying it's an artist who isn't particularly talented. It is not what you think it is. It's like in a rap battle with him and he just fucking won. He just slammed that monocle down.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
As more skeptics insist that the Cardiff giant is just a bunch of carved stone, audiences still come out in droves to marvel at it. And it's hugely popular and, of course, becomes a very lucrative attraction.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
In less than a week after the discovery, William Newell sells the majority stake in the giant as a concept, two-thirds ownership, to a small group of New York businessmen for $30,000, which in today's money... $250,000. $700,000. Holy, that man.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Okay, so, of course, with the Cardiff Giants' overnight fame comes overnight drama. Because down in New York City... New York City. New York City, the situation is getting heard about. And guess who gets wind of it? P.T. Barnum. Hey. He immediately wants in. He would later say, quote, One thing was certain.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Give us a top three highlights. Churro. Lucha. Sorry. You're thinking of the Contra Costa County Fair.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
That's $1.2 million. Goddammit, I've got it, man. Okay, so it's time math. I can buy a lot of corn cobs. Time math is really fucking hard. We've never gotten good at it on this show. But the Cardiff Giant brings in $12,000 in its first few displays on the farm. That's worth over a quarter of a million dollars today. So William Newell and his investors turn P.T. Barnum down. Damn.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
455 - Time Math
Because they are making bank. Nobody turns P.T. Barnum down. You're exactly right, because P.T. Barnum then decides he's going to send a sculptor up to the Newhall farm, and that sculptor will bring a little ball of wax, and then right there on site, the sculptor makes a miniature replica of the giant.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
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And using that replica, Barnum then commissions a full-size copy of the Cardiff Giant using measurements that have been widely reported in newspapers. And in no time, Barnum has his own perfect dupe, his Cardiff Giant, and he puts it on display in New York City. You gotta trademark that shit. It is the first case of IP infringement.
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I mean, it's such a sad, true fact where it's like, we got our thing and now we're the king of the world. But it weighs 500 tons and it's set in the ground. And therefore, you're just ripe for the pickin' if anyone to come by. A little ball of wax. Yeah. You just make a miniature. So the men who own the original Cardiff giant, of course, are furious at P.T. Barnum.
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That anger is only magnified by the fact that the copycat pulls in more visitors than theirs. Of course. Because it's New York City. Yeah. Especially because the real giant has actually been excavated from William Newell's farm and they were actively touring New York State. So it could have been them. Yeah. In a lot of ways.
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Historians Gerald R. Smith and George Basler report, quote, the imitation giant grew sizable crowds while the original giant flopped. What? I love the origins of sayings. That is... Crazy. And in A Final Irony, the phrase is now attributed to Barnum, although he didn't say it. You could say he stole both the giant and the phrase.
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Okay. Foreshadowing. Yes. OK, so the owners of the original Cardiff giant attempt to get an injunction to stop Barnum from displaying his replica. But the skeptical judge writes their concerns off with a sarcastic comment saying, quote, Bring your giant here. And if he swears to his own genuineness as a bona fide petrification, you shall have the injunction you ask for.
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You know, he's in fucking P.T. Barnum's pocket. Well, how about we listen to the rest of the story and then you see maybe this judge knows what he's talking about. So with that judge refusing to protect the original, the floodgates open and the sculptor who made Barnum's giant quickly churns out several more, which are advertised in shows across the country.
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The Philadelphia Inquirer even weighs in, writing, quote, It is rather rich that we should be victimized by such a fraud upon a fraud. Right. So just like these things won't stop coming. Then in early 1870, any remaining mystery around the Cardiff Giants' authenticity totally fades because that's when a man comes forward claiming he's the brains behind the whole thing.
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That man's name is George Hull. So George Hull is the kind of guy who stands out in a crowd. So in an era when the average man is around 5'7", George is 6'3". At a time when Americans are overwhelmingly Christian, George is an atheist and a very vocal atheist. And according to Gerald R. Smith and George Basler, he, quote, I mean, that was hot, right? I mean, what's up? Yeah.
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So very fitting for a man described as a shady opportunist. The same newspaper notes that, quote, criminal may be too strong a word for George Hull, but schemer certainly applies. And, quote, while writer Scott Tribble reports that he, quote, had no qualms about breaking partnerships or laws to get what he wanted. So George Hull, classic bad guy. Yeah, villain. Okay.
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He started out in his con artistry as a horse trader. That was a well-known, ethically questionable job involving downplaying a horse's flaws and putting all responsibility on the buyers to ask the right questions ahead of a sale. Classic. Yeah. Basically, Marin wrote, think used car dealers, but in the 19th century.
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Cool. I'm glad you got to get away. Me too. Oh, we were talking about Wrath of Fire. I mean, there's some great, I feel like we're back to the OG days of HBO documentaries. There's some amazing stuff out there. So we won't make sure.
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So Hull eventually graduates to a rigged gambling scheme where an accomplice would sell marked decks to saloons and hotels. And then George would go in and charm unsuspecting patrons into playing games against him with those same cards.
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He repeats this fraud throughout the Northeast until the early 1850s, more than a decade before the Cardiff Giant is discovered, when he's finally arrested passing through Broom City, New York. Hull serves a stint in jail there. Then he gets back on his feet with the help of his brother, who happens to live in the area.
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George responds to his brother's kindness by marrying his 16-year-old daughter, Helen. Yikes. George's biological niece. Do not do that, please. Yes. Very much against the family's wishes and 19th century standards, this is disturbing and scandalous. They become social outcasts, and the scrutiny actually becomes so intense that they move onto a farm in a far-flung part of the county.
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God damn it. Today. Later, he finds out that the buyer of the patent made over $400,000 from it. Shit. Which would be how many? Oh, 2.7. $15 million today. So he's got a chip on his shoulder, if all of that is true.
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But these experiences fuel his transformation from a small time con with questionable morals into a deeply disgruntled member of society who has a particular chip on his shoulder about religion. George engages in explosive, exhausting debates on religion with his neighbors. Those debates are described as pyrotechnic by the New York Daily Tribune. And writer Scott Tribble adds, quote, Okay, friend.
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Do you mean your niece? Yeah. Do you mean that teenager in your life? Which one are you talking about? There's a really hilarious TikTok I saw that was like, guys will defend dating teenage girls. But when you say, well, then why don't you hang out with teenage boys? They don't know what you're talking about. We're still in the quote.
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Mainstream and religious society were largely one and the same at this point in history. And George's atheism was fast taking on a more general misanthropy. So we're going to fast forward to 1866. This is now three years before the Cardiff giant is uncovered. George, who is in his mid 40s, is in Iowa on business.
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I think it's the final episode of Breath of Fire. Oh, because it's so these three, yes, we're one episode behind. So we just will say, it's very interesting to me that these simultaneous, and I actually don't know if the other one is also on, but the Anatomy of Lies about the Grey's Anatomy. Oh, I haven't watched that one yet either. Yeah. Oh.
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And during this trip, he finds himself in yet another heated debate about religion, this time with a traveling preacher. The men argue over the Bible, which the preacher interprets literally and George thinks is a complete fabrication. Eventually, they part ways, but George can't shake the conversation.
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So that night as he's laying in bed, he fixates on a specific Bible verse that says, quote, there were giants in the earth in those days. So George hatches a plan to make the pious look blindly loyal, if not flat out foolish. He decides he's going to create his own giant, pass it off as the real deal, and then basically let it be discovered as a hoax and make everybody look stupid.
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And he also, he's pretty sure the idea could make him a small fortune. So the plan starts about two years later in 1868 after George cashes out his cigar business in Broome County, heads back to Iowa, hires men to lift an enormous five-ton block of gypsum from a local quarry under the false pretense that it'll be used to sculpt a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
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Abraham Lincoln had just been assassinated three years earlier. George then arranges for that gypsum to be shipped to Chicago, where he hires a stonecutter and sculptors, all sworn to silence. This is so much work to prove a point.
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Knitting, more quilting.
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Put clothes on, take a shower. Well, I do think that that thing, self-righteousness is quite an engine.
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So speaking from personal experience where you're just kind of like, well, I'll have you know, that energy gets you right up and out of the house a lot of the time.
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You saved my life. What I also love is all those kinds of hoaxes. There are at least five people keeping their mouth shut. Yeah. Which I always think is fascinating because it's like, how do we find more people like you?
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They're like, you'll never know. And I won't have a deathbed confession. I'm the type that actually understands taking secrets to the grave. I hate it. So George R. Smith and George Basler report, quote, George Hull was a hands-on boss, supervising the work and hanging carpets and quilts on the walls to deaden the sound of the chiseling.
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He even supplied the sculptors with a steady supply of beer to keep them happy. So then in September of 1868, when the artist showed George their finished product, he's worried that that stone looks too pristine and new. So he throws together a cocktail of chemicals and douses his giant until it has a more distressed look.
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So maybe when you're done with that one, you can come back and we'll have a kind of a lit comp conversation because they're similar and nothing alike. And it is crazy. About someone pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and pretending to be someone they're not kind of a thing. Yeah, I'm kind of like. How much do we lie? How much do I lie? And how much do I feel like I need to lie?
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And then he takes a bunch of needles, pokes them into a piece of wood, and uses it to hit the stone over and over so that it appears to have pores. So what people do to jeans, right? To make them look... Yes.
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And what is this? Oh, microneedling. Microneedling. Yeah. Eventually, George is satisfied. The giant is put into a massive box that's marked as finished marble and transported by rail to New York. When it arrives, it's put into a wagon. It's hauled to the Newell Farm in Cardiff because it turns out William Newell is George Hull's cousin. Hey. He's been in on the whole thing the whole time. Yeah.
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Yeah, exactly. Shit. Yeah. In a way, he married him in dishonesty. Yeah. In the marriage of dishonesty.
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He knew the whole time it was acting, which also is like, oh, that's right. You had the workers dig it up. And then once you hit it, you're like, I'll be right back so that I don't have to stand here pretending to be surprised. Right. Okay. So they get to the final step. Obviously, they bury the giant together. And then George Hull waits and waits. An entire year passes.
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And then in October of 1869, George gives William the green light to hire and then lead the oblivious workers to the exact location under the guise that William is digging a well. Then once the giant's unearthed, William plays dumb. George is still managing the entire scene. And situation from the shadows.
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And from start to finish, it took George about three years to bring this spiteful dream to fruition, as well as around $2,600. Oh, my God. Which in today's money would be worth. Don't talk. 1.5. 60,000. God damn it.
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You overcorrected that to the last number. In the end, Hull does exactly what he set out to do. Some of his marks are indeed faithful people. Meanwhile, he makes a big return on his investment after striking a deal with the local businessmen who invest in it. But now with P.T. Barnum cutting into the card of Giants ticket sales, George is not happy. Yeah.
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So in December of 1869, George Hull comes forward as the creator of the Cardiff Giant. Scott Tribble suggests George's motivation here is quite simply another opportunity to cash in. When George comes forward, he dually pitches a tell-all book on how he came up with the whole hoax. It's kind of good business. Like, I have an announcement and then a second announcement. Yeah.
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Although Marin then notes here to me, doesn't seem like that book ever got written. So back on tour, the Cardiff Giants operators are trying to figure out their next move. They ultimately decide to take the Giant to Boston, hoping that the distance from New York City will at least let them draw a crowd for a little while longer. Yeah. This works for a few months. And this is so far.
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It's so long ago that like no one knew it was fake. I know geography and Boston's not that fucking far from New York.
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That's right. But it was so long ago that it would be like, I don't even know if these guys were around where you could be like, news on the Cardiff Giant. Right. That's true. No one was doing it. So among those who come to see the Cardiff Giant when it's in Boston is none other than Ralph Waldo Emerson, who describes it as, quote, astonishing.
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What a rube. But the Cardiff Giants allure is quickly nosediving in addition to the failed injunction against P.T. Barnum, the dwindling interest from crowds, the growing number of skeptics, and of course, George Hull, who is shopping his own tell-all story around. The sculptors who carve the giant come forward and accuse George Hull of never paying them. Oh, shit. You can't do that.
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But how much do you think you're actually lying when you are lying?
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He pulled a full Donald Trump and just didn't pay the workers.
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Yeah, they should not have to be expected to. So alongside all this bad press, the Cardiff Giant, which was once considered a marvel, now settles into its identity as a sideshow oddity. Still kind of cool, though. It's great. The whole concept is human innovation. Less than a year after it's dug up on the Newell Farm, the Cardiff Giant quickly fades into obscurity.
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But the appetite for unearthed prehistoric, quote unquote, humans does not dwindle. In fact, George Hull's hoax sparks a wave of similar discoveries across the country. Among the most famous is the solid Muldoon. You ever heard of the solid Muldoon? No.
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The old solid Muldoon. The solid Muldoon was dug up in Colorado in the mid-1870s. It's billed as a seven-foot-tall prehistoric petrified man who, in a twist, appears to have a tail. The solid Muldoon is quickly put on display for 10-cent admission, and it's touted as, quote, the missing link between man and apes. Oh, and also you can tell Vince this if he gives a shit.
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And is that kind of rationalization, whether it's automatic... or totally conscious is that why and how people get into cults or start cults or lead cults. It's all that kind of stuff of like human beings and their brains are goddamn fascinating.
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The Solid Muldoon was said that he was named after either famous wrestler of the day, William Muldoon or Muldoon Hill. Just getting a little wrestling trivia in there. And I know there's a bunch of murderinos with wrestling passions crossover. There is. We watch wrestling in My Favorite Murder. They're so similar. I mean, very spiritually similar. Yeah. But the Muldoon's mystery doesn't last.
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A chatty insider spills the truth and word spreads that it's yet another fake. And then in perhaps the least surprising twist, the man behind this creation is also George Hull.
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It's so embarrassing. And also, you know, no brag, but we would kind of live at the fair every year when we had to go do 4-H stuff. And so we got to see all of that where it's like this horse stands 21 hands high or whatever. And you'd hear it like playing all day long. Yes, exactly. It's a man eating fish of a thousand.
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And you just maybe it was because our parents gave us the money to satisfy that curiosity. Then we immediately were like, they ripped us off. And then it's like most kids never have that experience. And they have it when they're like 24.
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Did she know you were getting a nose piece?
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She was just like... She was cool. I'll always remember her. She didn't give a shit. No, she was cool. Shout out to you, Rhonda. Definitely Rhonda. Such a Rhonda. Such a Rhonda. Okay. Okay, where were we? He made another giant, but this time with a tail. And that was a shout out to Darwinism. So with this latest stunt, George was certainly aiming for another payday. He almost got it. P.T.
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Barnum reportedly offered $20,000 for the solid Muldoon, which is roughly $600,000 in today's money. Just take P.T. Barnum's money. I mean, you might as well. But for whatever reason, it doesn't seem like Barnum actually ever purchased it. The deal fell apart somehow. I bet you it was George Hull's fault.
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It's, oh, you meddling kids.
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I'm not dealing with you. As writer Mark Rose reports, quote, where Barnum admitted offering $50,000 for the Cardiff Giant in 1869, his supposed offer for the solid Muldoon seven years later was only $20,000. By the 1890s, petrified men were cheap. One found at Wind Cave, South Dakota, went for $2,000, and another found near Fresno and exhibited in the popular drugstore there sold for $1,000.
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I feel bad for, like, the real one. There's one real one out there probably, right? It could be down there, like, guys, I turned to stone. Oh, wait, then it says, petrified men had lost their financial punch. Their game was over. So interest in the solid Muldoon quickly fades. George sank a lot of money into this hoax, and he never recoups what he spent.
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He ultimately returns to his career in the tobacco business, but he struggles financially for the rest of his life. And he dies in 1902 at 81 years old in obscurity and without much money. But History, the website History, reports that he was, quote, still proud of once fooling the world with the Cardiff Giant.
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For years, George's original Cardiff Giant was regulated to the back of a barn in Massachusetts. Oh, my goodness. Which I love. Yeah. Like, basically, it got bought and sold a couple times, and then basically someone put it in the back of the barn where it's like, yeah, my dad bought that in the 50s.
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Of course not. But people question it, but it's kind of more like, well, if I am, then I'm going to work on it this way. And then working on it makes you a worse person, but you can't admit it by the time you're done with it. I mean, it goes around and around. Let's pretend we're smart and have a podcast.
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Then in 1901, the year before George's death, it got carted out of storage for the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. But not many people came to see it. The giant is again bought and sold several times. And then in 1974, it finally winds up in the hands of the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York, run by the New York State Historical Association.
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And it's on display there to this day. And the association's vice president for education, Garrett Livermore, has said, quote, it's one of our most popular exhibitions. People are still fascinated by this story.
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It's like almost makes me cry for some reason.
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It's about, it's a people story. Human nature. We're always looking past that of like, where's the giants from days of yore or whatever, where it's just like, how about a story about George Hull who was walking around looking like a snidely whiplash. Yeah. And trying to make giant sculptures trick, like Bible thumpers. Yeah. Yeah.
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The Cardiff Giants story has all the elements that we know and love. A shocking discovery, a circus-like sense of wonder, a media frenzy, faith butting heads with science, and shameless capitalism. All of these things that feel distinctly, chaotically, and timelessly American. As Gerald R. Smith and George Basler note, to close...
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For some visitors to the Farmers Museum, the Cardiff giant hoax can take on the rosy glow for a time when America seemed more innocent. Although whether this time actually existed is a matter of debate. Others remark on the gullibility of people who fell for the hoax, but maybe they shouldn't be so smug. Witness today's Internet hoaxes and online scams.
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For example, stories about aliens building the Great Pyramids. End quote. Very good slam in there right at the end. Smith and Bassler add that, quote, certainly the memory of the Cardiff Giant has outlived the memory of its creator. No marker exists in Cardiff to remember Hull, the great hoaxer. Considering his ego, he would certainly not be pleased.
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As the biblical saying goes, a prophet is without honor in his home country. That could go for a hoaxer as well. And that's the story of George Hull and the Cardiff Giant. Wow. Wow. Great job. What was that? I'm not sure. I guess I loved that story so much that I had to give it a theme song button.
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And let's stick together as we go forward and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
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This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck. Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton.
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Almost nine. Coming up on our nine-year anniversary. We're in what? Sixth grade? Yeah. Emotionally? Yes. What was the question?
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This episode was mixed by Liana Squilacci.
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Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
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Oh, yeah. Oh, if we were nine years old?
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Third grade, I think. Third. Is that it? Okay.
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Oh, yeah. We'd be running that thing. We'd be calling teachers by their first name.
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Because the thing about geography, it's not about the details.
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It's about the colors of the map. Geography is not science.
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Hey. Oh. I have, sorry. What? One piece of mail. Okay. Oh. This is a real email that we got. Hello from the team at BBC Studios UK TV in Britain.
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Dear Karen and Georgia, although we suspect this will mostly appeal to Karen. I am a day one listener. I've never missed an episode yet of My Favorite Murder. I also happen to be the chief communications and marketing officer for BBC Studios, which also owns BritBox and UK TV. Holy shit. And then they say, you can only imagine my total delight when I was on my morning run.
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In cold, dark London, true crime is the perfect companion on a morning run. It keeps your pace up. When all of a sudden your conversation turned to UK TV on the latest episode, Shoulders Back. Oh, that's the latest episode of our show. I was like, I've never heard of Shoulders Back. I have to see Shoulders Back. Instantly, I shared the episode with my team, Carrie at UKTV and Alana at BritBox.
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This is just a note to say we love and appreciate just how much Karen enjoys the shows we make. And if you're ever in the UK, let us know and we'd be delighted to see if we can get you on set to see some of your favorite British procedurals or period dramas being made. Just give us a shout. Best wishes, Susanna.
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That was so loud. No, the inhale. I thought you were going to like say a big thing. I think I'm like, oh, my God.
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Susanna, we really appreciate you writing in. I'm. I'm beside myself with being seen and perceived in the world by the things I'm perceiving. I'm happy for you.
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Nobody. Look, I thought it said pookie and I didn't even look. It says pookie. That's my dog.
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I'm so sorry that I didn't. I was like, I don't know Pookie and I don't have to get involved with Pookie. That was my thinking.
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But also that's how much I saw Pookie, I saw Cookie at the beginning, right before COVID. Oh, right. And then I've only seen Cookie since on social media. So, like, I didn't immediately recognize her the way I wish I would. Well, she's, like, green and purple in these, so it's a little weird. Right. And I thought her name was Pookie, and it was a different dog.
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This week on the Bananas podcast, comedian Chloe Radcliffe joins the Banana Boys to discuss weird news from around the world.
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On Wicked Words, Kate Winkler-Dawson talks to author Ellen J. Green about her book Murder in the Neighborhood, the true story of America's first recorded mass shooting, about a 1949 shooting in New Jersey.
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Yeah. And you guys bought those shirts and you donated. It was great. So with all the things that are happening in the world these days... And a bunch of people actually suggested this on social media. We decided we are going to bring back the Pearl Heart T-shirt. So head to Exactly Right Store and place your order by November 26th. Proceeds will be donated to the ACLU and their effort is...
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to combat all of the threats to our civil rights that are now standing somewhere in a murky future that we are not sure about.
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Now that women are second class citizens in America and we have an incoming president who is very interested in not just keeping it that way, but expounding upon that. We all need to get ourselves together. We need to collect our thoughts and our plans and we need to resist and never submit. Yes, let's. Yes.
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Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
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It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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454 - Together We're Fine
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
454 - Together We're Fine
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
457 - In With The Goths
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
457 - In With The Goths
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
457 - In With The Goths
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
457 - In With The Goths
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 411
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 411
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 411
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 411
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 409
I'm sorry. Getting in trouble for getting a divorce is the funniest thing of all. It's so not about you, Doris. Totally. Like maybe he needs you at this time of like strife, but no.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 409
I'm sorry. This is my new hometown of all fucking time. I love family gossip. I don't know. It's pure tea. And it's kind of like, you think your family's crazy. Listen to this shit.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 408
I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 408
It's kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
MFM Minisode 408
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Before the detectives could question Victor, they had to read him what's known as the Miranda Warning. It lets the person in custody know they have a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. They have a right not to answer questions. They have a right to speak to a lawyer. And anything they say can be used against them in court.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Victor's bail was set at $2 million. The booking record from that day states that he had no property with him and no car. There's nothing listed in the line for an emergency contact. This paperwork also includes a physical description of him, including a description of one of his tattoos. the word karma on his right shoulder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
In the booking photo, his hair is bleached down the middle, just like in that screenshot that Susie had sent to Lugo. And where his gauges had once been were now just a pair of stretched holes in his earlobes. He looked tired, defeated. It had been a long day, and an even longer four months on the run.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The night that Victor was arrested, Susie went on Facebook and posted a public statement, first in Spanish and then in English. She wrote, In the post, Susie thanked her friends, her cousin, and her daughter's best friend. She thanked Lugo and Sanchez and all the people who called and shared posts on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. Thanks to all of you, she wrote, this bastard is behind bars.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The post included a photo of Daisy in her prom dress, her hair glowing bright white. Susie signed off using a moniker she'd come to use again and again on social media. Daisy's mom, forever 19. Three days later, Daisy's friend, her name is Rebecca Fuentes, she posted a duet with her original TikTok. You know, the one that began, this is my friend Daisy. and she used it to announce the news.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But her cousin was insistent that she pull over. After some back and forth, Susie agreed. And that's when her cousin shared the news. Somebody had messaged the Justice for Daisy Instagram account. And this person said that not only had he seen Victor, he knew him. Actually, he knew Billy. That's the name Victor was apparently going by. They worked together. At a bar. In Mexico.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But this wasn't just a celebration post. It was yet another call to action.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The Compton Courthouse. It's this towering concrete building, and there's this big white sculpture in the shape of a tent in the plaza outside it. Daisy's friends streamed the whole thing on the Justice for Daisy Instagram page. It was July 6th, the day of Victor's arraignment.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
As comments trickled in on the live stream, Rebecca turned the camera on herself and read them aloud.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
At one point, there was this comment that came on the livestream that really seemed to upset Rebecca. I don't know exactly what it said, but based on her reaction, I assume it was something nasty.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
When the hearing started, Victor was read his charges. First-degree murder and personal use of a deadly weapon. The murder charge alone carried a possible sentence of 25 years to life. Victor pleaded not guilty. Susie found it deeply distressing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
When I spoke to her a few months after that day, she told me that he would have avoided so much heartache and so much headache if he would have just pled guilty. But all right, she said, I guess you just want to make it this much harder on yourself. It also meant that it would be that much harder on Susie. It meant that this case was going to trial.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
When the preliminary hearing started in early September, Daisy's mother and her friends all wore white t-shirts printed with a photo of Daisy on them. As they stood outside the courthouse, Susie gave an interview to the local ABC7 news station.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
I looked up the case on the court's website and started showing up to these hearings. And it was in the Compton Courthouse that I first introduced myself to Susie. I told her I'd seen her story on the local news and that I thought there was more to it. I told her I wanted to know more about her daughter... about the social media campaign, about the investigation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And soon after that was when we met at the Mexican restaurant, and she told me everything from the beginning about her daughter, her daughter's ex-boyfriend, her daughter's incredible friends, and the way she was still struggling, especially now that she was bracing herself for the trial. She was experiencing a new kind of anxiety and waiting.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Waiting for the court system, which was moving even slower than normal thanks to COVID. Victor was being held at Men's Central Jail in downtown LA. And anytime someone in his housing area got sick, It meant he couldn't come to court, which meant that nobody could come to court. So the dates kept getting pushed back.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But even as the judge and the lawyers met again and again to reschedule, Daisy's mother and her friends kept showing up. They wanted Victor to see their faces, to know that they were watching. that he wasn't going to get away with it. It was strange because ever since Daisy's murder, her friends and her family had been desperate for any scrap of information about the investigation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And he had a video to prove it. Susie was confused. Tons of people had reported seeing Victor around L.A., So how could he be in Mexico? And why would he be working at a bar? Susie wanted to see the video, but there was a catch. The guy who offered it wanted money.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And now they'd have to hear and see everything that had been hidden from them. Every horrifying detail, every graphic description, crime scene photographs, police camera footage, autopsy illustrations. In April of the following year, I returned to the Compton Courthouse for the main event, the trial. Susie and her cousin and a handful of her daughter's friends filled the seats in the gallery.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Sanchez was there too. He sat next to the prosecutor. The bailiff walked Victor into the courtroom and removed his handcuffs. His hair was parted and gelled. The bleach had grown out. He stared straight ahead, emotionless. Over the next couple of days, I watched as a small army of government workers took the stand, one after the other.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
There was a DNA analyst, a forensic identification specialist, a coroner criminalist, a medical examiner. And they were mostly young women. I remember listening to them and feeling totally overwhelmed by this degree of specificity they went into about the most atrocious things.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
I thought about how their jobs required them to react to violence, to study its aftermath, to examine its impacts on human skin and bones and organs. They talked about how they swabbed Deezy's body, put the cotton swabs in sterile tubes, retrieved her tampon, placed her clothing in brown paper bags, a blue zip-up hoodie, a black shirt, a bra, pants, socks, Shoes.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
They talked about collecting items from around her body. A knife, a pair of black glasses, a yellow and blue beanie, a keychain with a set of keys on it. They told the jury how they rolled up the rug, Wendy's rug, packaged it, took it back to a crime lab and laid it out on butcher paper to dry, then booked it into evidence. Tested everything for blood, for semen, for saliva.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
found a DNA profile consistent with Victor's on the carpet. The knife, the keychain, the tampon. It was hard to argue with the evidence. But Victor's public defender, A.J. Bain, found a way. Throughout the trial, he argued that investigators relied too much on DNA.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
He argued that they'd introduced errors into their work, that they used outdated software, that they were sloppy with changing their gloves, clumsy with collecting evidence, haphazard with storing it, and that the detectives were lazy, that they failed to ask questions, to find out who the knife belonged to, who the keys belonged to.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
He said that Victor, or Billy, or whoever, owed him money, and that if he got arrested, he wouldn't get his money back, so he had to get it somewhere else. Susie was skeptical. It was a huge risk. Because what if the man never sent the video? Or what if he did and it turned out to not be Victor in it? But her cousin had already thought this through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
That Daisy lived in an area where robberies were routine, where prostitution was pervasive, and that her murder could have been committed by anyone.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
What he seemed to be saying was, this is the price of living in Compton. Murders are tragic, but they happen. And sometimes they're random. I thought about how hard Daisy's mother and her friends had worked to get attention on this case, to counter this idea that homicide in Compton was normal, that it wasn't worth media attention or police resources.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
I thought about how this same narrative was now being weaponized by the defense to help convince a jury that Victor was innocent. The cross-examinations were sometimes brutal to watch. And not just the ones involving the forensic specialists. I mean, they were professionals who had taken the stand in lots of other murder trials. It was their job to talk about their work, even if it was gruesome.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But it was the interrogation of Daisy's neighbors that was really hard to stomach. The people who, together, made up this portrait of Daisy's community. There was Jose Tellez, the building manager, Juan de Leo, Daisy's grandfather, and Jeffrey, Wendy Valdivia's son.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Like, for example, when Jose took the stand, AJ repeatedly asked him if he'd seen Daisy and Victor having sex under a blanket outside the apartment complex. And it was this line of questioning, I think, that was meant to argue that the two of them were in this loving, consensual relationship. Basically, that Victor had no motive to kill Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But each time AJ asked the question, Jose insisted that he didn't see any sexual relations between them. He said through an interpreter, I cannot say that. I didn't see that. And then AJ just kept asking. At one point, he even said, You know what a zipper sounds like, is that correct? Yes, I suppose I do, said Jose. All right, great. Did you hear a zipper? AJ asked.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Maybe you know where this is headed, and I'll just say that the questioning became more graphic and more upsetting from there. When Juan took the stand, A.J. pointed out that he wasn't wearing his eyeglasses the night he saw this shadowy figure in the window of his apartment. He said there was no way that Juan could be sure that it was Victor he saw. At one point later on, A.J.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
If you didn't catch that, Victor's public defender referred to Daisy's grandfather as Mr. Magoo. You know, the cartoon character with comically bad vision. Even Jeffrey, who was 14 at the time, was questioned about his eyesight, about the fact that he'd walked past Daisy and Victor that same night, but he couldn't make out their faces. He didn't stop to look at them.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
He didn't peer at them from out the window. And when he was later shown the six pack, the defense attorney pointed out he did not pick the photo of Victor. But Jeffrey kept his focus, he answered all the questions, and when he didn't understand the questions, he simply said so. It was unusual to see a child testifying at a murder trial. I mean, according to Lugo, it was almost unheard of.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Wendy told me that Jeffrey had insisted on it, that he wasn't scared of retribution, that he knew it was the right thing to do. But the most surprising testimony, it didn't come from Jeffrey. It didn't come from anyone who lived at the apartment complex with Daisy or anyone who examined her body on a medical table. It came from someone who had only met her a couple of times.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
She'd told the guy in her DMs that she needed to know for sure the video was legit. And he came up with a solution. He said he'd send her a snippet of the video, a sampling of the product before she bought it. It would disappear immediately after she viewed it in her DMs. And if she wanted to keep it, it would cost her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And Victor, well, she'd known him his whole life. She'd given birth to him. And somewhat incredibly, she had agreed to testify against him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
When the video arrived in Mimi's DMs, she took a deep breath and clicked on the play icon. She had hoped to take a screen recording, but she was so nervous that her hands froze. Before the video ended, she realized she had just enough time to take a screenshot. And that's when she called Susie. She needed her to look at the screenshot and tell her. Was it him?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
It's why she was so insistent that Susie pull over. Susie sat in her car, waiting for her cousin's text to arrive. When it did, she immediately opened it. The resolution wasn't great, but the photo clearly showed a man sitting at a high-top table with at least one other person. There was a bucket of beer and a few bottles on the table.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The man's elbow was propped up, and he was holding a cigarette between his fingers. He didn't have any of the distinctive features that were displayed on the photos of Victor. For one thing, he didn't have dark hair. It was bleached, or at least, like, the middle of it was. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, so no visible tattoos. And his face was turned to one side, and his hand was covering his ear.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But Susie didn't need to rely on hair color or tattoos or ear piercings to know that it was Victor. She took one look at the screenshot, and she knew instantly. It was him. This man so casually smoking a cigarette at a bar. This was the man who had murdered her daughter. I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer, Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy. Episode 7, Karma.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Seeing Victor in that photo, Susie told me, it did something to her. Those were the words that she used in her interview. It did something to me. There was something about how he looked in that image. He just looked so completely unbothered that just drove Susie crazy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Before seeing that screenshot, she had imagined that maybe Victor had been hiding out somewhere, living in the shadows, on the fringes. She had considered that maybe Victor had made his way across the border. But whatever she pictured, it was not this. Victor, in a bar, out in the open, out of the shadows. There was something else about it that really did not sit right with Susie.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And that was the type of bar that Victor had apparently been recognized in. It's called Papa's and Beer. Maybe you've heard of it. It's not this, like, underground hole-in-the-wall dive bar. It's one of the most popular nightclubs in all of Baja. A place so massive that it calls itself the West Coast's largest beach club. And so touristy that it offers its own shuttle service from San Diego.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
It was just about the last place that Susie had expected Victor to show his face. To her, the screenshot telegraphed an almost incomprehensible message. That Victor thought he was going to get away with murder. I actually tracked down the guy who sent this DM. I found his Instagram handle in the screenshot that Susie had texted to me, the one that her cousin had texted to her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
I had a phone conversation with this guy over WhatsApp. And maybe this shouldn't have surprised me, but he actually tried to make a deal with me too. He didn't want to do the interview unless he got paid for it. But just as he'd eventually given in and sent the screenshot to Mimi, he also ended up giving me the information that I was looking for.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
He confirmed Susie and Mimi's version of events with me. Anyway, Susie sent this screenshot to Detective Lugo right after Mimi had sent it to her. This was the big tip they'd been waiting for. But when she got Lugo on the line, he wasn't nearly as energized about this tip as she was. Lugo said he'd already gotten a tip of his own.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
And the last thing he wanted was for Victor to catch wind of it and make a run for it. Again, Susie was told to wait, to calm down, to sit back and let the detectives do their jobs. She'd heard that before. Earlier that morning, Detective Sanchez was in a meeting at the Homicide Bureau. It was a weekly meeting where he and the other detectives gave status updates on their cases.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
I haven't been able to speak to this woman, and I haven't heard this voicemail. Sanchez said it doesn't exist anymore. He and his partner, Lugo, said all messages get automatically deleted after 30 days.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Mexico. She was calling from Rosarito, Mexico. She was an American living in San Diego, and she was visiting a friend at the bar where he worked.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Sanchez wrote down the name and location of the bar, and then he forwarded it to the U.S. Marshals. They then sent it to the Rosarito Police Department. And then Sanchez sort of forgot about it. Because the next day, he was at an auto body shop with his daughter when his cell phone rang.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Sanchez was about to leave on a family vacation to Mexico of all places. And like most American workers, on the Friday leading into a holiday weekend, his mind was elsewhere.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The Rosarito Police Department had Victor Sosa. Do you remember how you were feeling when you got this phone call?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Holy crap. The murder suspect that had been on the run for months. The guy Daisy's family had been rallying the internet to find. The so-called shadow. The Richard Ramirez lookalike. the guy who had been everywhere and nowhere at once, he'd suddenly fallen right into Sanchez's lap.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
The comandante had Victor transported to the border. There, he was turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They located the warrant that sheriffs had filed for his arrest just four days earlier.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Sanchez arranged to have a detective with the sheriff's fugitive division go on a road trip to one of the busiest border crossings in the world. on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
It meant that Sanchez and his partner, Lugo, had some time to prepare for their interrogation. They got suited up. They reviewed the evidence they'd collected, the interviews they'd done, and they drove over to the East L.A. Sheriff's Station. Sanchez was filled with anxious energy. He was trying to psych himself up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
He had to figure out what to say and how to get a confession out of an alleged killer.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
It was a little before 11 a.m. on July 1st, 2021. A Thursday, right before July 4th weekend. Everyone on the road seemed to be in a hurry, trying to squeeze in one last thing before the holiday. Including Susie. She was running a work errand to the post office when her cell phone rang. It was her cousin, Mimi Garcia.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
But when Victor walked through the door of the sheriff's station, he didn't look like he was going to overtake anything.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Victor looked so terrified that Lugo and Sanchez decided they needed to get him to relax.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
They ended up getting a McDonald's. After that, Lugo and Sanchez decided it was time to ease into the interview. And there were so many questions to ask. Questions like, what actually happened the night he allegedly met up with Daisy? Why did he go to Mexico? How long had he been there? And how did he end up working at a spring break-style nightclub?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
So when she was killed in a wealthy neighborhood... She had been shot twice in the head and in the back, behind the heart.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 7 - Karma
Mimi had been managing the Justice for Daisy Instagram account, along with one of Daisy's friends. Together, they'd been sifting through DMs from people who claimed they'd spotted Victor. They didn't want to overwhelm Susie or give her false hope, so they only passed along the most promising leads. Susie knew this, and now she was anxious to know why Mimi was calling.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I first became aware of Sarah's videos when I saw that someone had tagged her in the comments of the My Friend Daisy TikTok. Can you please help share this? They'd written. Sarah didn't end up seeing the video, she told me. Her notifications are always blowing up, so it's easy for stuff to get buried.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
People who make videos about missing or murdered friends and loved ones, they often tag Sarah, hoping that she'll repost them to her more than a million TikTok followers. Sarah went viral in April of 2020. She'd made a TikTok about her sister's disappearance. She'd tried for nearly two decades to get police to investigate, but nothing worked. Until TikTok did.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Four months after she posted the TikTok, the person she'd been accusing of murder had officially been charged. It was her father.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
A jury later acquitted him. But Sarah's TikTok was like this case study. for others who desperately wanted to have their day in court, to see charges filed, investigations closed. And they knew they had a powerful resource at their disposal.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Sarah talks about TikTok as this democratizing tool, this thing with the power to boost stories that aren't getting attention elsewhere. Like all social media platforms, it also carries a risk of circulating misinformation or just having it spin out of control. But to people like Sarah, the risks are worth it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I think that's one of the reasons why I got so many responses to the article that I ended up writing about Daisy for New York magazine's The Cut. Maybe it was the fact that her story first surfaced on TikTok. It was the story that otherwise might not have been reported on by the local TV news or by me. But after the article was published, I had this feeling.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It was sort of like that feeling I had when I was watching that news segment. Like, this wasn't the end of the story. There was still this part of it that I hadn't uncovered yet. Like, what actually went wrong during the police investigation? Why had it stalled? How did it get to this point where Daisy's friends and family felt the need to take it into their own hands?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And there were bigger questions I had, too. Like, was social media the only way to get attention on a murder case when it involved someone who wasn't rich or who wasn't already kind of famous? What was the effect this was having on the families of crime victims, putting themselves in the spotlight as a last resort? Was our justice system fundamentally broken?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
In other words, how much depends upon a TikTok? When I started making this series, I had already interviewed people who created the posts about Daisy. But I hadn't yet talked to those who had consumed them, who sprang into action, who I would soon discover put their own safety on the line and hunted for the suspect in their own backyards. What compelled them to get involved?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I was interested in exploring this idea of vigilante justice. Why did so many people in Daisy's community feel abandoned by law enforcement? And where did their drive come from, this drive to demand accountability by any means necessary? I ended up sitting down with both detectives in person for the first time.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I spoke to lots of people who knew Daisy, and I spoke to a lot of people who had only ever seen her on their phone screens. I sifted through legal documents, and I gained access to records I had never seen before. Records that really shifted my understanding of this case. And I ended up speaking with the person whose photos I had seen all over the internet.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The person who, according to that TikTok, had murdered Daisy. Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
If you've ever scrolled through TikTok, then you know it's full of people sharing the most intimate and sometimes the most mundane parts of their lives. People who film everything they ate in a day, everything they purchased on the internet, everything they wore on vacation. People who see their lives as content. Daisy DeLaO was not one of those people.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The last time any of Daisy's family members saw her alive was February 22nd, 2021. It was a Monday, an ordinary Monday by most standards, filled with work and chores and errands. But to Daisy's mother, Susanna, this day stuck out. It's so weird, she told me, but that day, we spent the whole day together.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Susanna relayed this to me the first time I interviewed her, in November 2021, nearly nine months after her daughter's murder. She'd suggested we meet for dinner at a Mexican restaurant in her neighborhood. It was wedged in a suburban strip mall in southeast L.A. Reminders of Daisy were everywhere.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The CVS where she had worked was just a few doors down, and the junior high and high schools she graduated from were a short drive away. Suzanne and I sat on stools at the bar. She told me she goes by Susie. She had big brown eyes and long brown hair parted to one side. There was this loud mariachi music playing in the background. So the audio from this interview isn't great.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And Susie did not want to be re-interviewed for this series. Talking about it again on tape would be too painful. We ordered tacos and we got to talking. At one point, the bartender maybe sensed that we were having this difficult conversation. She brought over two shots of tequila on the house. And Susie proceeded to tell me about this one day she remembered vividly.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She wasn't planning to do laundry that day. The laundromat was just across the street, but it meant loading and unloading the car, waiting around for hours, and she just didn't want to deal with it. But Daisy convinced her otherwise. Come on, lady. Come on, Susie remembers Daisy had said.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Daisy had this way about her, this way of cheering on her mother, rallying her to do the stuff she didn't feel like doing. At the laundromat, Daisy worked on a crossword puzzle. And at one point, she looked up and told her mom that some guy was checking her out. Susie chimed in. How about that one? He's checking you out. Ew, gross, Daisy had said. At 19, she was roughly half the age of her mother.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
They were both adults, and to Susie, their easy relationship felt like a relief, especially after all the hardships of the previous few years. Years when Susie didn't always know where Daisy was. She was worried she might flunk out of high school, never mind making it to college. Susie had grown frustrated. She worked long hours and she didn't have time to track Daisy's every move.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And so she showed her tough love. She let her screw up and then deal with the consequences. And that was when something surprising happened, she told me. That's when Daisy started getting her life on track. She started going to night school to make up for all the classes she'd missed. She went to prom with friends. She wore a floor-length, baby blue strapless gown.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She looked like punk rock Cinderella, her white blonde hair glowing like a halo. And by the spring of 2019, she'd made up enough credits to walk at graduation with the rest of her class. That fall, she enrolled at East LA College, about a half hour northeast of Compton. She'd even gotten a job on campus, welcoming new students. At least until COVID hit and the school went online.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She was not an influencer or a vlogger or a content creator. She didn't like to share her secrets with the world. Sometimes she even hid them from the people closest to her. When she was murdered at the age of 19, her Instagram contained just five posts, only two of which showed her face. Slightly more than 100 people followed her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Daisy dreamed of becoming a makeup and tattoo artist, of starting her own business. She didn't want to work for nobody, Susie told me. But in the meantime, she was super focused on a short-term goal, one she was on the verge of achieving. She had saved up enough money to buy a used car. It seemed like everything was going perfect, Susie told me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
After they got home that night from the laundromat, Susie said she had no energy to make dinner. And that's when Daisy started in with her rallying cry. Come on, lady, come on. Susie went to the kitchen. She made chicken tinga. She and Daisy joined Daisy's grandparents in the living room. They all lived together, along with Daisy's younger brother. It was a little cramped.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
There was just one bathroom, but they made do. A Spanish-language news show was playing on the television. Daisy curled up near Susie's feet, and there was this sense of calmness. Everyone was in a good mood, especially Daisy. That's Daisy's grandfather, Juan de la O. He has a round face, bushy eyebrows, and graying hair. He says that Daisy was about to buy a car.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Especially at that age, he said, you get excited that you're going to have your own car. It was a big deal. In LA, a car means freedom. Which was probably really important when you share an apartment with your grandparents and your mother and your brother. Especially because the bus from Daisy's apartment to work took her almost an hour. Took even longer for her to get to campus.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
But it was worth it. Daisy was on track to get her associate's degree in just a few months. Maybe it was her knowledge of all the good things on the horizon that put Daisy in such a good mood that night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
That's Miguel Contreras. He conducted this interview with me, and he also served as a translator. Miguel and I interviewed Juan in the living room of his Compton apartment. It's the top unit in a two-story cream-colored building off of Busy Boulevard. It's the place where Daisy and her mother and her little brother used to live.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Miguel noticed a piece of colored tinsel taped to the wall near the kitchen. He asked if it was for a party.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The tinsel was left over actually from two Christmases ago.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The night that he was telling us about, it stuck out in his memory because of how peaceful it was, how calm it was, how everyone was getting along. But the energy in the room seemed to change sometime around 10.30 p.m. That's when Daisy got a text message. She looked down at her phone, and she announced that she was going to step outside.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
They were mostly friends from high school and college, people she knew in real life. Nobody else would have known to find her there. Her real name wasn't even on the account. To anyone outside of her social circle, her profile was essentially unsearchable. Her LinkedIn page, created just six months before her death, listed no activity and no connections.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It stuck out to him, the way she gave her mother and her grandmother this big hug before walking out the door. She assured them that she wouldn't be long. I'll be right back, she'd said. Early the next morning, Jose Tellez went to take out the trash. He's the property manager at the building where Daisy's family lived.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He's in his late 50s with piercing green eyes, dark hair speckled with gray, and a white goatee. He was born in Michoacan, but he spent more than half his life here in Compton. And for most of that time, he's lived and worked here. The property consists of eight buildings. There are these boxy bungalows with steps that wind down the front of them, connecting the second story to the ground floor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
There's 32 units in all. And Jose knows just about everyone who lives here. A lot of his tenants use Section 8 vouchers, he told me. They're essentially federally subsidized rent payments. It's not always easy to find landlords who accept Section 8. So tenants here, they tend to stay a while. Jose is always busy taking care of something or another.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Like, on the day that I showed up at the property to talk to him, he was busy trimming trees. While we talked, tenants came up to ask him questions. He takes pride in his job. He said he's always working. And that Tuesday morning in February of 2021 was no exception. Jose walked across the complex to the patch of concrete where all the garbage bins were stored.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He started wheeling them out to the alley, one by one, saving the bulky items for last. One of those items was a big blue and gray patterned rug. It had been laying on the ground a few feet away from the garbage bins in the walkway between two apartment buildings.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Jose walked over to it and lifted it up. But when he saw what was underneath it, he froze. It was a body lying face down on the ground.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I don't get scared of nothing. But hey, I find some person there and I don't know what I'm going to do. Jose had seen and heard a lot during his more than three decades as building manager. He'd even witnessed death in the back alley.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
He started panicking. But the first call he made wasn't to the police. It was to his wife. Call the cops, she responded. It seems obvious, but to Jose it wasn't exactly intuitive. Because, like a lot of the people I spoke with in his building, Jose had not had the best experiences with police. He told me it often took them a long time to show up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And sometimes their presence made a bad situation worse. Like, there was this one time.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And her Facebook, it seemingly hadn't been touched in years. For the most part, Daisy lived her life offline, and that was the way that she liked it. But when her life was cut short in February of 2021, a strange thing happened. Daisy went viral. Photos and videos of her began to appear online. And there was this one TikTok that really told the story of her life and death.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's a long story. It involves an aggressive former tenant and Jose firing a gun into the air. He says it was to try to scare him away from the property. But Jose's takeaway was that the next time he had a problem, he'd deal with it himself. Less of a hassle than getting the police involved. But on that morning, when he found the body, he knew this was not something he could handle on his own.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
the operator asks Jose to speak up. She sounds agitated. She says she can barely hear him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
But it seems pretty clear it's not the volume that's the issue. It's the language barrier.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
As Jose waited for the police to arrive, his mind raced with questions. Who was this person? How did they end up here? And who had done this to them? This season on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The first frame of it showed Daisy on a carnival ride. It's the one where you grip the steering wheel and spin it around and around in circles until you either puke or lose your voice from screaming so much. Five words appear across the screen. This is my friend Daisy. Daisy is wearing wingtip eyeliner and a gold septum ring. She's got black and turquoise hair peeking out from under her beanie.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The neon lights from the carnival cast this purple glow across her face. And there's something about her expression. It's like, I don't know, the way she's looking off to the side and her eyes and her mouth are wide with joy that is just really magnetic. A few seconds later, the TikTok cuts to a new image. And this one has no carnival rides, no smiles, no neon lighting. There's no joy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's mostly black with a collage of photos of someone else. Someone suspected of murdering her. This TikTok, it was posted on May 26th, 2021. It was less than a minute long, but it accomplished two things that nobody had been able to do up until that point. Not the media and not the police.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It got people to care about this woman they'd never met, who came from an immigrant family and a low-income neighborhood. I've watched this TikTok over and over again. I've studied it, like pausing the frames and zooming in and out and analyzing it like it's this piece of art. And I don't know, it's not like I'm looking for some kind of secret message within it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's more that I'm just in awe of its storytelling. It has this precision to it. It hooks you in, gut punches you with a series of emotions. Joy, horror, sadness, anger. And it conveys this sense of urgency, this need for justice. Not later, but right now. And not from the authorities, but from the community. It gives us permission to look for answers. To take control.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
To be the sleuths we wish to see in the world. I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy. Episode 1, Sitting Ducks.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
If you lived in L.A. in the summer of 2021, you might have come across this story on the local ABC7 station. It was the kind of story that TV news shows seem to love to spotlight. It was about a promising young girl, the senseless violence that ended her life, and the single mother left shattered. There were tearful interviews set to a slow piano instrumental. The whole thing was deeply tragic.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Like, unspeakably sad. But the news segment also had this unexpected element.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The TikTok campaign. It immediately piqued my interest. This idea that TikTok, a platform nobody outside of Gen Z seemed to understand and which the federal government wants to ban, could actually lend a voice to the people who needed it the most. And then there were the photos of Daisy herself that drew me in. I didn't know her, but she reminded me of myself and my friends in high school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
The piercings, the rainbow hair colors, the fishnet stockings. She dressed like I did when I was a teenager. when I didn't quite know who I was, but I knew I wasn't like everyone else. Or at least that's what I told myself. And there was something I couldn't get out of my mind when I first saw this news segment. Susanna grateful to the L.A.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It was the way detectives had been celebrated in that news clip. The narration was so over the top. that I almost wondered if it was a PR stunt for the sheriffs. I found it confusing. Because it raised this question for me. If that was true, if detectives had been working endlessly on this case, then why did Daisy's friends feel the need to get involved and try to solve it themselves?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
To take matters into their own hands and launch their own seemingly rogue campaign? I had the sense that there was something missing from the story. Something that just couldn't be contained in this short news segment. And I immediately wanted to know what it was. So I got in touch with Susana Salas. We talked for hours.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And she told me about something one of the detectives on the case had told her. It was something I'd heard her talk about on that news segment. And he'd say, I promise you, Mija, we're going to find them. But then she told me something that didn't make it onto that TV segment, which is that the detective's words did little to reassure her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
When she heard them, she thought to herself, bullshit, it's a Mexican-American girl. Who's going to care about her? It turned out a lot of people. Daisy's friends made sure of it. I spent a lot of time speaking with them in the months following Daisy's murder. At that point, they hadn't been interviewed on the news or by anyone at all that I could tell.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
I wanted to understand what had compelled them to become their own detectives, to put their trauma on display for the world. And it became clear pretty quickly that these teenage girls hadn't made these TikToks and Instagrams and Facebook posts for clout. They definitely did not want to be investigating their friend's unsolved murder. But they felt they had no other choice.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
And this thing they did, it was pretty gutsy. But it didn't exist in a vacuum. It was part of this larger phenomenon of friends and loved ones turning to social media when the so-called justice system wasn't working for them.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
She's a true crime TikToker, YouTuber, and podcaster. If you've ever spent time watching true crime on TikTok, or crime talk as it's sometimes called, then chances are you've seen Sarah's videos. Talking to her over Zoom felt a little surreal. It was almost like jumping into one of her videos to ask questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
Questions like, what would compel someone to talk about their loved one's murder or disappearance on social media? To ask the public for help in solving a case.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 1 - Sitting Ducks
It's a last resort, Sarah told me, because it requires a degree of vulnerability, which means it can also open the door to harassment.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
That's Detective Ray Lugo. He's got broad shoulders and a bald head. He used to be a high school football coach, and he still kind of got that coach vibe. Like, he likes to remind me that he was the lead detective on Daisy's case. He says he always had a plan for it. He walked me around the office and pointed to newspaper clippings and photographs on the wall.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Okay. Were there ever any records of him having a history with domestic abuse besides this one assault charge?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It's a word that Lugo used to describe Victor at least six different times during our 90-minute interview.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But Victor wasn't a kid. He was 25 when he murdered Daisy. When he fled. When, more than three months later, Daisy's friends and family began posting about it online. And when, a little more than a month after that, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department decided to co-opt their strategy. They turned to social media, too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The local news began broadcasting Victor's name and photo after the sheriffs posted a flyer about him on their Facebook page. WANTED FOR MURDER, the graphic said in all caps across the top of the flyer. In the center was a DMV photo of Victor. It had been taken about four years earlier, actually around the time that he met Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
In it, he had shaggy hair that fell to the base of his neck and clear gauges in his ears.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The local CBS news station wasn't the only media outlet to pick up the sheriff's announcement. The LA Times ran a story, and this time, it included Daisy's name and details about her life. Her mom was quoted in the article talking about how she dreamed of opening a salon someday. And Lugo was quoted in it too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He said that he believed Victor had fled to Mexico, but had since returned to the LA area. And that he'd recently been seen in homeless encampments all over town. These sightings, they were the result of all the calls that Lugo had been getting. Calls from people who had seen the TikToks and the Instagrams.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And because this is Los Angeles, there were also movie posters.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Hang on. The CODIS hit came back in the middle of March? Just three weeks after Daisy's murder? I thought about all the weeks that passed after that, weeks when her friends and family were on pins and needles waiting for updates. I thought about Daisy's neighbors, watching their backs around the apartment complex, wondering who the killer was, not knowing he had any relation to his victim.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It was impossible not to wonder what might have happened if the detectives had put out Victor's name and photo after they first got this CODIS hit. What exactly was gained by waiting an additional three months to warn the public? And what was lost? I sat there in the conference room, dumbfounded.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I'd been working on the story for three years at that point in some form or another, and this piece of information about the date of the CODIS hit, it had totally eluded me up until then. I must have had this blank stare on my face when I heard it, because Lugo suddenly seemed self-conscious. There was this awkward silence, and then he said,
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I just, yeah, when you say that, I know you've explained this to me before, but when you say the CODIS that you're saying that you were able to sample the DNA from the scene and match it with the DNA from his previous arrest. Is that right? Yes, yes. Okay, but then the public didn't know to look for Victor until I think June, the end of June you put out that report.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
So walk me through, like, how do you make the decision about when to tell the public, you know, okay, we're looking for this guy, here's what he looks like. If the CODIS hit was in March, tell me about, like, April, May, June.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I spoke to Lugo and his partner Sanchez multiple times to try to clarify this timeline. to try to understand their reasoning for not putting out this information sooner. They maintained that they were working with Victor's family to try to track him down. They didn't want to put out the information about him to the public because they didn't want to scare him off.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
They were afraid that he'd find out people were looking for him and he'd flee even further south.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Never mind that by the time the detectives posted their flyer on Facebook, Victor's face had already been plastered across TikTok and Instagram for weeks. Which is probably why when people saw this flyer on Facebook, they wrote comments like, Another comment read, I can't believe you guys are just now posting this when it happened in February.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Do you feel like you get slighted if LAPD gets all the glory?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There was this one comment that really seemed to sum up the anger of some people in the community. It read, "'Everyone's been telling the police department where he is, and they don't care. I'm ready to go out and catch him myself.'" This comment, it had been posted by Valerie Panato. Underneath that comment, she'd written the one about wanting to hunt Victor down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
"'We need rope and a bat, because he won't go down without a fight.'" Yeah, she'd written that comment on the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's Facebook page. When I talked to her about these comments, she did not back down from them. She said she meant every word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Was some of your anger around the fact that, like, it had been four months and Victor still hadn't been arrested, like, the comment that you wrote was something like, they don't take this seriously?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
You might be wondering, what kind of beef does Valerie have with the cops? And... It may not shock you to learn this, but she too, like so many others I spoke with in Daisy's community, had had an unnerving encounter with law enforcement. Here's how she put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
All right, so if you didn't catch that, Lugo was saying that The Changeling was based on a sheriff's department's case, but that the movie made it all about the LAPD. When I asked if that bothered him, that the LAPD always gets the Hollywood treatment, he said no. I mean, it sounds like what he said was their junior varsity to us. Again, he's a former football coach.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Valerie, who's not scared of anything, including suspected murderers, was scared of being pulled over by the police. And yet, when a murder happened in her own community, she wondered, where were the police? What had they been doing? And so she decided she wasn't going to let this go.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
You're like, I got to talk shit for justice. I got to do it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Valerie would turn out to be right, but not in the way that anyone expected. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And by the way, the LAPD and the LA Sheriff's Department have separate jurisdictions. The former patrols the city of LA, whereas the latter serves the county's unincorporated areas and more than 40 of its other cities. So everywhere from Palmdale to Malibu to Compton. It is a massive area. Lugo showed me a break room.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It looked kind of like a high school cafeteria, right down to the mascot that was painted on the back wall. It was this cartoon bulldog wearing a fedora, and it had a little piece of paper in the fedora, and on that piece of paper were the numbers 187, California Penal Code for Homicide. I've been noticing this bulldog everywhere.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo pointed me to a newspaper clipping mounted on a wall. It was from 1977. The headline is, Sheriff's Bulldogs Hang In Where LAPD Doesn't. Oh, so they're like pitting you against LAPD again.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Well, that's actually what I was here to talk with Lugo about. Like, what exactly was he doing while Daisy's friends and family were putting Victor on blast? Desperately looking to get attention on the case. Where was that bulldog spirit when it came to finding a murder suspect? I'm Jen Swan.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 6, Armed and Dangerous. In June of 2021, Lugo's cell phone had been blowing up. Susie had been calling him just about every day to ask about her daughter's case. Daisy's friends and relatives were calling him too. But those weren't the only people calling about Daisy's murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo's cell phone number, he discovered, had been plastered all over the internet. Unbeknownst to him, it was on the TikToks and the Instagram and Facebook posts that Daisy's friends and family had made. The posts that had since gone viral. Now, Lugo was getting calls at all hours of the day.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
all from people who said they'd seen a murder suspect, a 20-something guy with dark hair, distinctive eyebrows, and stretched ear lobes.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I had a feeling that the reason why college students were calling didn't actually have much to do with gauged ears. It had to do with their age group and the media they were consuming. I wonder if those were also people that were seeing the TikTok and the Instagram that were put up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo said things like that a lot. Things like, that's part of our job. That's what we do. I'd come here to interview him, to find out what he and his partner had been doing all that time when Daisy's loved ones were desperately looking for answers. And he'd come to this interview ready to defend his investigation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Lugo had a stack of index cards in front of him, notes and talking points that he referred to every so often. We were sitting in a boardroom where, on the back wall, an American flag was printed on this big framed piece of wood. It had a thin blue line running through the middle. And in the left-hand corner, among the stars, was that cartoon bulldog in a fedora. And Lugo was in bulldog mode.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He wasn't giving up explaining how difficult the investigation was.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
I think from Susie's point of view, you know, she had, and I think she told you this from the beginning too, she had this fear that this case wouldn't be taken seriously because she's Mexican or because she lives in Compton. And it's like going to Compton, it could be a body dump. It could be an unknown victim. And so I think she always had this like defensiveness of like, I have to fight.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Everything looks very closed up, like they definitely don't want people just knocking in. I think I need to ring the bell. Hey, my name is Jennifer. I have an appointment with Ray Lugo. Hey. How's it going? It was a weekday afternoon, and I was at the Homicide Bureau of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. It's this institutional-looking building in a suburban office park just east of L.A.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
And can I ask, like, how you decided to join the shift?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
It occurred to me that maybe this was the source of Lugo's competition with the LAPD. It's not an agency rivalry. It's a sibling rivalry. Lugo said he wanted to work his own neighborhood, which was under the sheriff's jurisdiction, and try to solve problems from within. He put in time as a patrol officer and then worked his way up to a night detective.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
He says he ended up solving a lot of murders, in part because he just knew a lot of people in the neighborhood and they trusted him. Eventually, he found his way to the Homicide Bureau in the mid-90s. And the only way he's been able to keep doing it is by compartmentalizing. He didn't use that word, but that's essentially what he described.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But Daisy's case, it didn't just come together when he was driving to work or jogging on the treadmill. He did at least have a suspect. But the suspect had vanished, his whereabouts unknown, which was sometimes true even before he disappeared.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
The metro line, the place where Valerie Arellano and so many others reported seeing a skateboarder who looked like Victor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System. It's this big federal database maintained by the FBI. And it combines data from law enforcement agencies all over the country. And a CODIS hit, that's a bingo. It's when the DNA collected from a crime scene brings up a match for someone who's been arrested before. which is exactly what happened when the blood around Daisy's body was processed.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There are stories from all over the country about social media users accusing the wrong person of a crime. It even happened in Compton, the city where Daisy lived, about eight months before her friends took to social media to find her killer.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
There are stories of sleuths misidentifying someone as a victim or filming them without their consent because, you know, they thought they were a missing person.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
Why does she look so lost? There are stories about the way good intentions can become misguided search parties, like this one that Sarah Turney reported on.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 6 - Armed and Dangerous
But this is not one of those stories. Because when DNA evidence from the crime scene was processed, it showed that the person Daisy's friends and family had been adamant about, the person they'd been calling detectives about and making videos about and circulating photos of, It was the same person whose DNA was found at the crime scene.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Nobody had suspected that he'd been hiding in plain sight after committing a murder across the border. I mean, the bartender did think it was a little weird that his new coworker came from the US to work in Mexico, essentially as a food runner, especially because he really didn't even speak much Spanish.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
But the bartender never questioned the only two things he thought he knew about his coworker, that his name was Billy and that he was from Arizona. Both, of course, would turn out to be lies.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Billy the Kid, the Wild West outlaw who went on the run after committing a series of murders. It was the nickname this bartender had given to Victor, having no idea just how fitting it really was. The bartender's main impression of him was just that he kept to himself. except for when he was drinking. That's when he became an entirely different person.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
It was one horrific tragedy, one senseless act of violence, that had ended the life of yet another teenager from the same apartment complex. And so, as I spent the next few months putting in requests to interview the detectives on Daisy's case, I realized I had another murder to ask them about. Jeffrey's. Usually, homicide detectives are the ones with all the information.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
The bartender described this version of Victor as aggressive, violent, unpredictable.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Finding out just how many months Victor had been in Mexico made me rethink so much of what I thought I knew about the hunt for him. It meant that all of those sightings of Victor, all around Southern California and all of these surrounding states, they were sightings of guys who weren't actually Victor. It made me think of people like Valerie Arellano.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
She went to high school with Daisy and she thought she may have seen Victor on the train platform. She and so many others were on high alert for months, watching their backs around Compton and Southeast LA. And it also made me think of the skateboarders or maybe the guys with gauged ears who had repeatedly been mistaken for a murderer.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I thought about what could have happened if someone had tried to capture the wrong person. When I talked to Victor on the phone, he didn't specify exactly when he left for Mexico. He just said that he had been eating breakfast one morning at a shopping center, which is really casual, right? And he met someone who was on their way to Mexico.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Victor suspected that authorities might be looking for him, and so he decided to catch a bus with this person. He claimed that he later discovered he'd been recruited into some kind of drug smuggling operation, so he ran away. Next thing he knew, he found himself bussing tables at Papa's and Beer.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I can't confirm this story, but it did make a lot of sense what the bartender was telling me, which is that Victor had been in Mexico nearly the whole time he'd been on the run. Sticking around LA or crossing back and forth across the border, it would have been risky for someone who had just committed a heinous crime. Then again, it was also risky to be working at a tourist bar.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
They're the ones who get to choose when to withhold it and when to share it, whether to put out bulletins on social media or to work the case without the help of the public. They're often the ones tasked with delivering horrible, life-shattering news, telling people when someone they love has been murdered,
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
That's something the bartender couldn't quite figure out either.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
He was having beers with some coworkers after work. The busy season of spring break had finally ended, and they were looking to relax. The bartender I talked to told me that he usually didn't like to go out drinking with his coworkers. But that night, he made an exception. He got a bottle of tequila for the table. Everyone was celebrating. One of his coworkers decided to film a video of the group.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
And I should point out that this was actually a different coworker than the one who sent that video to the Justice for Daisy Instagram page. The guy who took this video, he didn't know at the time that the food runner known as Billy was wanted for murder. Nobody did. He took the video, I assume for the same reason that anyone does.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
He wanted content for the gram, something to post on the feed, evidence of a good time had. On a sunny, breezy morning in early July, The good times came to an end. Victor showed up to work in the morning. It was July 2nd, and he began sweeping the streets. It was part of his job to clean the windows and all the outdoor areas of the bar.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
That's when the Rosarito police pulled up, got out of the car, and handcuffed Victor. The bartender had no idea what was going on. He just remembered that the arrest happened really quickly. There was no big struggle. There was no argument. It was all over in a minute. The bartender said his boss later pulled him aside. He looked distraught.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
He'd come across a video on TikTok and discovered that Billy the Kid was actually Victor the Fugitive. So he called the police. And then he felt bad about it. The bartender said he tried to comfort his boss.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
But the more I dug into that history, the more I talked to people in all these different places, the more complex it became. I had come down to Mexico in search of the definitive story of how Victor came to be arrested. I had been thinking that there were only a couple of possible explanations. And I was hoping that whoever I talked to at the bar might be able to confirm one of them for me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
But when I began talking to Lugo and Sanchez, it became clear to me that they didn't know about Jeffrey's death. Because when I sat down with each of them, they spoke about him in the present tense. For example, here's something that Detective Lugo said.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
It was either the Instagram DM or it was the phone call that Sanchez said he got as a result of the sheriff's Facebook post. But here I was at the bar presented with a third scenario. Victor's boss had seen Daisy's friend's TikTok and he called the police on him. Maybe Victor being TikTok famous did have a lot to do with his arrest.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I mean, it's possible that all of these scenarios unfolded roughly at the same time. Maybe there's no way to know for sure. But what seems clear to me is that in all of these scenarios, the arrest was a direct result of social media, whether it was a TikTok or an Instagram DM or a Facebook post. The influence of these platforms was huge.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
And maybe it's cheesy to say, but it really is a testament to the power of the internet, of social media, of information traveling and converging at exactly the right moment, being seen by exactly the right people, all of them in different cities, honestly, different countries, and all of them with the same goal of getting justice for Daisy. And they did it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
They found her killer, and they made sure that nobody would forget Daisy's name or her story forever. Jeffrey's mother, Wendy, is still waiting on justice and wondering what that might look like in her son's case. I reached out to both detectives assigned to it. They said it was an active investigation and that they couldn't comment on it. I also submitted multiple public records requests.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I wanted to get police reports from that day. They all got denied for the same reason. They told me it was an ongoing investigation. Then I requested a copy of Jeffrey's autopsy report.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
The L.A. County Medical Examiner Building is on the east side of L.A., kind of near where the 5 and the 10 freeways meet. It's housed in this brick building from the early 1900s, and it's got marble walls and these big chandeliers. The place looks regal, but inside, people are having some of the worst days of their lives.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
They come here to get autopsy reports, but also to do things like collect their loved ones' belongings after they've been sent to the morgue. It's pretty heart-wrenching stuff. I waited in the lobby, and then I was escorted down into the basement where all the records are stored.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Yeah, I'll do a card. I handed over my credit card, and I was given a manila envelope. I walked down the hallway, took a seat on a wooden bench, and opened up the envelope. I started thumbing through the report. It was about 30 pages long. And as I flipped through it, I found a summary of what detectives believe happened on the day that Jeffrey was killed, which is this.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Jeffrey and a few friends had ordered a pizza. When the pizza delivery guy got there, this is according to the report, Jeffrey and another friend flashed guns and attempted to steal his jewelry and cash. At some point, the pizza delivery guy apparently took hold of one of the guns. One of Jeffrey's friends ran away. And at some point, about a dozen shots were fired.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
The police know this because of the bullet casings they found on the ground. Most were from a rifle. Some were from a handgun. But that's about all the authorities know for certain. That and the fact that three different bullets pierced Jeffrey's body. One in his arm. One in his chest. One in his head. As far as I know, the police have not charged anyone for Jeffrey's murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Again, they've told me that the investigation is ongoing. This is also what they've told Wendy, his mother. One way that she's been attempting to process her grief is by posting videos of Jeffrey on TikTok, by remembering the good times and sharing them with others.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Jeffrey actually was older than that. He was 13 when he identified Daisy's body. He was 16 when he died of multiple gunshot wounds just three years later. When Detective Sanchez spoke of him, he said in the present tense, he's a young kid.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
February 23. It was filmed on February 23rd, 2023. It only hit me later that that date was the anniversary of Daisy's death. It was exactly two years to the day after Jeffrey identified her body. The day after his death, Wendy uploaded this video to TikTok. She put a sentimental music track over it. The lyrics went, I didn't know today would be your last.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Jeffrey's smiling and laughing in the video. When he looks into the camera, his eyes are, of course, green. RIP, mi ojitos de gato. Wendy wrote on the video, my little cat eyes.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
She said that TikTok, it's kind of like a slot machine, and you never really know what's going to hit, what's going to be rewarded by the algorithm. In Wendy's case, it was this short clip of her son just being himself, being a kid in a food court with his mom. Wendy wasn't using TikTok to try to find his killer. It wasn't a call to action. It was simply a way of remembering Jefferies.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
And maybe of finding comfort from strangers. Wendy scrolled through her phone and showed me more photos of Jeffrey over the years. Some of them were goofy. They captured these random, silly moments at home.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I found myself in this strange situation because now I was the one who had news to share with the detectives. I had to tell them that their main witness, the teenager who helped them solve Daisy's murder, had also been the victim of a homicide. I didn't really know how to share this news.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
This series is dedicated to the memories of Daisy De La O and Jeffrey Tinoco. Thank you so much to everyone who shared their memories of them with me, including Juan De La O, Daisy's grandfather. He died in late 2024. And thank you so much to all of you for listening.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Tracy Lee fact-checked this episode. Joel Rickert is our legal counsel for this series. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kolosny.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Special thanks to Steve Akerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Lugo had been on a tight schedule when we first talked, and I had so many questions about Daisy's case that it seemed like it wasn't the right time to ask about another one. Detective Sanchez and I talked just a few days after that, and during the end of our conversation, I decided to bring it up. I have another case that I wanted to ask you about.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I don't know. I don't know who's handling it. Maybe you can tell me who is. Figuring out the words to say was really tough. So I decided to pull up a local news article on my phone. It didn't mention Jeffrey by name, presumably because he was a minor. But I decided to read the first couple of lines of it to Sanchez and see if it rang a bell. 16 year old boy was killed in Compton.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Sheriff's department said a man was also found at the scene who had non-life threatening injuries. And so this is the homicide department's number. I just don't know if you're working this case and I'll tell you why. It's not totally random.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
But so this case, the 16 year old boy that was killed was Jeffrey.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Sanchez and I sat there in the conference room in silence. He looked visibly uncomfortable. I mean, his mouth was literally hanging open, and his eyes kept darting back and forth between me and Miguel, who had been sitting next to me holding the microphone across the table. It was as if Sanchez wasn't sure whether we were playing some kind of sick joke on him. I didn't know what to say.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Finally, I broke the silence. Yeah, so I guess I would just be curious to know if there's any sort of headway in that investigation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Yeah, I'm sorry to tell you that. I know, I know. I wanted to tell you earlier, but I knew it would derail kind of... I would have walked out. I know, I know. It's so upsetting.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I know. I really want to know what happened. Because I feel like there's things that happen all over LA all the time. And then you never hear about it. And you're like, what happened to this kid? Or what was their name? What was their story? I'm sure you deal with that a lot too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is my friend Daisy. Episode 10, Cat Eyes. After I told Sanchez about Jeffrey, I knew I had to tell Luko too. He agreed to meet me at the Homicide Bureau for a follow-up interview. And that's when I filled him in on my conversation with Sanchez.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
The other thing that I told him during our interview, and I don't know if he told you too, was that I found out that Jeffrey, the main witness, was murdered.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Lugo's response was surprising to me, especially because when we first sat down in his office just two weeks earlier, he gave no indication that he knew about this other homicide case, about how it dovetailed with Daisy's.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Maybe it was the way he hesitated or restated my question. Or maybe it was just the stark difference in his reaction versus Detective Sanchez's. But I had this feeling that he was not being honest with me. He'd always been a little defensive when speaking about Daisy's case, and I understood why.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Here I was questioning him about what he'd been doing during the investigation and why Daisy's friends felt like they had to start their own. But I guess I thought that since this case wasn't one that he was working on, he might be a little more forthcoming with me. But to me, it felt like he was again assuming the role of the detective with all the answers. the football coach with all the plays.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
As we walked out of the conference room, I began to question other things that he had told me about Daisy's case, about how he'd been working the investigation, about how difficult it was, about how exactly Victor had been caught. And I wondered, could I really trust any of it? In the hallway, Lugo stopped and introduced me to a detective named Joe Purcell. He's an old-timer who trained Lugo here.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I had just started making this show when I learned that Jeffrey had been murdered. It was just after New Year's Day, 2024. I had been talking to Susie on the phone, and when she told me the news, it felt completely inconceivable. Jeffrey had been the one to identify Daisy's body. He made sure that she wasn't a Jane Doe. He testified at Victor's trial. The guilty verdict was partly because of him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Maybe he didn't mean it that way, but it sounded like what some of Daisy's neighbors had imagined the police might say. A murder in Compton? That's never happened before. Like it was some kind of joke, some kind of punchline.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I felt like I had to jump in and explain that the police had gotten this big assist from social media. They were like putting this photo out. People were calling, blowing up your cell phone, saying, I've seen him here.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Lugo was always downplaying the role of social media in solving this case. Like when I first interviewed him in this office just a couple weeks earlier. I asked him about the moment he saw the screenshot showing Victor at Papa's and Beer. He told me he barely saw it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
Okay, maybe it's worth pointing out that Lugo actually did have proof. This is based on his own admission. He had the DNA match. Sanchez confirmed this when he gave testimony at trial. He said the CODIS hit came back less than two and a half weeks after Daisy's murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
The first results came back on March 12th, and the official letter from the California Department of Justice, that came back March 18th. Anyway, I was curious about this screenshot, about how it led to Victor's arrest. But when I asked Lugo about it, he seemed almost agitated by the question.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
This flyer that he's talking about, it's the one the sheriff's department put out on Facebook. Lugo is saying that it was this social media post that led to Victor's arrest, not the ones put out by Deezy's friends and family. But those TikToks had apparently made an impression on the detectives. That's at least according to Victor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
When I interviewed him recently, he told me that when he came into the office for his interrogation, which, you know, never actually happened because Victor didn't know what a lawyer was. He told me that that was true. The detectives, he claimed, had teased him for being famous on TikTok. Here's how Victor says that conversation went.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
So what really happened? Did Victor get arrested because he was TikTok famous? Was it the Instagram DM that led to his arrest? Or was it the voicemail that Sanchez said that he got that very same morning that Susie saw the screenshot? I realized I wasn't going to get a straight answer out of the detectives. If I really wanted to get answers, I had to take matters into my own hands.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I had to go to the scene of Victor's arrest. I showed up to Papa's and Beer on a weekday afternoon. It was the off season and the bar was nearly empty, which was honestly a little weird for a place that feels a bit like a cruise ship docked on the beach.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
There's this sprawling outdoor area and there's clusters of tables surrounding a mechanical bull and a live music stage that sits directly on the sand. I ended up taking a seat inside. It was kind of a smaller area. It felt more like a sports bar with wood paneled countertops, big screen TVs, and loud reggae and rap music blasting over the speakers.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
I ordered nachos and I started talking to the bartender. And when I told him about why I was there, his eyes lit up. He had followed Victor's murder case. He'd even tracked down news footage from the trial.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 10: Cat Eyes
It's hard when we lose innocent life, the bartender said. He didn't want to be identified by name, so I'm just going to refer to him as the bartender. He said that he felt for Daisy's mother and for Victor's. That he was shocked by the details that emerged at trial. And the reason he was so invested, the reason he wanted to see how the story had ended, is because he himself had been part of it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
A few weeks later, a different woman, also named Valerie, was having an emotionally intense day of her own. She took to Facebook to let out some rage. She wrote in a public comment that she'd been hearing all kinds of rumors about where Victor was hiding. He'd been catching the blue line and sneaking around the L.A. riverbed, she wrote. And now she wanted to go hunt him down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
We have to lay low to get him, she wrote. We need rope and a bat, because he won't go down without a fight. When I stumbled upon these comments, posted in June of 2021, I was really taken aback by Valerie's aggression. This, like, take-no-prisoners attitude she had. It made me think about how so many people were terrified of running into Victor. And yet, Here she was, seeking him out.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
I immediately wanted to know, who was this woman? Why was she acting like this, you know, vigilante superhero? And how did she become so invested in catching a murder suspect?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Each of the photos showed off some identifying feature, gauged ears or a tattoo of what looked like big rats crawling up his ribcage. The text on the post was in all capital letters. If seen, please contact us. Wendy, Daisy's former neighbor, she saw this post while she was scrolling through her Instagram feed one night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
On a sweltering summer day, I stood in the parking lot of a mobile home community near Compton. And when I spotted someone who looked like Valerie Pinato's Facebook photo, I flagged her down. She was short with square black glasses, and she had a haircut that Daisy once had, a black bob with blonde bangs.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Once we got to her place, she led me to a small wooden table in her living room.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Eventually, we got to talking about Daisy. So, and then tell me how you first heard that Daisy had been murdered.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie remembered looking at the photos and thinking that Daisy looked familiar. She was pretty sure she'd seen her around, maybe at a punk show. It seemed possible. They lived close to each other, and they seemed interested in the same kinds of music. To Valerie, Daisy's story felt personal.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
You actually went to people's houses and said, are you harboring this person, Victor?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But Valerie wouldn't take no for an answer. She was convinced that Victor had to be somewhere, hiding. And if other people weren't going to rat him out, she'd find him herself.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
What was sort of going through your head? Like, had you thought through what you would do if you actually saw him?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
There it was, that anger, that desire for revenge that I'd read in Valerie's Facebook comment. I was just as surprised by it in person as I was when I read it online. Surprised, by the way, that, I don't know, Valerie was willing to risk her own safety to take action against what she saw as an injustice. Not just in this instance, but in a bunch of others she told me about.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, she told me about this time that she hunted down and confronted a friend's boyfriend after she heard that he'd been abusive to her. And then there was this other time she climbed a ladder at a punk show and jumped off it to attack a guy she'd seen hitting girls in the pit. Seriously.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Wendy knew who Victor was. She used to see him hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie showed me the spot on her eyelid where she said she got punched.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Tough felt like an understatement. I wanted to know what was behind it. So I asked her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Military school, the kind that teenagers get sent to when their parents think they need to be straightened out. There are drill sergeants, physical training, the whole nine yards. It was so intense, Valerie said, that she realized she could face anything after that. And then where did you get your sense of, like, justice?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, it seems like you have a strong sense of, like, the community has this power that the police don't have. Like, where did that come from?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Especially because of what she saw some of her own family members go through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Women like Valerie. She told me that at one point in her life, she found herself in a relationship that had become violent. And eventually she realized she needed to get out.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Like, how did you have this knowledge to be like, oh, to even get a DV counselor, I think is something that or therapist is something that I think a lot of women need. or some women in that situation maybe wouldn't know to do? Like how, yeah, how did you navigate that?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
What Valerie proceeded to tell me was actually not that funny. But I got the sense that she's someone who copes with difficult experiences through humor. She said that she never really wanted to enroll in therapy. But her caseworker knew she was struggling with housing insecurity because of domestic violence. And in order to maintain her government benefits, she was told she had to sign up for it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie said that the experience of doing it, of going to therapy and getting out of a bad relationship, it taught her a lot.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
That is really what drew her to Daisy's story. It wasn't just that she was also in the punk scene and lived in the neighborhood. It was that she knew what it was like to be hurt by someone she loved.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But as much as she looked and as determined as she was, Valerie never did find Victor. Nobody seemed to know where he was hiding, including the detectives. But all of these social media posts, they were doing something. They were getting more eyes on the case, more community involvement. They were building public pressure, the kind of pressure detectives couldn't ignore.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendel Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
And I wanted to let you know about the statistics that I cited in this episode. They come from the CDC. They were published in July of 2017. And you can find them online under the title, Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
And if you're interested in reading more about the link between intimate partner violence and homicide, there's another study that I read called Examining Intimate Partner Violence-Related Fatalities, It was published in the Journal of Family Violence in January of 2023. Thank you so much for listening.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It's the homepage that shows this never-ending scroll of TikToks from people who you may or may not follow. They're all served up by this super secretive algorithm to fit each user's individual interests. And these TikToks must have showed up on a lot of people's For You pages. Because there were comments from people shouting out their locations.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
People as far away as Texas and Washington and even Canada. They commented as proof of how far the TikTok had spread. And no one knows exactly how the TikTok algorithm works, but there's this popular thinking around it, which is that the more comments a TikTok gets, the more often it'll appear on For You pages.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
So people kind of just kept commenting as a way to sort of show how much the TikTok had spread, but also to boost its visibility in other people's feeds. And it became this thing where people shouted out their locations all over Southern California. Southgate, Huntington Park, South Central, Long Beach, Riverside, San Diego.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It was like this neighborhood watch assembling on the internet in real time. There were comments from people who lived in Daisy's neighborhood and people who were appalled that they hadn't heard about Daisy's murder until that very moment, including people who actually knew Daisy, like Lolly, her friend from middle school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Lolly's in her early 20s, and like a lot of people in her age group that I reached out to for this story, she was just trustful of the media.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
I found Loli's view disheartening, but I get it. I mean, in the instance of Daisy's murder, Lolly was right. The news only covered it once it had gone viral. Prior to that, the only article about the murder, it didn't even mention Daisy by name. It only referred to her as a Jane Doe.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
But once people learn Daisy's story, once they found out that she had a name and a life and friends and family who cared so deeply about her, they felt compelled to join the search party to help find her murderer. But vigilante justice can be a tricky thing. Because once you spot the culprit or, you know, the person that you believe is the culprit, what do you do next? Do you call the cops?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Do you alert the media? I mean, do you rely on these same institutions that have previously failed you? Or do you roll up your sleeves and deal with it yourself? Does violence justify more violence? What is the right way to deliver justice in the age of TikTok? I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 5. Are you hiding him?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
It was a Sunday afternoon in early June of 2021, and Valerie Arellano was panicking. She was standing on the Metro light rail train platform when she spotted a guy with a skateboard in his hand. Valerie did a double take. He looked a lot like Victor.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
You might remember Valerie. She grew up in Huntington Park. She knew Daisy back in high school. She never met Victor, but she'd been seeing photos of him all over Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. The posts had been circulating for a little less than two weeks. And because of them, Valerie had a pretty good sense of what Victor looked like.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker. He was notorious for breaking into homes and assaulting and murdering women in LA in the mid-1980s. When the police finally identified him and shared his mugshot with the public, it sent the whole city on a manhunt. Residents caught him attempting a carjacking just a day later.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
They beat him up so badly that when the police came and arrested him, he reportedly shouted, I'm lucky the cops caught me But this was a much different situation. The police hadn't released a photo of Victor, but Valerie had little doubt that it was him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie's right. Some reports have found that more than half of all women killed in the United States were murdered by a current or former male intimate partner. That percentage goes up when the victim is a young woman of color.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie knew these statistics intuitively, and like a lot of people who had been following this case, she had been frustrated by the seeming lack of progress made by detectives and and the lack of news coverage by the media. I mean, all she knew about it was what she'd been seeing on her social media feeds.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie was also scared. Or, as her friend Chantel Patrice put it, Valerie was freaking out. And at first, Chantel had no idea why.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
The TikToks appeared on a Wednesday in late May. One of them began with the words, this is my friend Daisy. Maybe you can already picture it. The carnival ride, the neon colors, the high school graduation photo, and then the cut to photos of Victor. Each of the TikToks had slightly different music and different photos and videos, but all of them told the same story.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie desperately wanted Victor to get caught, but she didn't want to call 911.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie, like a lot of people I spoke with in Daisy's community, had not had the most pleasant interactions with law enforcement. She told me about a time early on in the pandemic when she was in a car with her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend. A cop pulled them over and insisted that their car was registered as stolen.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Eventually, according to Valerie, the cop told them that the real reason he pulled them over was because he was looking for Valerie's uncle. The car had been registered to a house where he lived at one point.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Okay, so what Valerie is describing, it's known as a pretextual stop. It's basically when a cop pulls you over for something minor in order to ask you questions about a much larger, unrelated potential offense. It was such a widespread practice that California actually passed a law about a year ago banning it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
So now when police pull you over, at least in California, they have to tell you exactly why they're doing so. All to say, when Valerie saw the skateboarder who looked like Victor, she did not immediately call the police. Instead, she sent a Facebook message to her best friend, the friend who used to live with Daisy and her family.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie showed me the messages she sent to her best friend that day. They were dated June 6th, 2021. I called the detective.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Valerie found his cell phone number plastered all over the social media posts that Daisy's friends and family had made. And this number, right there on the flyers, it seemed a lot more accessible, more appropriate than simply calling 911.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Lugo called Valerie back. She told him what she'd seen. Her heart was pounding, her adrenaline pumping. It was hard to get words out. I think I, I was just so nervous.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 5 - Are You Hiding Him?
Daisy's life mattered, and the person who took it was still running free. An Instagram post was published the same day, on a new account called Justice for Daisy. This post contained a slideshow of photos of Victor. A lot of them were taken from his own Instagram, In one of them, he wore a striped beanie. In another, a bowler hat.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I sat at my desk and I waited for his face to appear on my phone screen. When it did, I realized he looked a lot different than the photos I'd seen of him, and even from how he'd looked in person in the courtroom in Compton. He looked a lot older, like he'd put on some weight. And he wasn't at all like detectives had described him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Detective Lugo had called him nonverbal, but Victor had no problem carrying on a conversation with me. Except that he'd apparently changed his mind, because as we began talking, he said he wasn't sure whether he really did want to do this podcast after all.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I got the sense that maybe he just wanted to talk to me because he was bored, or because he thought that it might help his chances of getting paroled. His first parole hearing is tentatively scheduled for 2039. At that point, he will have spent 17 years behind bars. I called the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
She'd been there all morning trying to pass the time, trying to distract herself. She'd called up a cousin in Tijuana. They sent each other funny voice memos. Stupid stuff, she told me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
They told me that Victor had earned credits for good behavior and for taking classes, and that had made him eligible for parole sooner. When I talked to Victor, it seemed to me like he was trying to maintain his innocence. He had never admitted to the murder. And I got the sense that he wasn't about to, that I wasn't going to get a genuine answer to any of my questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
So we hung up, and that was that. Six months later, just as I was about to turn in this episode, I got a message on the app. Victor had changed his mind. He said he wanted to do the interview. I wasn't sure whether to take it seriously. But then, I got a phone call.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
In a room nearby, the jury was weighing the evidence, discussing the testimonies they'd heard over nearly the last two weeks, deciding whether Victor had done the horrendous thing he'd been accused of, first on social media, and now in a court of law. Around 11.40 a.m., Susie got a text message when she saw that it was from Leslie Hinshaw, the prosecutor. Her heart began racing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
When I got the call from Victor, I decided to get right into it. I had no time or interest in small talk. I started by asking about the skateboard attack. The attack that Daisy's younger brother had witnessed. The attack that resulted in her getting stitches. I asked Victor what happened that day.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I'll summarize what Victor said next. He said they got in a fight essentially because of his jealousy. He thought Daisy was texting somebody and he flipped out. He says it got physical on both sides, but let's be real that he was the one who ended up sending her to the hospital.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Okay. Yeah, it sounds like you hit her pretty hard.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Well, it sounds like you had hit her in the past as well, so that was an ongoing thing. Would you have described yourself? It sounds like you were a little jealous or possessive. Does that sound right?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Okay. This automated warning happened a lot. I guess you get used to it after a while. That and then this other automated warning that kept reminding us that our call was being recorded and monitored by the state.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Yeah, what I was saying is it sounds like there was a history of violence. It wasn't just that one time with the skateboard. It was a lot. And it sounds like maybe you were a little bit jealous or possessive. And I'm wondering if you would say that's accurate.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
The message said, the jury has reached a verdict. They had deliberated for less than three hours. Susie opened her mouth to share the news, but she couldn't get the words out. She told me that she felt like she was frozen. She was having a panic attack.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Yeah, so it's my understanding that, um, that she broke things off with you just a few weeks, um, before she was killed. Is that correct?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
She'd been getting them a lot since her daughter's murder, a little more than a year earlier, but never anything quite this bad, quite as debilitating as this one, right there in the hallway of the courthouse. Her face turned pale. Her cousin reminded her to breathe, but all Susie wanted to do was scream, to run away.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Is that something that we can come back to? Is what happened that night?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Okay, so it's my understanding that that night you had texted her and said, I have something for you. Is that right?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I'll summarize what he said next, which is that he'd brought her some of his old t-shirts that she liked. They had the Thrasher logo on them, you know, the skateboarding magazine. They stood there in that patch of dirt near the alley, and he and Daisy had a discussion about their breakup. Long story short, he wanted to get back together. She didn't. And then, as it often did, it became physical.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
In Victor's version of events, events which of course cannot be verified because only he lived to tell them, Daisy took a swing at him, and he became overcome with rage. The kind of rage that caused him to do something he says he will always regret.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
And the feeling only got more intense when the jurors flooded out into the hallway. The elevator doors opened and the hallway filled with more people. There were newscasters and camera crews, like this one from ABC7.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
When Victor says that he grabbed Daisy and she fell to the ground, what he says he means is that he choked her. And as she tried to catch her breath, he says he considered turning away. He should have turned away. Instead, he spotted a knife. A knife sitting on a gas tank.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It's a little hard to hear Victor's audio here, but what he's saying is that he remembers Daisy's parents speaking about him in court. These are the recordings that you heard earlier in this episode, when Daisy's mother called him a parasite, a monster.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Ever since Victor had written me that letter, I had been bracing myself for the possibility that he was going to insist on his innocence. So a part of me was relieved to hear him confess, to finally admit what Daisy's friends and family had known all along. He had taken Daisy's life.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
He murdered her because he said he felt alone, because he had no other relationships, because he could not handle the rejection of a breakup. All of this pain, all of this suffering, all of this tragedy, it all seemed to stem in some ways from insecurity, from jealousy. So What happened? What happened was, in some ways, just as Susie had imagined.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It was both as simple and as devastating as what she told the judge at Victor's sentencing hearing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
There was the judge and the bailiff and the clerk and a gaggle of sheriffs in uniform. They all filed into the courtroom. Susie felt like she could barely breathe. She watched as one of the jurors handed the judge an envelope. The clerk read a statement, and all Susie could think was, get to the point, get to the point, get to the point. Finally, she heard the words.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
When I first interviewed Susie, even before the trial, she said, if I have to be 60, 70, 80 years old at the parole hearings, then I will do that. I'll be there. He's always going to see my face. Always. Next time, on the series finale of My Friend Daisy. A search for answers about what happened in Mexico. And an update on Jeffrey's case.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written, and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson, and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Tracy Lee fact-checked this episode. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kolasny. Special thanks to Steve Akerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Susie started crying and shaking when she heard it. She squeezed her cousin Mimi's hand as hard as she could. Relief washed over her. She could feel the members of the jury looking at her. And to her, it felt like they were looking at her with warmth. Like they were proud of this decision they'd made. Susie hugged Leslie, the prosecutor. "'I have no words,' she told her. "'But thank you.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
You fought so seriously for my kid.'" It was May 4th, 2022. And to Susie, this date meant something. She's a huge Star Wars fan. And as a lot of Star Wars fans will probably tell you, May the 4th sounds a lot like May the Force. You know, may the force be with you. But this day had taken on a much bigger meaning for Susie. She told me, today is going to be a good day to remember.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Justice prevailed today. Two days later, she went to the Redondo Beach Pier. Looking out over the ocean as the wind tousled her hair, she recorded a video message for the Justice for Daisy Instagram page.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Susie was grateful, but she didn't really feel like celebrating. Nothing could get back what she'd already lost. Nothing could change what had already happened. If anything, the verdict only made her daughter's death feel more real, more final. All she wanted to do after the trial ended was go home and watch television with her youngest son.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It's the little things you miss after all this chaos, she said. But all this chaos wasn't over just yet. I'm Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy, Episode 9, After All This Chaos. Victor's sentencing hearing was held roughly five months after his trial ended.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It was October 12th, 2022, and Daisy's friends and family were nervous all over again. Nervous that after all this, after the TikToks and the Instagrams and the arrest and the courthouse protest and the testimonies and even the guilty verdict, Victor's sentence still wouldn't be quite harsh enough. Everyone in the courtroom was fidgeting in their seats.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
And then Susie got up and walked to the front of the room to speak.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Her voice grew shaky as she recounted the day she had to identify Daisy's body. The day she said that no mother should have to live through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Susie's speech wasn't just about how Daisy's murder affected her own family. It was also about its impact on Victor's family.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
The room was quiet, and then the judge announced Victor's sentence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It's a life sentence at maximum, with parole eligibility after the first 25 years. I wanted to know what the culmination of this case had felt like for Leslie Henshaw, the deputy district attorney. She had won her case. It had been, at least on paper, a victory. but it didn't necessarily feel that way.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
Yeah, it seems like so much of it is about closure because, like you said, it's so – it almost feels like there is no – not to say there is no justice, but, you know, it's not like anything will bring Daisy back. Right. And it seems like that's something that you wrestle with too, is just like, what is the best possible outcome given the situation?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
What happened? How could Victor have murdered Daisy with such brutality? Where did that come from? And how could he have shown no remorse at trial? He was silent the whole time in court. He didn't say anything at his sentencing hearing either. So I tried to talk with his family to try to answer that question. What happened? I went to see his mother.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
You might remember she declined to speak with me. I also went to see his father. His house was located on a dirt road and it was surrounded by a chain link fence and guarded by big growling dogs. And at one point someone did come out and it sounds like they were yelling the name of the dog to try to tell them to like calm down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
And then I at one point saw the blinds kind of like open a little bit. It seemed like someone was peering out. And so they knew we were there. There's two cars outside the house. So I know someone's home and then they clearly just didn't want to come out and talk to us. I guess I will take that as a no comment. I left a letter in Victor's dad's mailbox. I never heard back.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
A heads up. The second half of this episode includes some descriptions of violence, including intimate partner violence. Please listen with care. It was a Wednesday in May. Susie and her cousin Mimi were huddled on a bench in the hallway of the Compton Courthouse. It was the first day of jury deliberations, and Susie was nervous.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I even went to the house of another one of his relatives. It was a place I'd heard that Victor sometimes stayed, you know, before he was arrested. And again, this time I was greeted by the sound of a dog barking. A woman's voice appeared from beyond the metal security door. I couldn't see her face, but she spent about 20 minutes talking with me as we stood on either side of the doorframe.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
She seemed wary of me, but at the same time, it almost seemed like she was eager to tell me things. Like, more than once, she started sentences with, Did you know? Like, did you know that Victor had a tattoo of Daisy's face on his arm? No, I didn't, I said. Or, did you know that Victor's mother keeps a photo of Daisy in her living room? No, I didn't.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It was obvious to me that she and Victor's mother both cared deeply about Daisy. That they were devastated by her murder and destroyed by the actions of the person who had done it. This relative, I'm not using her name because she didn't want to be recorded and she wasn't mentioned in the court documents.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
She told me that she talked to Victor on the phone sometimes, that he'd found God and seemed to be doing well in prison. She encouraged me to get in touch with him, to let him tell his side of the story. So I did. I wrote him a letter. I explained that I was making this show and that I had been talking to people who knew him and people who knew Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I told him that I wanted to try to understand how things ended up the way they did. I told him that it would be a chance to say whatever he had not been able to say before, either in court or to the media. And for me, it was a chance to get answers to some of the outstanding questions I had, the questions that detectives never got to ask him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
I figured this was all a formality, that there was no way that Victor would speak with me. I was wrong. The letter arrived in the mail last fall. It came in a white envelope stamped by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In the left-hand corner, there was Victor's name and his prison ID number. His return address was the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
It's a sprawling compound wedged along the U.S. border. It's actually pretty close to where Victor had been picked up by a detective that Fourth of July weekend in 2021. It's home to other convicted murderers that you might have heard of, like Lyle and Eric Menendez and Tex Watson. He's a former member of the Manson family. Inside the envelope, there was a sheet of lined notebook paper
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
The handwriting and pencil was neat and slanted to the left. It read, I received your letter and I would like to do your podcast. My heart raced a little when I read this. Here was this person I had heard so many horrific things about. I had seen images of him all over social media. I talked to people who had spent all of this time and effort trying to hunt him down.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
And now, he was writing me this letter by hand. In the letter, he instructed me to download an app, which maybe sounds a little strange if you don't know anyone in prison. But nearly all incarcerated people in California and in more than two dozen other states have access to tablets. And these tablets often have this messaging app installed. It's run by a private company called Global Tel Link.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 9 - After All This Chaos
They contract with jails and prisons all over the country. More than a million and a half incarcerated people reportedly use it, mostly to send texts to people on the outside and to make video calls, albeit really glitchy ones, but, you know, calls nonetheless. I added Victor as a contact on the app, and we set a time to talk. This was last September, on the day before his 29th birthday.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Ray Lugo. He works for the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, and he was the lead detective on this case. At that point, Lugo told me, he and his partner, Leo Sanchez, were still waiting for the DNA from the crime scene to be processed. Here's how Sanchez put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Or because her son Jeffrey, who was 13 at the time, had been the one to identify Daisy's body to the police. It was also because one of Wendy's belongings ended up becoming a key piece of evidence. The blue patterned carpet that had been placed over Daisy's body. It was Wendy's.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
it doesn't happen like on the TV shows. It's something I've heard a lot from both Sanchez and Lukow.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They may not have had a witness, but they did have what they thought would be a vital piece of evidence, surveillance footage from the crime scene.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The detectives had told me that getting surveillance video like this one, it wasn't always easy, especially in places like Compton, where residents didn't always see the benefit of handing over evidence to the police. Here's what Sanchez told me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
But when detectives reviewed the video, they discovered it did not reveal much. The grainy black and white footage had been captured from a distance. It showed the shadowy figure of a person out by the alley where the garbage bins were. They were dragging something in the corner of the frame, but it wasn't enough to prove that it was Victor. It wasn't enough to make an arrest.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
What do you mean you don't, like, what, did you actually get the warrant?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Okay. So did you actually, were you actually tracking his cell phone or was it not approved?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Even Victor's own mother couldn't find him. The same week that Daisy's body was found, Victor's mom filed a missing persons report for her son. It was all deeply distressing to Susie. She continued to call Detective Lugo every day, asking for updates. And each time, she hoped to hear the words, We've got him. We've made an arrest. But the weeks continued to slip by, and those words never came.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Susie's sadness turned to anger. Her biggest fear, she said, was that Daisy's case wouldn't be taken seriously because she wasn't white. If you're white, she remembered thinking, then you get the spotlight. And there's plenty of research to suggest that Susie's fears aren't wrong. Academic studies have found that white homicide victims generally garner the most news coverage.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And federal data shows that these cases are also the most likely to be solved. To Daisy's mother and to some of Daisy's friends, it felt like detectives had simply moved on. Given up. They keep us in the dark, Susie told me. They keep the victim's family in the dark. It's a feeling that Wendy knows intimately.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
So in the time between Daisy's murder and when I interviewed Wendy, about three years later, something horrific had happened to her. Something that completely shattered her life, which is that she had lost her own child to murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Wendy's son, Jeffrey, the boy who grew up with Daisy and later identified her potty, was fatally shot the day after Christmas, 2023. Wendy and I met up four months after that. Everything was still raw. and still completely unresolved. Because at that point, she still had no idea who killed her son.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The LA County Sheriff's Department wouldn't tell me anything either. They said they couldn't give me any information about an ongoing investigation. Wendy felt that the sheriffs were giving her the runaround, even treating her as a suspect. When she got to the hospital the night that Jeffrey had been shot, she said the sheriffs were standing outside his room and wouldn't let her inside.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
At some point, a doctor informed Wendy that her son didn't make it. But even then, she said, the sheriffs wouldn't allow her into the room to see his body. She wasn't even allowed to go to her car.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Wendy said she tried calling the detective assigned to the case. She said that he told her she wouldn't have to pay the $80 to get her car released. But the call went straight to voicemail, and Wendy paid the bill. In the absence of information about her son's murder, her mind just started racing, trying to imagine what might have happened that night.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Okay, I'll just say it is unclear whether the knives she threw away were in fact the murder weapon.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
After that, Wendy retreated. She felt alienated by the police, abandoned by them. She was grieving, and she didn't have the energy to keep calling the detectives to demand answers. Answers they didn't seem to have anyway.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Another death in Compton. Who cares? That was the impression Wendy got from the sheriff's department.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
I'm going to come back to Jeffrey's story later in this series. But when I interviewed Daisy's friends and relatives in the months following her murder, they often expressed some variation of that sentiment. That anger, that grief that Wendy was now feeling. There was this feeling that the authorities had collectively shrugged in the face of murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Some of Daisy's friends did not want to be interviewed again for this podcast. They were still trying to process their grief to move on from it. Some had recently become mothers. They were 20-somethings who were living their adult lives like Daisy should have been. But one of Daisy's friends from high school told me something that really stuck with me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
I remembered the anger, the matter-of-factness in her voice. The cops, she said, half-ass everything in our communities, especially in Compton. They become so desensitized to violence that they forget it's someone's daughter on the floor, stabbed to death, she said. Three months after Daisy's murder, there had been no significant updates in the case.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
There were no press conferences, no news of a possible DNA match. There were no rewards offered for information leading to an arrest. And the police had yet to announce that there was even a suspect. They hadn't released Victor's name or his photo to the public. It made one of Daisy's friends start to wonder if maybe the police really did have some other intel that she didn't know about.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Like, maybe the DNA at the crime scene matched with someone who wasn't Victor. Maybe the detectives were looking into a different suspect. But the longer she waited, the more she became convinced that her instincts had been right all along. There was no way Victor hadn't done this, she remembered thinking. It just didn't make sense otherwise.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
There was no one else who would have wanted to hurt Daisy. She and her friends considered looking for Victor on their own. They had a few ideas about where he might be hiding, like the motel that he sometimes rented for him and Daisy, or somewhere in the bushes along the LA River. Because even before he went on the run, they told me, it wasn't unusual for him to spend the night on the streets.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Daisy sometimes came with him just to keep him company. That's just the kind of person she was, her friends told me. Ultimately, though, Daisy's friends thought better of their search party. Because what if they did find Victor? What were they going to do then? Or worse, what was he going to do? That's when they began talking about ways to spread the word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Maybe if other people knew to look out for this guy, then someone would be able to spot him. And if detectives weren't going to put his name and photo out, they thought, then fine, we'll do it ourselves. They told Susie about their plan, and she gave them her blessing. She told them, do whatever it takes to find him. Next time, on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
This episode cites two different studies. One of them is called Whose Lives Matter, which appeared in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. It was published by sociologists at University of Chicago and Stanford University. And it was previously reported on by the Marshall Project. You can go read more about that on their website.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And the federal clearance rate data that I mentioned, which breaks down homicide clearance rates by race, was based on a CBS News analysis of the FBI's data. You can read more about it on CBS News' website. Thanks so much for listening.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
the murder and the absence of information around it, it created this void, this panic, this paranoia, a fear that everyone was a suspect, including maybe even Wendy and her neighbor. But this idea that just anybody was a suspect, it wasn't something that Daisy's mother or her friends subscribed to. They were pretty sure they knew exactly who had committed this murder.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The question was, why hadn't he been arrested yet? I'm Jen Swan, from London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer, Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy, Episode 4, Another Death in Compton. The night that Daisy slipped out of the house and never came home, her mother, Susie, noticed something that concerned her. It was a message on Daisy's phone from her ex-boyfriend, Victor Sosa.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Normally, Susie told me, she would never read her daughter's text messages. But she happened to see it pop up while she was looking in Daisy's direction. It contained just five words. I've got something for you. After Daisy got this message, she got up, she hugged her mother and her grandmother, and she told them she'd be right back.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
She opened the screen door and walked down the steps of the second floor apartment. Susie wasn't happy about it, but she felt she couldn't say anything. Daisy was technically an adult, even if she was also still a teenager. And if Susie's past experiences had taught her anything, it was that the more you tell a teenager not to do something, the more they want to do it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Besides, Susie had no reason to suspect that Daisy wasn't going to come right back. She'd left her phone and her wallet inside the house. When Daisy didn't come right back, Susie figured she'd spent the night with Victor. It was disappointing, but maybe not surprising. Old habits are hard to break.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
When Susie identified her daughter's body the next day, the detectives asked her a series of questions. Who did she hang out with? Did she have a boyfriend? That's when Susie told them about Victor. She told me that she called the lead detective, Ray Lugo, nearly every single day to ask for updates. And to his credit, he always answered, she said. When he didn't, he called back right away.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
But even when she got him on the line, Susie said, Lugo didn't give her much information. He was empathetic, but evasive. The investigation was ongoing, and he couldn't say much. All he could say was that he and his partner, Sanchez, were working the case, following leads, conducting interviews, and that they couldn't just arrest someone without evidence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Susie tried to be patient, to stay positive, which meant staying busy. A week after Daisy's murder, she went back to work. She needed to be away from the apartment that had become indistinguishable from the crime scene. And she didn't want to deal with running into her neighbors, with being gossiped about, or worse, in her eyes, being pitied. She knew everybody probably had a million questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Wendy again. When I met with Wendy outside of a grocery store near Compton, almost exactly three years had gone by since Daisy's murder. A lot had happened in Wendy's life in those three years.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Her oldest daughter had recently turned 18, which meant that Wendy now had this new knowledge, this new experience of how difficult it is to raise a daughter that age. And it gave her this new perspective on what Susie was going through.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's what Daisy's grandfather thought, too. That Daisy had gone to see Victor the night she left the apartment. The night of February 22nd, 2021. Daisy and her mother and her grandmother had been in the living room. They were sitting on the couch watching television. Juan was sitting in a chair across from them, and he was the only one with a view of the window.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And around 10.30 p.m., he saw something that nobody else saw. It was something moving outside. It was dark out, and he wasn't totally sure what he saw. Like, maybe it was a shadow, or maybe it was nothing. So he decided not to say anything. Everyone was having a good time and he didn't want to ruin the mood. But then he saw it again.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He couldn't tell who it was because they were wearing a beanie and a hood and a mask over their face. The only thing that he could make out was their eyes. And for a brief moment, he stared directly into them. And then, almost as soon as they made eye contact, this person vanished. When the detectives questioned Juan, he told this story to them, and they asked him to come down to the station.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They wanted him to look at some photographs to tell them if he recognized the person he saw in the window that night. Juan remembered being nervous. He'd never done anything like this before. But if it would help the investigation, then he was willing to do it. He showed up to the homicide bureau and he was instructed to sit down at a table and look at six photographs.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Each photograph showed a different man's face and each of these men looked a little like the suspect, which was Victor. Victor's photo was included among these six. The other five were what's known as fillers. So these are people that the police know were not at the crime scene. Often that's because these fillers are photos of incarcerated people.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They're the booking photos, and they're now in a police database. So this method is what cops call a six-pack. It's basically a modern-day version of a police lineup. You've probably seen this in movies or TV shows where, you know, the suspect and a bunch of people who sort of resemble the suspect are put in a room and the witness has to say, like, that's the guy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Well, that kind of thing never really happens anymore, at least not in person. Now it's all done through photographs. And there's a lot of debate about whether this is actually effective or ethical. Some critics say that it can lead to false arrests and convictions. That's actually one of the reasons why, in California, detectives are not allowed to do six-packs on their own cases.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
The news of Daisy's murder rattled everyone at her apartment complex. There was no making sense of what had happened there. So much of it just didn't add up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
They're typically presented by detectives who aren't involved in the investigation. It's intended to prevent them from pressuring a witness, even inadvertently, to select the person they know is the suspect. It's a really imperfect process, to say the least. But detectives sometimes rely on it when they don't have much else to go off. It can help them get an arrest warrant. So here was Juan.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He's sitting in this room. There's probably a fluorescent light buzzing overhead, and he's staring down at these six photographs in front of him. He recognized Victor's photo. He pointed him out to detectives, and he told them, this is Daisy's ex-boyfriend. This is the person who killed her. But here's the thing. Juan was not brought into the station to identify Daisy's ex.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He was asked something really specific. He was asked, who was the person you'd seen outside the window that night? Juan had always assumed that this person was Victor. But now, sitting in that room, he realized he wasn't sure.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Juan said that whenever Victor came around, he always waited for Daisy downstairs on the ground floor of the apartment building. He never climbed the stairs and walked up the landing of the second floor unit. He never peered in the window. It was like he wanted to avoid all contact with Daisy's family. And in the moment, this made Juan doubt himself. He studied the photos in front of him.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
He looked at Victor's photo. And then he looked at all the others. He scanned each of the men's faces, one after the other. He looked into their eyes and studied their bone structure. He noticed their blemishes, the shapes of their scars, the length of their eyelashes, and he wondered, did one of these men kill my granddaughter?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Eventually, after what felt like hours of staring, of searching, trying to access some deep part of his memory, he decided that one of the faces staring back at him did look like the person he saw in the window that night. The eyes he saw peeking out from above the mask. He told detectives that this was him. This was the killer. But that couldn't have been true.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Because the man that Juan picked was a filler. There was one other person who reported seeing the suspect at the apartment complex the night of February 22nd. And that person was Jeffrey, Wendy's son. He'd been walking home from his cousin's apartment on the other side of the complex. That's when he saw Daisy. She was laying down between two buildings.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
That's Wendy Aldivia. She used to live in Daisy's apartment complex. And her mother actually still lived there at the time of Daisy's death. She rented the unit right below Daisy's family. Wendy was deeply invested in getting justice for Daisy. It wasn't just because she'd known Daisy since Daisy was a little girl.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
And there was someone standing over her, pacing back and forth. Jeffrey had assumed that this person was Victor because, you know, he'd seen Victor hanging around with Daisy before at the apartment complex. But when Jeffrey was asked to look at the six photos, the photo of Victor and the five fillers, he, like Juan, chose a photo that was not Victor's.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 4 - Another Death in Compton
Detectives had struck out on the six-pack. Neither of their witnesses had been able to identify the suspect, which to them either meant that Victor hadn't done it or that it would be that much harder to arrest him if he had. That must have been frustrating.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Claudia told Leslie that this was the reason she did not allow Daisy into her house. She wanted to prevent her son from being alone with her. I had known that Daisy's mother had banned Victor from her home, but I did not know that Claudia had banned Daisy from hers. Here were these two mothers who, as far as I could tell, had never met each other. They lived in different cities.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
They lived totally different lives. But in their own way, unbeknownst to each other, they were both trying to protect Daisy. There was something else I learned in these trial transcripts that Claudia had told Leslie, which was that at one point she drove Daisy home. And as the two of them sat in the car together, Claudia told Daisy about her own experience with domestic violence.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
She urged Daisy to get out of the relationship. She also told Daisy to get a restraining order against her son. Here was a mother telling her son's girlfriend, pleading with her behind his back, to leave him. And not just to leave him, but to take legal action against him. The situation was that serious. Claudia sensed this, and she had tried to intervene.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I remember reading about this in the transcript and just feeling stunned. It contradicted this image of Claudia. that had emerged during the trial, which was a mother trying to protect her son, agreeing to testify against him, but then changing her story on the stand, omitting or minimizing certain details.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Her testimony raised questions about whether she had known about the murder before she gave Victor the money, whether she had helped him flee the country, and whether she really believed that her son had gone missing when she filed that missing persons report with the police.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Claudia's relationship with her son and with Daisy was obviously more nuanced, more complicated, and almost certainly more difficult than what was conveyed at trial. I wanted to try to understand more about it, to hear from Claudia outside of court. So I wrote her a letter. I told her that I was doing this project and that it was important to me to get her perspective.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Again, no reply. It wasn't totally unusual for him not to come home. He sometimes slept on the streets or stayed in motels. But after a couple nights passed and Claudia still hadn't seen or heard from Victor, she started to become worried. She went to her local police station and filed a missing persons report. It was February 25th, 2021, just two days after Daisy had been found dead.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I told her that Daisy's story it seemed to me was also a story about multiple generations of women. Mothers, daughters, women whose lives had been affected by various cycles of violence. I never got a response. And I wasn't even sure if she'd gotten the letter. So I decided to drive to her house one night. I was hoping to speak with her in person, introduce myself at least.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I knocked on the door and she answered. And when I identified myself, Her face just dropped. Her eyes started welling up. She didn't slam the door in my face. She didn't seem to be angry. She just seemed sad. She allowed me to stand there, uncomfortably, awkwardly, on her doorstep and ask for an interview. And she listened to me. But she shook her head, no. I can't, she said. I can't.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
It struck me just how painful this must have been for her on a number of levels. I mean, her son had committed a murder and the person he killed was the person she had been trying to protect.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
The day after Victor's mother took the stand, Leslie gave her closing argument. It was the last day of a nearly two-week-long trial, and it was her last chance to convince the jury that Victor was guilty of deliberate, premeditated, first-degree murder. Leslie started by recounting the last night of Daisy's life, how she and her family had been watching television in their living room,
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
How her grandfather had seen a masked man in the window. How Daisy kissed her mother and her grandmother goodbye and said she'd be right back. How everyone went to sleep and Daisy didn't come back. And then Leslie started recapping the evidence. She talked about how the surveillance footage showed a person dragging something near the area where Daisy's body was found.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
A couple of weeks went by. No sign of Victor. And then, Claudia told the jury, she got a phone call. It was him. He wanted to talk. And he needed money. He gave his mother his location, and she agreed to meet him, somewhere on the street. By that point, she must have learned that Daisy had been murdered. Because when she met up with her son, she asked him, point blank, did you do it?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
how this figure appeared to have shoulder-length black hair, the same as Victor at the time, according to testimonies from his mother and Daisy's grandfather and Daisy's neighbor, Jeffrey. And then there was the adoptive admission, when Victor seemed to confess to his mother by simply lowering his head when she asked if he had done it. Leslie reminded the jury that after Daisy's murder,
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Victor fled the country and changed his appearance. This is because of what she called his consciousness of guilt. The same consciousness of guilt, she argued, that led to him covering Daisy's body, hiding what he had done with a rug. The rug that had bloodstains on it. Bloodstains that presented a DNA match with Victor, just like the bloodstains on the knife found next to Daisy's body.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Leslie pointed out that there's a kind of intimacy that using a knife on a human body requires. A literal physical closeness to another person. And the words that she used, the motions she made with her hands, when she described just how many times Victor stabbed Daisy, they were haunting. They still haunt me. They are lodged deep into my brain to this day.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Maybe you heard me exhale after Leslie said that. It was an exhalation of dread. And it wasn't the first time that I had heard this information. The medical examiner had talked about it at length on the stand just a day earlier. There were 58 stab wounds on the right side of Daisy's skull. Fifty-eight.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Susie and her cousin were sitting in the row ahead of me. You can hear them sniffling in this recording. They were passing tissues to each other.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Meaning, did you kill Daisy? But Victor didn't respond. At least not verbally.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And then, before closing, Leslie acknowledged all the stuff we didn't know. The lingering questions the jury might still have. About things she said we might be able to make inferences about, but could not definitively prove. about things like sexual assault. And I should warn you, Leslie's speech here is graphic. It's about 90 seconds long if you want to skip ahead.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And what about the knife? Had Victor come to Daisy's apartment that night carrying the nine-inch knife found at the scene? Or did he happen to find it laying around near the trash bins? Was it one of the knives that Daisy's neighbor had reportedly thrown out? Had he grabbed it in a fit of rage? These are questions we may never know the answer to.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
That's Deputy District Attorney Leslie Hinshaw. She was the prosecutor on this case. And to her, this moment, this moment where Victor's mother described her son hanging his head, it was a big deal.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And according to Leslie's theory of the case, these answers don't change the deliberateness of the murder. She argued, quote, whether he chose to bring the knife with him or whether he saw the knife and chose to pick it up. Those are conscious decisions. By the time he commits the act, he has made his decision.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Victor's public defender, A.J. Bain, he made his closing argument next. He argued that the DNA testing had been faulty and basically that the whole case was circumstantial because nobody actually saw Daisy being stabbed. He pointed to the surveillance footage. You know, it didn't actually show anyone's face.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And then he mentioned that moment that Claudia had described. That moment when she had asked her son if he'd done it, and he bowed his head in response.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Leslie had believed so firmly in the strength of the DNA evidence that she had decided not to argue a motive, not to present any of the allegations of violence, of physical abuse. She barely mentioned Victor and Daisy's relationship at all. It was a decision that watching it all play out in real time had really surprised me.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And as the judge read the 12 jurors their instructions, I started to wonder if it was a decision that could backfire.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
In order to reach a verdict, all 12 jurors must agree to the decision and to any finding... As everyone shuffled out of the courtroom, ending an exhausting and deeply upsetting murder trial, I thought about Daisy. The photos I'd seen of her on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. The stories I'd heard about her from her friends and family.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I thought about the DMs and the phone calls from strangers all over North America. Each of them determined to catch her killer. I thought about the suffering, the waiting, the longing, and about how all of it had been leading to this moment. Now, it was no longer in Daisy's friends' hands. It wasn't up to the detectives. And there was nothing more that Susie could do or Leslie could say.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison. And our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
As the prosecutor, Leslie had anticipated this moment. She'd interviewed Claudia before the trial started, and she'd questioned her on the stand during the preliminary hearing, about seven months before that. And during that hearing, Claudia testified that she urged her son to do the right thing, to turn himself in to the authorities.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
She said that he responded by telling her that he was going to do it. He was going to turn himself in. That was the last time she saw him. But at trial, Claudia's recollection had become hazy. When Leslie questioned her, she said she couldn't remember whether Victor had told her that he'd turned himself in. I don't remember if he said anything like that, she told the court.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
There was another part of the story that Claudia told a little differently at trial. So previously, she'd said that she gave her son $500 a few days before she met up with him a second time to ask if he'd done it. But at trial, she said she thought maybe all of these things happened during one single interaction.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Like maybe she'd asked him that question and he put his head down and she didn't take that to be any sort of admission of guilt. I mean, or maybe the trauma really did just play tricks on her memory. It's hard to unpack it either way. It was almost like Claudia was unsure of herself. Like, she was questioning reality itself. Like, did all of these things really happen?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Maybe it was all just a bad dream. Was she really about to help convict her own son? It was a tough position to be in. And Leslie knew that.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
She would send me these voice memos during the trial, especially on days when I couldn't be there in person. She'd recap some of the testimonies and tell me how she felt about everything that day, as she was driving home or picking up dinner. And there was something that she said to me in a voice memo on the day that Claudia took the stand.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
A lot of strength, I think, is what she meant. And in a way, Susie saw how she and Claudia both had a lot in common.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I am Jen Swan. From London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer Paris Hilton, this is My Friend Daisy. Episode 8, Cycle of Violence. I spoke with Leslie at the Hall of Justice in downtown Los Angeles. It's this big granite building from the 1920s. It's sandwiched between the courthouses and City Hall. Leslie was transferred here from the Compton DA's office.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
That's where she worked back when she was assigned the case known as the State of California versus Victor Sosa. We sat in a small meeting room. It had these kid-friendly illustrations on the wall and stuffed animals on the couch. Leslie works on cases related to domestic violence and sex crimes.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
And it occurred to me that this room that we are sitting in, it was meant to make children feel comfortable talking about deeply uncomfortable subjects. It made me wonder how Leslie found herself in this line of work. Can you tell me how you got into this? Like, have you always wanted to be a prosecutor and how did you end up in sex crimes?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
That, obviously, did not happen. Because somewhere along the way, Leslie ended up taking a class on criminal procedure. She decided she wanted to become a public defender. Well, that didn't exactly pan out either.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Leslie's been prosecuting sex crimes and domestic violence cases for about six years now. She said she doesn't know exactly why she gravitated towards it, but she thinks it has something to do with wanting to help vulnerable people. Women, children, people who don't always feel comfortable or safe identifying as victims. People like Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I know that Susanna was trying to report, I think it was the skateboard incident at one point, and she says that she was told that she couldn't report it because Daisy wouldn't disclose it. Like, I'm just curious if that's something you've encountered where someone has tried to report it and they've been told they can't report it because they're a minor victim.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
But to your knowledge, there wasn't reports of domestic violence at all in this case, right?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Daisy was a minor, and this system, which was supposed to protect her, it failed. It's hard not to think about what might have gone differently, or if anything would have gone differently, if a report had been taken. If just one mandated reporter, like a nurse or a social worker, had intervened. At the very least, a report almost certainly would have been introduced as evidence during the trial.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Evidence that could have helped to establish a motive. But because no such evidence existed, and because Leslie felt that the DNA evidence was strong enough on its own, she never told the jury about the domestic violence in Victor and Daisy's relationship. She said she didn't realize until after she prepared the case that there had been a firsthand witness to at least one of these assaults.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Someone who might have been able to testify. Daisy's little brother. And I want to just quickly note that I'm here talking to a prosecutor. Someone tasked with working with police to enforce the law and punish those who break it. But there are plenty of reasons why a person experiencing intimate partner violence may not want to involve the legal or criminal justice system at all.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
This episode discusses intimate partner violence and sexual assault. Please listen with care. On April 27th, 2022, Claudia Gutierrez took the stand at her son's murder trial. She recounted how, about a year and a half earlier, Victor had gone missing. After he didn't come home one night, she tried texting him. There was no reply. Then she texted Daisy. She figured they were together.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
I mean, for one thing, they might fear retaliation from their abuser. It could escalate the violence. And if there's children or a shared household involved, one partner being sent to jail could result in a loss of income or a loss of childcare. This is all to say that victims have a lot to weigh when it comes to deciding whether to disclose their abuse to authorities.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
There are plenty of reasons for them to lose faith in the legal system. And in Leslie's experience, that's not uncommon.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
There were people in Daisy's life who tried to take her out of the relationship with Victor, who tried to break the cycle. And it wasn't just her own mother. It was also Victor's. I discovered this while reading a transcript of a conversation that happened early on in the trial. The conversation was on the record, and it was between Leslie Hinshaw, the prosecutor, A.J.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 8 - Cycle of Violence
Bain, who was Victor's public defender, and the judge, Sean Cohen. The jurors had been dismissed for lunch, and Leslie was telling the judge about something she was considering submitting as evidence, which was that when she interviewed Claudia several months earlier, Claudia said that there were times when she would hear Victor and Daisy arguing, times when she saw bruises on Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But then, during that bus ride, Daisy confided a little more.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lolly was concerned, but she knew that Daisy had a close circle of friends at her high school, a big support system. What she didn't know is that she was one of the few people, maybe even the only one, who Daisy talked about her relationship with. Maybe, in hindsight, it made a strange sort of sense.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But Lali didn't know many of the details, and the truth of what was really going on. It was so much worse than she could have imagined.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
One night, during the summer before Daisy's senior year of high school, her grandfather, Juan de la O, was asleep on the couch. Daisy's younger brother began screaming at him to wake up.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I first reached out to Lali on TikTok. Her profile is filled with funny, candid videos. Nothing too edited, nothing too trendy. Just snippets of everyday life. A friend walking around with a paper bag over her head. Soccer teammates banging on plastic bottles to make an ASMR drumbeat. Lali and I met up at a coffee shop in Huntington Park.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She got a call from her youngest son and heard him shouting. He hit her. He hit her with a skateboard. When Susie got to the apartment complex, she saw blood on the ground. But Daisy was nowhere to be found. She'd taken off running, just like Victor. To Susie, it seemed like Daisy was embarrassed. Embarrassed that her younger brother had witnessed what had happened.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She was such a mature, rough girl, Susie told me. That for her, that was embarrassing that she was getting hit by this person. Daisy's mother and her grandfather and her little brother began running after Daisy and Victor, chasing them down the street. Victor eventually got away. When they caught up with Daisy, she was distraught.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The public spectacle of her family chasing her and her boyfriend down the street, it probably added to her embarrassment. And the last thing she wanted to do was to talk about what had happened, or even to seek treatment for it. Susie pleaded with her daughter. She wanted to see the wound on her head, but Daisy wouldn't show her. She was covering it with a hat. You need stitches, Susie told her.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But Daisy did not want to go to the hospital. It seemed like she was afraid of reporting the assault, afraid of drawing even more attention to her injury and what that might mean for her relationship. Finally, Susie made a promise. She told her daughter that she wouldn't call the police. She was bluffing. She had actually already called the police.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Problem was, the police never showed up, she told me. Daisy finally agreed to let her mother take her to the emergency room. But when they got there, Susie told me, Daisy insisted to the medical staff that nothing had happened. No assault had taken place. California law requires registered nurses to make a report any time they suspect a patient has been injured as a result of abuse.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And that's regardless of whether the patient consents to it. So it's unclear why a report was not taken. But because there was no report made, this account of alleged assault isn't based on any sort of official record. It's based on my interviews with Daisy's mother, her grandfather, and her youngest brother, who confirmed to me that he witnessed it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Jeffrey, the teenager whose grandmother lived in the building, also witnessed the attack, according to his mother. After Daisy got stitched up at the hospital, Susie went to the L.A. County Sheriff's Station in Compton. Since the hospital wouldn't file a police report, she figured she'd go to the police herself. But Susie said they told her, quote, the same crap.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
They can't make a report if the victim doesn't come forward. Susie was baffled. Her daughter was a minor, and she'd been injured so badly that she needed stitches. Wasn't that enough to file a police report? Susie was not willing to take no for an answer. She went to a different law enforcement agency, the Huntington Park Police Department, in the city where Daisy attended high school.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But again, she said, she was turned away. The police department declined to file a report or press charges without the cooperation of the victim. I asked the Huntington Park Police Department about this. A media spokesperson said they don't comment on incidents involving minors. But a lieutenant did tell me that this kind of situation, quote, it's not really spelled out in a policy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's a working-class suburb just a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles. We sat at an outdoor table on Pacific Boulevard, the main shopping district. It's filled with signs in Spanish advertising tax lawyers and passport photos. There are huge, glittery boutiques that sell tuxedos and princess-like quinceañera dresses.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
He described it as a gray area, meaning if a parent comes in to report a crime against their child, and the child doesn't want to provide a statement, police might not be able to gather information for a police report. When Daisy returned in the fall for her senior year of high school, she was called into the principal's office.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When she got there, school administrators wanted to ask her about the alleged assault. She said she didn't know what they were talking about. And that's when, according to Susie, Daisy was told that they had already interviewed her younger brother. And he said the attack did happen. Was she calling her brother a liar? This confrontation, it was all a setup. It had been masterminded by Susie.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She told me that she had approached school administrators for help in making a record of the alleged assault. These administrators did not comment on or corroborate this incident, citing student confidentiality. According to Susie, her daughter cracked under the pressure. She told them, no, my brother is not a liar and yes, what he says did happen.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Victor was banned from entering the campus as a result, Susie told me, and she also banned him from entering her home. And it was roughly around this time, maybe just a few weeks earlier, that Victor posted this really cryptic image on Instagram. It was this old school tattoo style illustration of this guy holding two different theater masks. Maybe you've seen this kind of thing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's like a happy mask in one hand and a sad mask in the other. And there's this text across it that says, smile now, cry later. And then the caption says, not allowed to see my girlfriend no more. And then there's this hand clapping emoji and an hourglass emoji. The whole thing is really ominous. Like, was it some kind of threat of time running out?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's impossible to know for sure what he meant by this. And it's also impossible to know how exactly this whole experience affected Daisy. It had to have been incredibly difficult. And it seems like at that point, you know, she was already struggling with this relationship, with whether to stay, how to go. And I just wonder, is this the thing that made her see clearly, gravely, I need to get out?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But getting out of a bad relationship takes time. In Daisy's case, it happened about two and a half years after the alleged assault with the skateboard. It was early 2021. We were driving. Susie told me. She was like, by the way, I broke up with what's-his-face. Susie told me that Daisy didn't even like to mention Victor by name because she knew her mother disliked him so much.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Inside, Susie said she was jumping up and down at this news. But she didn't want to show Daisy how excited she was. Teenagers are weird, Susie said. The more you tell them not to do something, the more they want to do it, and vice versa. So Susie kept driving. She tried her best to hide her smile and act casual. She kept her hands on the steering wheel. She looked straight ahead.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The businesses here cater to a population of mostly immigrants, like Lolly's family. They're from Tabasco, Mexico, and Daisy's family back when they lived here. They're from Mexico City. Daisy and Lolly bonded instantly. They had the kind of closeness where they could spend hours together, sometimes without even saying a word.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And besides, it wasn't the first time that Daisy and Victor had broken up. But something about this time felt different. More real. More final. Maybe it was the fact that Daisy seemed like she had so many more options in her life now. She'd made friends in her college classes. She'd gotten a job at CVS. And she had co-workers that she really liked.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
There was something else that Daisy did that silently suggested this breakup was the real thing. She deleted all of her photos of Victor on Instagram. One of Daisy's friends told me that she clocked this immediately. Daisy never said a word to her about the breakup. She didn't need to. Her social media said it all. Her and Victor were over.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
The oldest remaining post on Daisy's grid, after she deleted everything else, was a selfie. It was posted on February 3rd, 2021, which was roughly around the time she broke up with Victor. The photo didn't show her face, but it did show a purple key hanging from a chain around her neck, a moon and bat tattoo on her clavicle. A spider web inked across her shoulder. The caption?
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
On its way to happiness. At the time that she posted this image and caption, it was winter break at East LA College. But Daisy was not taking a break. She was enrolled in a course called Management for Small Business Entrepreneurship. In other words, she was on her grind. She wanted to own her own salon one day, and this was one step along the way. And this class was intense.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
What was normally four months of instruction was crammed into just five weeks.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
That's Frank Aguirre. He's the chair of East L.A. College's business administration program. He's got dark, slicked-back hair, and he wore a polo shirt printed with the college's mascot, a husky.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Frank didn't get to know Daisy well. This class was only five weeks long. And it was also completely online. This was still less than a year into the pandemic, so that was the norm. But he did try to get to know all of his students, to understand their reasoning for taking his class.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And one way that he did that was by asking them all to submit a questionnaire, to tell him about their background and interests, to name something unique about themselves. Of course, I wanted to know what Daisy had written in hers.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But there were times when Lolly wondered if there was more going on with Daisy than she let on.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I stared at this photo of this 19-year-old woman with so many dreams. So much life ahead of her. I thought about how the world was just beginning to open itself up to her. To become so much bigger. I thought about how she had recently made this big decision. To leave a partner who, by many accounts, had been abusive to her. And how difficult that must have been.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I thought about the injustice of it all. Just three weeks after this class ended, her life would be taken from her. And to a lot of people who knew Daisy, it seemed like the cops were willing to let her case go cold. Not if they could help it. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
My Friend Daisy is a production of London Audio with support from Sony Music Entertainment. It's reported, written and executive produced by me, Jen Swan. I'm also your host. Our executive producers for London Audio are Paris Hilton, Bruce Gersh, Bruce Robertson and Joanna Studebaker. Our executive producer for Sony Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kolkin.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Production assistance and translations by Miguel Contreras. Sound design, composing, and mixing by Hans Dale Shee. Our fact checker is Fendall Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and our production manager is Tamika Balance-Kalosny. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben Goldberg and Orly Greenberg at UTA, and Jen Ortiz at The Cut.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
This idea that Daisy always put on a smile, no matter what. It was something that came up a lot when I spoke to her friends.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lolly and Daisy drifted apart in high school. Lolly went to one school, Daisy to another. But Daisy always stayed on Lolly's mind.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And this encounter, it shed light on Daisy's inner life, on one of the difficult things that she was struggling with in the years after they lost touch. It still haunts Lolly today.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I'm Jen Swan from London Audio, iHeartRadio, and executive producer, Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy, Episode 3. Smile now, cry later.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Valerie Arellano was two grades above Daisy. She was a sophomore in high school when Daisy was in the eighth grade.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's possible that the two might never have met if Valerie's best friend didn't end up getting pregnant. The father was Daisy's older brother.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When the baby was born in the fall of 2015, Daisy embraced being an aunt. Later, she would even get a tattoo of the baby's name. Daisy adored the baby's mother, too. She got a septum ring just like her and started dyeing her hair like her, too.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
This episode contains descriptions of intimate partner violence. Please listen with care.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I'm laughing because I can relate. My hair was also fried in high school. Honestly, my brain was probably a little fried too, from all the bleach I put on my head, followed by clumps of Manic Panic and neon shades.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Valerie's in her mid-20s with short curly bangs and thick hair that when we met, she wore in two braids. I had messaged Valerie on Facebook after noticing that she donated to the GoFundMe that Daisy's mother had started to help with her funeral costs. Valerie's Facebook page is like a community bulletin board. She often reposts flyers about missing people and lost pets.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
PSA is about shelter animals that need homes. And in person, she was just as sensitive and caring as her online profile suggested. A few years back, she told me, she started studying sociology at Cal State LA because she wanted to work in homeless services. Then she got disillusioned and switched over to art education.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She wants to get her teaching credential someday, to work in a field where she can really have an impact and make a difference. We sat at a picnic table outside the Civic Center in Huntington Park. That's where Valerie grew up and where she still lives. And she told me about the first time she met Daisy, about how she watched as Daisy's style and musical tastes began to evolve.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
With her tough exterior, Daisy sometimes gave off the air of someone who was unfazed, self-assured. But underneath it all, she was going through a lot. It seems like she was probably dealing with a lot of uncertainty. Her parents were getting a divorce after nearly two decades of marriage. It was finalized in the summer of 2017.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And based on what I've heard from Daisy's mother, Susie, it must have been hard on Daisy. I haven't been able to reach her father. I asked his father, Juan de la O, to help us get in touch. I never heard back. But from what Susie told me, Daisy used to be very close with her father. A daddy's girl is how she put it.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She was really like this with her dad, she told me, crossing her index and middle fingers together. But after the split, Susie and Daisy got a lot closer. They ended up moving in with Daisy's grandparents in Compton. It was a tight squeeze, but it was at least familiar. They'd all lived there for a time when Daisy and her siblings were younger.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Susie told me that in order to maintain a sense of normalcy, she decided not to take her kids out of the schools they were already enrolled in. Now, Daisy had to commute to school from a different city. Huntington Park was a straight shot on the bus, eight miles north on Long Beach Boulevard until it turned into Pacific. The drive took a half hour by car or sometimes an hour on public transit.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
It's hard to imagine this was an easy transition. Daisy was living far from her friends, her school, her community. And now she had to navigate a new living arrangement with extended family members she didn't always get along with. But around this time, when Daisy was a sophomore in high school, she began dating somebody that seemed to bring her comfort, at least in the beginning.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
When she introduced her mother to her boyfriend, she said that he was 17, just two years older than she was. And at first, Susie had no reason to doubt that. Victor Sosa looked like your average teenage skateboarder. He'd carry a skateboard with him wherever he went. He had thick eyebrows and a thin mustache. He sometimes grew his dark, wavy hair past his shoulders.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But the thing that everybody noticed about him was his earlobes. They'd been stretched and gauged with jewelry. It looked like big black discs. His appearance didn't bother Susie. She was actually suspicious of him for another reason. He was too quiet, she told me. And pretty soon, she began to notice things about him that made her suspect he was a lot older than 17.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
I saw tattoos on him, she told me. A lot of tattoos. And I'm like, how old is he for real? Susie would later discover that her daughter had lied to her about her boyfriend's age. He was already 21 when Daisy was 15. Susie had always felt like she and her daughter were on a team. But after Victor came into the picture, she no longer felt that way. It seemed like everything had changed.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Susie had been working long hours to make ends meet. She was seeing less and less of her daughter. And when they did hang out, Daisy never wanted to talk about Victor, Susie told me. A number of Daisy's friends told me the same thing. That Victor was a topic that was always off limits. They didn't know much about him, and they weren't even really sure how the two of them met.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
But they knew better than to ask about it. When they did, Daisy sometimes told them that he wasn't worth talking about. But Victor clearly didn't feel that way about Daisy. It was like he wanted the whole world to know about his relationship. Because on Instagram, he filled his grid with photos of her... Daisy with her hair bleached blonde and then dyed jack-o'-lantern orange.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Daisy and fishnets climbing a fence. Daisy and fishnets on a beach. Daisy in an antique shop. A little yellow Daisy propped in the buttonhole of her jean jacket. His Instagram contained a few photos of himself, too. There was one photo that showed off his tattoos. On his leg, an image of Jason, the killer from Friday the 13th. Two blades arranged like crossbones under a hockey mask.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Across his abdomen, an outline of the Grim Reaper. It seemed like he had a thing for horror movies, right down to the clothes he wore. He even sometimes dressed like Freddy Krueger in a red striped sweater and bowler hat. His look sometimes freaked people out. Like Jose Tejas, the apartment manager at Daisy's building. He'd sometimes see Victor hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
And he was not into it. He dressed in all black, like a shadow, Jose said. Then he compared Victor to The Undertaker, the wrestler who entered the ring in a black leather trench coat and top hat. Daisy's style had become a little theatrical, too. Her hair was cut short and asymmetrical, and her makeup was dark and bold. She looked a little like the 1980s punk singer, Susie Sue.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
By her junior year of high school, she had changed her look so much that Lolly, her friend from middle school, had to do a double take when she spotted Daisy on the bus.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
She and Daisy hadn't seen each other in years, and Lolly wasn't even sure if it was really Daisy she was seeing.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Lali and Daisy had a lot to catch up on. And they only had the length of a bus ride to do it. Lali didn't want to waste any time. So she went straight to the big questions.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
Junior high was more than a decade ago for Lolly. She's in her early 20s now. She's got wavy brown hair parted down the middle. And on the day that we met, she wore a Whitney Houston T-shirt. She wants to be a nurse someday, delivering babies. But for the time being, she delivers something else. Food from local restaurants. That's in between classes at East LA College.
My Friend Daisy
Episode 3 - Smile Now, Cry Later
To Lolly, it sounded like a lot of high school relationships, including her own, full of drama, insecurity, and intensity.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
Imagine, you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. And I was like, what? Like, it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Poutine: Canada's Pride
I'm a journalist in Los Angeles and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. Es ist die Geschichte, wie und warum eine Gruppe von Teenagern sich auf Social Media konzentriert, um ihre Freundin als Mörder hinzutragen. Das ist ihre Geschichte. Das ist mein Freund Daisy. Musik Musik Musik Musik Musik
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
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Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Saga of Silk Road
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turn to social media to get justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Saga of Silk Road
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Saga of Silk Road
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turn to social media to get justice.
Stuff You Should Know
The Saga of Silk Road
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How The Pill Changed the World
I'm Jen Swan. I'm the writer and host of My Friend Daisy, the true story of how and why a group of teenage girls turned to social media to get justice.
Stuff You Should Know
Selects: How The Pill Changed the World
If you've been waiting to binge all 10 episodes of the series, now is your chance. My Friend Daisy is available in its entirety on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 240: Weed Is Cool?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
This Is Important
Ep 242: Are You Smarter Than A Podcaster?
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Like They’re Reaching Out to Me
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turned to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
A Southern Ethos
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Under Yazoo Clay
Threads
Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like, that could have been my daughter. Like, you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy.