After Daisy’s friends and family make TikToks and Instagram posts revealing the name and photos of her suspected killer, their community bands together to start looking for him — and becomes terrified by potential sightings. Some see the manhunt as a personal mission: a crucial opportunity to avenge Daisy’s killing and bring her murderer to justice. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What happened after Daisy's friends revealed the suspected killer on social media?
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.
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.
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.
Chapter 2: How did Daisy's community react to the TikTok and Instagram posts?
And then I started seeing the viral video that went on TikTok. And I was like, what? Like, it was him? I was like, oh my God.
Wendy knew who Victor was. She used to see him hanging around the apartment complex with Daisy.
It was shocking. It was very shocking because, like I said, we didn't know what was going on in the beginning. And then after that, well, at least I took that out of my head that it was, like, dangerous that we had to be watching our backs for somebody killing women or raping them out there and stuff.
But I was just mad at the fact that this kid did something like that and he was thinking that he was going to be able to get away with it. It's like, how do you think you're going to get away with something like this? Like, you killed somebody. Like, you didn't just...
hurt her that was like probably he got tired of hurting her where you know so now that he killed her that's what i was thinking i was thinking a lot of things but she desperately wanted to see victor held accountable for daisy's murder and so she used the tools at her disposal she went to instagram and shared the posts on tick tock she reposted and reposted and reposted and i would go back and see all the videos because they would always come up on the for you page the for you page
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapter 3: Why do some people trust TikTok more than traditional news for crime updates?
Yeah. Is there something that made you not trust the news or just seeing that you felt like the stories you wanted to see weren't represented?
I feel like Just because they don't cover them enough, you know? They don't always cover them. Like, I could hear about, like, a person getting shot. You just say, here in Huntington Park, and the news won't cover it. And I would just find out because someone posted, oh, this happened, or TikTok, you know? So I feel like the news doesn't cover everything. It only covers whatever goes viral.
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.
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?
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?
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.
I saw half of his face. It looked like him. Like I saw like his eyebrows and his eyes because I feel like he has very unique features in that sense. And I did make eye contact with him and it freaked me the hell out. I feel like it was 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.
He has like deep set eyes and all, like thick eyebrows. I've seen a lot of people compare him to Richard Ramirez. And I'm like, that's a good description. Yeah, especially when he had the long hair.
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Chapter 4: What are the challenges of seeking justice through social media and vigilante action?
He's being seen on the blue line by other girls, and they're probably, like, you know, scared and alone to, like, you know, want to call the cops or something like that.
Valerie was also scared. Or, as her friend Chantel Patrice put it, Valerie was freaking out. And at first, Chantel had no idea why.
I think when you saw him I was looking another way I was looking like you know just because I'm like that I have ADHD dude like I'd be looking and staring off so when you turned to me you're like oh I think I think you told me oh I think that's Victor yeah and I was just kind of like what I did see somebody like slight like kind of with the with the like the figure of him kind of like leaving yeah but that was it I didn't actually see what you saw you saw him pass by you yeah and he went down wherever he went
But I remember you, yeah, you were like very frazzled, you know, and obviously I understood that.
Valerie desperately wanted Victor to get caught, but she didn't want to call 911.
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Chapter 5: Who is Valerie and what did she witness regarding Victor's sightings?
She remembered thinking, I'm not sure whether that's appropriate to call the cops on someone who I can't even see their face entirely.
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.
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.
And he did not like that I was telling him, like, how can this car be stolen? Like, he was lying. And I did not like that. It was a bad experience. And we all felt, like, on edge. And also, he kept, like, touching his gun, too. And we're like, what the hell? It was a Latino cop, but it's like, dude, I don't care if they're, like, Asian.
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.
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.
I wrote, I was by the blue line on Florence and Graham, and I saw someone that looked like him, meaning Victor. Does he skate? I'm going to call the detective number. And then she said, yes, he does. And I wrote, I'm calling right now.
Valerie showed me the messages she sent to her best friend that day. They were dated June 6th, 2021. I called the detective.
It left me on voicemail.
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Chapter 6: How does Valerie's experience highlight community distrust in law enforcement?
And he was just staring at me.
And they had secrets of their own to share.
I'm Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.
I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it.
Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.
I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.
If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.
I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here.
At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of Valerie's attempt to report a sighting to the detective?
John F. Kennedy. Listen to Murder on the Towpath with Soledad O'Brien on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
Hey, I'm Jen. Nice to meet you, too.
We walked across the blacktop and made small talk.
It's hot today, huh? It's so hot, I know.
Once we got to her place, she led me to a small wooden table in her living room.
I don't know how to close this. I feel like, do you want this open?
Eventually, we got to talking about Daisy. So, and then tell me how you first heard that Daisy had been murdered.
Yeah, I first heard about it basically when it was being spread on Facebook. You know, and I think I was in a yeah, I think I was in like a punk group that like, you know, you share like flyers of shows and stuff. And usually someone who does get exposed for violent behavior, it's like we posted like, hey, watch out for this person.
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Chapter 8: What parallels are drawn between this case and other true crime stories?
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.
I jumped off the ladder so fucking quick and I started punching him.
Wow.
Yeah, I jumped off. He didn't even really notice, you know, because I was so short. And that's why I kind of have a scar on my eyelid. I think one of my eyelids has like permanently scarred.
Valerie showed me the spot on her eyelid where she said she got punched.
After that, a lot of girls, they would see me around at shows and they'd be like, yeah, I'm so glad that you did that. They're like, you're fucking crazy. They would say the same thing you did, like, oh, you're so tough. And I was like, I couldn't just sit by and just watch that shit.
Tough felt like an understatement. I wanted to know what was behind it. So I asked her.
How did you become so fearless?
I think I became fearless because, you know, of the type of environment I grew up and because I went to military school, so.
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