Chapter 1: What happened in the disappearance of Susana Morales?
In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water.
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Chapter 2: How did Susana's family react to her disappearance?
Welcome to 2020 The After Show. So good to have you with us as always. I'm Debra Roberts. And as we always do, we're going to dig a little deeper into our most recent episode of 2020. And this one, if you saw it, I'm sure you haven't forgotten it. And if you haven't, you're going to hear some details about the heartbreaking story of the murder of 16-year-old Susana Morales.
now those who knew her described her as somebody who was full of light somebody who loved music and she was living sort of a classic immigrant story her mother came here from mexico setting out to live the american dream and then only to find a nightmare on july 26 2022 susannah vanished while walking home from a friend's house in norcross georgia
And it wasn't really until a chilling discovery made almost by chance in the middle of the woods that led police to a shocking realization of who might have been responsible for the murder. It is one that that community just couldn't shake. Well, my colleague and friend John Quinones covered the story for 2020.
And as always, he just does an expert job of bringing us into all those details and all the humanity of these stories. And John is here to help us put the pieces of this puzzle together with some exclusive details from what happened inside the investigation. And he's going to give us a chance to see some clips that you didn't get a chance to see on Friday night.
interviews also with law enforcement and Susana's family. John, as always, it's good to see you. I wish you were here in the studio, but good to see you there.
Great to be here, Deb. Thank you.
Yeah, you and I always have such an interesting time talking about stories because we go way back and have such perspective with so many stories that we've covered over the years. And I have to say, the first thing that came to mind, you know, in talking to you about this one is, you're a father, you've got a daughter, I'm a mother, I've got a daughter.
And the death of a young girl, a teen girl, and the desperation of her family trying to
find answers i mean this one really i think just kind of gets at you and and pulls at the heartstrings what about you when you set out to start looking into the story of course you know you our daughters uh are precious i only have one daughter two boys and her andrea and uh i worry about her all the time and she's now you know 30 years old and i still worry about her. So yeah, it touched home.
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Chapter 3: What evidence was discovered that indicated foul play?
And that's how it all started.
And John, what we learn in the piece is that, you know, it's like that, that ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, that heartbeat. It wasn't like Susanna not to answer her phone or reply to text messages. And, you know, we all kind of know that feeling of having a kid, even our grown children, right? When you reach out to them and they don't get back.
Give us a sense of what Maria told you she felt in those early moments of just not hearing from her daughter.
She was desperate. She shows us the texts, and you saw them, where she says, Miha, my daughter, where are you? Mi amor, where are you? And she keeps reaching out to her, and there's no response. But as it turns out, Susana had a friend named Kaya. And Kaya had downloaded this app called Life 360.
And it's a popular GPS-based app that tracks real-time locations of people on their phone, people who give permission to each other to do this, families and friends. And on that app, you can see her face. phone at least, leaving Kelly's apartment complex at around 10 p.m. So it wasn't that late.
And you can actually see Susanna starting to move, to walk home on Singleton Road toward her street, which was Santa Ana Drive. And then Susanna's phone starts moving in the opposite direction. And it's going very quickly, around 40 miles an hour.
And then at 1029, Kaya receives a text message saying that Susana's phone has experienced a crash alert, meaning there's been some sort of accident or some sort of hard force trauma to her phone. And that starts them raising their eyebrows.
I had never heard of this 360 app. I just thought that was fascinating, John, the idea that in real time you can kind of get a sense of where someone is and so forth. And this was a critical piece of evidence for them to actually be able to have this when they begin looking for her.
Right, right. The police step in. Of course, they call the cops. But at this point, the police are thinking Susanna might be a runaway, right? Because there was no evidence of any kind of foul play. They cannot consider her being abducted. But Susanna's sister, and this family was amazing, Susanna's sister Jasmine argues that, you know, this could well be an abduction.
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Chapter 4: What role did the Life360 app play in the investigation?
that maybe she was abducted. Now, police tell the family that that could be interpreted in two ways. This could either be that she got into a vehicle, right, with someone she knew, willingly,
or yes it could be that she was taken by force but the family wouldn't give up they post up missing posters and they the mom goes on facebook and she starts desperately pleading for information and she does interviews by the way with with local spanish-speaking media so they're just desperately getting the word out about this missing daughter
And John, that's what I thought was so touching and also kind of gives me goosebumps really to this moment, thinking about a family's desperation and how a family won't give up when they feel like they know their family member. They know what she might be capable of or not. Police were trying to be helpful, but they are also trying to be realistic. It's a teenager.
But the family would not give up. Our team sat down with Lieutenant Biggers, who was one of the investigators on Susanna's case. And he began to kind of take matters into his own hands. He's trying to help bring her home to her family. And we showed some of that interview on Friday night, of course. But here's a bit of it that if you were watching, you didn't get a chance to see on Friday.
Let's take a look.
I remember I went to my mom and dad on Thanksgiving and then I came back and dropped my wife and kids off and I drove my personal car looking. I remember like it was yesterday. I went looking, drove my personal car down off Indian Trail looking for her, hoping that I would, even then I had hope that I would see her.
John, we saw Lieutenant Biggers getting pretty emotional during these interviews. I mean, this was kind of a mind-boggling case. I mean, what was that like for you seeing this cop become so emotional in this search?
was a family man himself he has a 16 year old daughter he's married to a to a hispanic woman he could see the pain uh in maria and he just didn't want to give up he even worked weekends on this case because he connected with them and and up to this point there was no solid evidence of an abduction now there were no witnesses no suspects so they had very little to to to go on
It takes a while, John, and that's what I think was so fascinating about this story and also so heartbreaking. I mean, time just kind of dragged on. You know, we go from months to months. I mean, the case would drag on for nearly seven months with no leads, no further evidence, and no answers. So, of course, everybody's trying to figure out what happened to 16-year-old Susanna.
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Chapter 5: How did police initially perceive Susana's case?
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Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I'm here with John Quinones, my colleague, who is talking with me about the heartbreaking story he just brought to us on 2020 about 16-year-old Susana Morales, who disappeared after walking home from her friend's home in her Georgia neighborhood. and she was never heard from again. The investigation had gone on for months.
Her family was convinced that she was not a runaway and that something had happened, but police were not able to crack this case. And then, John, there was a break on February 6, 2023, when a man who was just off-roading in a wooded area happens to find skeletal remains more than 20 miles from where Susanna had vanished. And it was a complicated crime scene, wasn't it?
Yes, yes. The skeletal remains were scattered throughout the woods in that area. Remember, her body had been out there months. There was exposure to the elements. There was decomposition, animal activity in the woods after all, right? No clothing or personal items belonging to Susanna were found at the scene. Nothing was found.
And the medical examiner could not even determine an exact cause of death. Also, because of all that decomposition, there were no body fluids or blood recovered at the scene. But what they did find, Deborah, were fingernails painted black. It was the color of Susanna's nails the night she went missing. And also at the scene, they suddenly find a critical piece of evidence, a Glock 19 handgun.
And that was absolutely critical. This is what they needed to zero in on her killer. Heartbreaking, heartbreaking for the family because they were holding out hope all that time that they would find her. And then they find this evidence and they find the remains. But the gun, John... belonged to Miles Bryant, a Doraville police officer. I mean, that was mind-blowing.
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Chapter 6: What shocking discovery was made about Susana's remains?
Brian tells police, oh, I had a break in into my car, which I left unlocked. at the apartment complex where he lived and worked. He claimed someone broke into his unlocked truck, in fact, and stole his wallet and then also stole the gun. But strangely enough, he tells the officer that day that he does not want police detectives assigned to the case. That's a bit of a red flag, right?
Investigators, of course, are now pretty suspicious. They believe that Brian dropped his gun while he was trying to dispose of Susana's body out there in the woods. They're convinced that by claiming his gun was stolen, Brian was just trying to cover his tracks.
And what police now have to confront is that this is a police officer who you would think is there to serve and protect, but now clearly something has gone on. He's possibly got a different life, a double life, and the community has to come to grips with this. Police are sort of confident at this point that they know who the killer is, that it is indeed Brian.
They've got phone records that show he was in the exact location where Susana's body was found that same night. What are they theorizing about what might have happened?
Well, one of the theories was that Miles Bryant had seen Susana Morales before and that he had approached her. The theory is that he likely saw her again that night, and this time she's walking home alone in the dark. He follows her, and then as she turns into the street where she lived, he took her, maybe forcibly. We don't know for certain. And then drove her into the other direction.
That's why that app showed her speeding away at 40 miles an hour. At some point shortly thereafter, he throws her cell phone out the window of his truck, which caused that crash indication on the app. She appears to have been killed and then dumped in the woods. Prosecutors believe he likely intended may well have intended to rape her, but they were not able to prove that during his trial.
Remember, the body of Susanna was completely decomposed when she was eventually found.
Yeah, just you can only surmise, you know, what he might have done to her because they weren't able to tell, but they could definitely see she didn't she wasn't clothed. Now, you're talking about police investigating an officer who knows a little bit about strategy and what might be coming. So they they had to have a particular strategy to try to get him to to cooperate.
They were you know, they were being coy with him, but they were essentially just trying to get him to possibly fess up.
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Chapter 7: Who was Miles Bryant and what connection did he have to the case?
He actually apologized to Susanna's family at the sentencing. And her family, as you said, has just been heartbroken. And hearing from her sister in the interview in your piece was really something else. But we've also got a little more of her interview that we didn't get a chance to hear on Friday night reacting to what Brian said. Let's take a look.
I felt maybe just like a little bit of relief that we got partial justice for Susana and that he wasn't going to be able to walk away free from what he did. I didn't care about his biology, to be honest, because we still had that unknown of what happened that night. I don't feel like I have closure because I feel like the unknown still eats me to this day.
I would want to know what happened that night.
John, she talks about how she wanted to know more. She just needed to know why this happened. And there's still unanswered questions here. Give us a sense of how the family is coping with the idea. It's one thing if they have, and I don't want to say closure because we always find out that these folks don't have closure, but some kind of a resolution.
But in this case, they don't have it, do they? And they have to live with that.
Absolutely. They really don't. Like I said, they're heartbroken. They wound up moving from the house that they used to live in. And even then, her mother didn't want to leave, didn't want to move from that house because she still thought... That Susanna would walk home and walk in through that front door one of these days. You know, Bryant requested a new trial.
And in March, a Gwinnett County judge denied him his motion for that new trial. But now we understand that Bryant's appellant attorney has filed a notice indicating that he wants to take this case to the Georgia Supreme Court. So we'll see what happens there.
So stay tuned. We may not have seen the end of this just yet, but at this point, he has been denied, so he's still in prison. You talked so passionately and eloquently and just so heart-wrenchingly about her mother. Suzanne's mother. And, you know, you really had a chance to know this family and they had to make a choice to sit down and talk and share their emotional reaction to all of this.
Give me a sense, John, of this family, because at the end of the day, it's also about the family left to deal with the impact and the emotional turmoil of what they've dealt with. What kind of impact did her mom leave on you? And did they give you a sense of how you know, what they're hoping people will take away from this tragedy that they've experienced?
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of the trial and how did the family cope?
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