March 26, 2025 • 27 mins
After getting an early morning call about a body at an apartment complex, police officers canvass the area and interview the neighbors for clues. Detectives suspect it’s a so-called “body dump,” especially since nobody at the apartment complex seems to have heard anything the night before, and nobody recognizes the victim. That is, until a 13-year-old boy is called upon to identify the body. That’s when everything changes and the full scale of the tragedy comes into focus.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
How many times you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Got it right now?
Speaker 3 (00:08):
It was February twenty third, twenty twenty one, when a
series of police SUVs pulled up in the alley behind
an apartment complex in Compton. The sun had only just
started to rise, casting this piercing neon glow over the buildings.
An officer with the Elle County Sheriff's Department stepped out
from one of the Ford expeditions and put on a
white face mask. He walked past the dumpsters and through
(00:30):
this narrow gated walkway. It led to the apartment complex.
Sneakers dangled from a telephone wire overhead. There on the
dead grass between two buildings was this blue and gray
patterned rug. It was big, five feet wide by eight
feet long, and from a few steps back it was
hard to tell that there was anything underneath it. As
(00:51):
the officer got closer, he put on a pair of
blue latex gloves. He lifted up a corner of the rug,
and there beneath it was the body.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Do you have two forty five?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
You're gonna have a two forty five?
Speaker 5 (01:10):
Hey, start keeping it off.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You're gonna have a two forty five, he said, Police
code for assault with a deadly weapon. Officers started cordoning
off the area with yellow tape. They wrapped it around
palm trees and around the metal bars, over apartment windows,
and around the basketball hoop on the concrete walkway. The
apartment complex had become a crime scene. Tenants began to
(01:35):
wake up and mill about that morning. An officer showed
them away. Oh, you can't cross here right now. Sorry, Yeah,
you got it that way, just the trust.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
The Compton Fire Department showed up next. One of the
firefighters wore a blue hoodie over his uniform and carried
it to fibrillator even he was spooked by what he
saw when he approached the body. Oh shit, oh shit,
he said, And then he wondered aloud, what had happened?
Did he get shot? Did he fall? A female officer
(02:07):
in a khaki uniform stood next to him. She pointed
out that there was a knife lying next to the body.
It was a nine inch Farberware steak knife, like the
kind you might have in your kitchen drawer, and that's
what appeared to be a lack of blood. The condition
of the body made the firefighter think it had been
out there for a while.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, you got grigor's ability.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
He put his defibrillator down with a sense of resignation.
He seemed to accept what had been painfully apparent all along.
This was not a situation that called for resuscitation. It
was one that required an investigation. I'm Jen Swan from iHeartMedia, London,
(02:58):
Audio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy,
Episode two, Jane Doe Leopoldo Sanchez hadn't left for work
yet when he got the call. It was early on
(03:19):
a Tuesday morning, and he immediately knew what it meant.
There had been a homicide and he was about to
be assigned to the case.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
The way our office works is you're on call for
two straight days, and depending on where you're at in
what we call the lineup, you kind of know, Hey,
the phone rings, you're up next.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Sanchez is a detective with the Li County Sheriff's Department.
He's got a buzz cut and he's built like a
football player. He actually used to be one in high
school in a suburb just east of Los Angeles. His
former coach is now his partner at the Homicide Bureau.
Sanchez has been working for the ELI County Sheriff's Department
for almost three decades. He didn't always think he'd end
(03:58):
up a cop. He was the civil engineer. Then he
took a criminal justice class in college and everything changed.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I got an eight in the class, and I was like,
holy smokes.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It wasn't the only thing that drew him to the field.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
My best friend at the time was a year or
two older than me, and he had just graduated from
the Sheriff's Department academy. And I mean he had a
brand new car, he had a boat jet. Skin was like,
what's he doing?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Then, I'm not doing It didn't take long for him
to get hired. He logged hours working at the jails
and on patrol, which is where he realized he wanted
to do something else. He wanted to solve murders.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I had a lot of interaction with homicide investigators and
it was just kind of like, wow, man, these guys,
you know, these guys are the guys. These are the
top of the top, right.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
He eventually landed the job, and when he got this
call about a homicide in Compton, he was still a
rookie detective. It was February of twenty twenty one, and
he'd only been working in the bureau for eight months.
He didn't know Compton well at all.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Initially it was kind of like, we're going where I
grew up east of the seven ten. I didn't. I
don't know many in that area west of the seven ten.
So I know, yo, you hear about Compton, but I
don't know the streets Like Long Beach goes through Compton,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Sancha's got in his car and typed the address of
the crime scene into his GPS. As he sat in
morning rush hour, he molled over the scenario he'd been
briefed on. A body had been possibly literally swept under
a rug. There was no identifying information found nearby, no wallet,
no ID, no cell phone.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
So in my mind, I'm thinking, well, could this be
a body dump? Right? Could this individual have been harmed,
murdered somewhere else and then their body disposed of there?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
A body dump? It was the signature move of the
so called Grim Sleeper, the serial killer who for decades
stocked South Los Angeles, a collection of neighborhoods, some of
which border Compton. He prayed upon poor women of color,
sex workers, drug users, people whose absences almost surely wouldn't
(06:10):
get the attention they deserved, and he left their bodies
thrown in dumpsters and alleys. Before Sanchez and his partner
arrived at the apartment complex, the sheriffs who were already there,
tried to find out as much as they could. I
obtained body camera footage of the crime scene. One of
the videos, she was a female officer walking up to
a group of residents gathered on the other side of
(06:32):
the police tape.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Familiar to any of you guys, You guys know this
the woman?
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I didn't see her. She was facing down.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
If you didn't catch that, The officer asked if the
lady looked familiar to anyone, meaning the lady who had
been found dead. One of the residents was clearly confused
by the new information. It's a woman, he said. Another
officer tried a different line of questioning.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Did you guys hear anything last light or anything?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
The officer pivoted. He looked out at one of the boxy,
oatmeal colored apartment buildings and pointed to a surveillance camera
mounted overhead.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Hey, do you guys know obviously on these cameras here,
do you guys know who they were activator or said,
yeah they are who.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Who I talked about?
Speaker 4 (07:29):
The camera?
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Wh yeah, oh here list on top.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Of the officer walked up the steps to the second
floor apartment where the camera was mounted. He banged on
the metal door with his flashlight. When it opened, there
was a guy in a blue beanie, a green army
jacket and black Adidas track pants.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
How's it going, man, I have a question, man, I
know that you yes, I.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Just heard yeah, let me actually let me come up brother,
or not to wake him up.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
See if you could get your guys in the footage anything.
It's a little hard to make out what they're saying.
But the guy in the blue beanie, the guy who
answered the door, he said he'd have to ask his
brother in law about the surveillance footage, and in the
meantime he had a question of his own.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Approximately how long do you think the body has been out?
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I don't I stepped out like a two in the
morning with smoker.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Cider and you were around there and it was smoke
my cigarets.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Right, They're like, well the basketball courtside, OK, you didn't
hear anything or no?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
At that time. I didn't. The officer continued knocking on doors.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
That's how I like. It's like okay, also.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Each time he knocked, he got the same answer. Nobody
had heard or seen anything. Yeah, I just have a question.
You have cameras that the camera's work. No, we don't.
I don't know if the manager does.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Oh, those cameras that are not connected to you guys. No, Well,
then yesterday you guys.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Didn't do or anything. No one seemed to have any intel.
The officer realized he needed to widen his search, so
he drove to the residential street behind the apartment complex.
He double parked in front of a one story house
painted green. Kids toys sprinkled the driveway. A small black
(09:32):
chihuahuah barked incessantly from inside the house.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I have a question.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We have cameras, but it only gets the answer of
the lord.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
You think you'll find.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
The officer waited outside while the resident went to get
his phone. He showed it to the officer, saying, there's
no view of the alley right.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
So on the whole alleys blocked off.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
We have nothing happening last night, so we're trying.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
To either so you won't be able to go that way. Yeah,
so we're just trying to That's why we're trying to
investigate it.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Is there a dead body back there?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Man?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
The guy said something around that nature, the officer replied,
and then talk turned to politics. The guy blamed the
DA at the time for releasing people from jail.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Who is kills people at them?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Yeah, it's starting to get back to how it was,
you know, after everybody didn't release long Yeah, yeah, he's
releasing everyone.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Man.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
At another house down the street, the officer unlatched a
white metal gate and walked up the driveway to the
front door.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Hey man, how's it going.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
It's sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm thinking.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
The artist hover, with conversation with Allie Kelly, shared the department,
I have a question, man, they have cameras in the
back of yours.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
There's no cameras here.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Again, he was met with the same one word answers, No, no, no.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Did you hear anything by anytime of any noise history
like going on back there, like yesterday around midnight around
that time, any screaming or anything.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I've seen always something happening back there.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Okay, just a verifying ma'am. All you say going on
for years. Right, it's pretty chaotic there.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It's difficult to hear, but she said there's always something
happening back there. This has been going on for years.
It's unclear what exactly this is that she said was
happening for years. Gang violence maybe the kind of violence
that is sometimes seen as constant in this area, the
kind of violence that fills the Chirones of local TV
(11:51):
news shows our top story at five that Toddler is
shot on the streets of Compton. He and his mother
were in a car.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Erald's detectives are investigating a murdered tonight after.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
Three shot to death in a Compton park late last night,
and now deputies are looking for the killer.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The crime scene that morning resulted in a headline of
its own. Women found stabbed and beaten to death in Compton.
The article appeared in the Lly Times. It said that
deputies found the body of a quote latina who had
died from blunt trauma and stab wounds. The article said
that authorities were still trying to figure out whether she'd
been robbed or sexually assaulted prior to her death, and
(12:30):
that they had no leads on a suspect. It included
a short statement from an Elli County Sheriff's Department spokesperson.
He said, she's Jane Doe right now. When detectives arrived
on the scene, the first person they wanted to speak
with was the person who found the body. Jose Tais,
(12:53):
the building manager. He was the one who called nine
one one earlier that morning. You have a what dead men?
A dead man in your building. But like his tenants,
Jose didn't know much. He didn't think he knew who
the victim was, and he definitely didn't think they lived
in the building. He told the detectives that there were
(13:15):
sex workers who sometimes worked in the alley behind the apartments,
and he suggested that maybe the victim could have been
one of them. But Jose had another hunch, this feeling
that compelled him to make a phone call to do
some investigative work of his own. Maybe it was an
(13:35):
apartment manager's intuition, the kind of instinct you develop when
it's your job to know everyone else's business. Whatever it was,
he decided he needed to reach out to one of
his tenants, Juan de la Oh, Daisy's grandfather. Jose said,
may one have you got or you're finding in your
(13:55):
house at that time, he said, yeah, everybody here, what
was you Norma?
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
At this point, Juan already knew that something horrific had happened.
He'd walked past the crime scene that morning while trying
to leave for work. He couldn't get to his car
because the police tape was blocking the parking lot. He shuddered.
It looked to him like the body of a young
person lying there on the ground. In his mind, it
must have gone somewhere dark, because he went back inside
(14:27):
and asked a family member on the studies, where's Daisy?
Did she come home last night? Around the same time,
Wendy Valdivia was in her car. She was on her
way to take her to Chihuahuas to the park. Wendy
was in her early thirties with long, dark blonde hair,
(14:50):
and as she drove past her mother's apartment complex, she
noticed yellow tape surrounding it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So I called my mom and I was like, hey,
Mom's like, what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
She's like, oh, nothing, white was what happen?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And I was like, there's yellow tape in cops outside
and she's like, well, I didn't hear anything. I was like,
are you sure, like, no shooting nothing. She's like no,
I'm like, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So Wendy kept driving. She figured that whatever was going
on it was nothing serious, but on her way home
from the dog park, she decided to pull over and
flag down a police officer. What's going on, she asked.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
They were like, oh, well, it's just I think somebody
was killed here, but we don't know. We're trying to
like figure out what happened with the person.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
This, as you might imagine, was not the most comforting answer.
They said it was like.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
An older woman, like in her forties that wore glasses.
So they described like a lady that lived in the
third building type of thing. So I'm like, oh man,
I was like, I hope it's not her.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Wendy, you used to live in this building. She moved
out just a year earlier, and she still knew a
lot of the people who lived there. She pictured a
former neighbor who fit the officer's description, and she immediately
began imagining the worst.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So when they said that, I was like, oh my god,
Like what happened to her? Like I wonder if somebody came,
like if they raped her, Like if they killed her there, Like,
what was going on?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I got? I was so confused. She went over to
her mother's first floor apartment. That's where her thirteen year
old son, Jeffrey, had spent the night, and the room
where he slept was located directly next to the area
where the body had been found, and.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
He was like, well, I heard like somebody like moving
something outside, but I didn't pay much attention. So I'm like, oh, okay,
so I left it at that.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Now, it might seem odd that Jeffrey didn't pay much
attention to the noises outside, but when I asked Wendy
about this, she told me that the boulevard nearby was
frequented by sex workers. And I think what she was
getting at was that sometimes if you hear other people's business,
you just have to tune it out. Close the window,
(17:01):
shut your eyes. It wasn't something you got involved in
or tried to listen to, especially if you were a kid.
Before long, there was a knock on Wendy's mother's door.
It was a police officer and he had an update.
He now believed that the person who had been murdered
was a younger girl, not a woman in her forties.
(17:22):
Wendy immediately thought of her mom's upstairs neighbor, Daisy.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I remember she has like a little blonde or blue
strand of hair in her veins. And I also told
the sheriff, so I was like, well, you know, she
has green eyes.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Wendy had known Daisy ever since Daisy was little. Daisy
and her brothers had grown up alongside Jeffrey and his sisters.
They all used to play together at the apartment complex.
Wendy aske Jeffrey if he'd seen Daisy the night before.
It turned out he had. He'd been over at his
cousin's apartment on the other side of the complex. They'd
been playing video games. Call of was Jeffrey's favorite. A
(18:02):
little after eleven thirty pm, Jeffrey headed back to his
grandmother's apartment, and that's when he spotted Daisy. She looked
like she was lying down on her side taking a
nap in the grassy area between two apartment buildings. Someone
was standing over her, pacing back and forth around her body.
Now this sounds really ominous, but in the moment, Jeffrey
(18:27):
didn't think anything of it. Besides, it wasn't really his business.
He understood that staying out of other people's business could
mean staying out of trouble, especially in a neighborhood where
trouble could sometimes feel inevitable. When the police heard about
what Jeffrey had seen, they wanted him to answer some questions.
They also wanted him to do something else, something Wendy
(18:50):
was unsettled by. They wanted him to go look at
the body and see if he could identify it.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was hard because I was like, why can't I
do it? Because I think I offered, like why can't
I do it? Like I know her?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
But the police were insistent. They wanted Jeffrey to do it.
He was the one who had seen Daisy the night before.
Wendy thought about it, and she reluctantly agreed if Jeffrey
could help solve the mystery of who this person was,
if he could lend a name and an identity, some
(19:23):
humanity to this Jane Doe, then it would be worth it.
Jeffrey walked out of his grandmother's apartment and ducked under
the yellow police tape. He looked down at the body
that had been lying there for hours, and in that moment,
he gave the confirmation police were looking for afterward. He
(19:46):
was quiet, stoic, like a boy changed by what he
had seen.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well, I think he wasn't shocked at the moment because
he didn't say much. He didn't say much. I remember
him just telling me like, oh, you know one mom,
it is Daisy.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
After hours of uncertainty, the police were finally able to
identify the body. As Sanchez put it, it was all
because of Jeffrey that kids.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
That kid's amazing. I mean that kid. If he hadn't
come forward when he did, it was she would have
been a Jane Doe, right, so she would have been
she would have identified it by the corner's office. That
kid deserves a lot of credit.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Daisy dela O was not a Jane Doe and this
was not a quote body dump. Daisy lived there, She
had been with her family just the night before, and
her family they still didn't know anything was wrong. Susanna
Salas was at work at a food manufacturing warehouse when
(20:59):
she got a phone call. The voice on the other
end said he was a detective with the La County
Sheriff's Department. He wanted to know when was the last
time Susie had seen her daughter. Susie thought of the
previous night, The night she and her family spent watching
television in the living room, The night Daisy had gotten
that text message, The night she gave her mom and
(21:22):
grandmother a hug, the night she said I'll be right back.
Susie had assumed that Daisy met up with her ex
boyfriend and they'd spent the night together. But now Susie
was worried. She told me. She remembered thinking what did
she do? Had Daisy and her ex gotten into some
kind of trouble, committed some kind of crime and made
(21:44):
a run for it? Why was the detective calling her?
But he wouldn't say. All he said, according to Susie,
was you need to come home. At some point, it
dawned on her, maybe Dais he hadn't done anything, Maybe
something had been done to her. After Susie hung up
(22:06):
the phone, she marched into her boss's office and broke
down crying. A detective called me, she said, and I
don't know what happened. I don't know. Susie knew she
needed to get home, but she was shaking so badly
that she couldn't drive. I was a wreck, she told me.
A coworker offered to give her a ride, and as
(22:27):
they drove through the late afternoon gridlock on the seven
to ten along the concrete basin of the Elle River,
Susie just kept saying, over and over, something happened, Something happened.
Earlier that same day, she'd been talking to her coworkers
about Daisy, telling them that Daisy was about to buy
(22:49):
a car, and that that made Susie a little melancholy.
Daisy was already so independent, and when she got a car,
she'd only become more so. Small part of Susie was
already mourning the version of her daughter, who still had
to ask her for rides, who had to spend time
with her in the car, had to show her where
she was going and when and with whom. Now, as
(23:13):
Susie and her coworker exited the freeway and turned onto
the boulevard where she lived, that worry seemed so distant.
They pulled up to Susie's apartment building and she saw
the police tape wrapped all around it. She remembered thinking
it looked like something out of a scary movie. She
began cursing to herself, and then suddenly she was running,
(23:37):
running and running, until she reached the yellow tape and
the crowd of police. That's when she heard the words
she's the mom.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I remember when she got there and they told her
they were already taking Daisy in the little what is
it in the little bags, that they'd take them.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
A body bag. Wendy said that they were putting Daisy
in a body bag. When Susie got there.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I was like, oh my god, because we stood out there,
and then when she got there and the cops told
her and she just fell on the floor and started
crying and yelling, and I'm like, oh my god. I'm like,
oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I'm like, what do I do?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I was like, well, I mean, she was over there
with the sheriff, so I'm like, I don't want to
get in near, you know. I was like, I'll just
let her cry it out or whatever.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I'm like, oh no. Susie told me that her
legs gave out, that they felt like jello, like mush.
She said it was like something she'd seen in movies,
something she'd probably assumed was some kind of dramatic Hollywood cliche.
It felt surreal. Susie remembered screaming cursing, begging to know
(24:45):
what had happened, But detectives had no answers for her,
only more questions, things like did Daisy have any tattoos?
They wanted to double check that they'd id'd the body correctly,
that it was in fact yeah. She told them there
was a bunny on her forearm because Daisy's niece loved bunnies,
(25:07):
dancing skeletons on each of her hips, two angels on
her neck, a spider web on her shoulder near the crescent,
moon and the stars. It was a matching tattoo she'd
gotten years earlier with her best friend. They had showed
them off in their side by side yearbook photos. There
were stories behind the ink memories, but now they'd become
(25:29):
identifiers number one through ten on an autopsy. Daisy was
so much more than the markings on her body, the
descriptions on a stack of government paperwork. I wanted to
know the things that body cameras and autopsies couldn't tell me,
And for that I knew I had to talk to
(25:51):
the people who knew Daisy. The first place I went
to find them was TikTok. Next time on my friend
Daisy and.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I didn't think much of it because I was like, okay,
like when in high school, we all have problems with
the partners. But like when I found out what happened,
that's when I was like damn, Like I felt guilty,
I felt remorse, and I was like Dawn, like I
wonder if I could have helped her.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
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
(26:43):
Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin.
Production assistants and translations by Miguel Contreras, Sound design, composing
and mixing by Hans Dale she Are. Fact checker is
Fendel Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison and
(27:05):
our production manager is Tamika Balance Colosny. Special thanks to
Steve Akerman, Emily Rossick and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben
Goldberg and Orley Greenberg at UTA, and Jen ortiz at
the cut
How many times you.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Got it right now?
Speaker 3 (00:08):
It was February twenty third, twenty twenty one, when a
series of police SUVs pulled up in the alley behind
an apartment complex in Compton. The sun had only just
started to rise, casting this piercing neon glow over the buildings.
An officer with the Elle County Sheriff's Department stepped out
from one of the Ford expeditions and put on a
white face mask. He walked past the dumpsters and through
(00:30):
this narrow gated walkway. It led to the apartment complex.
Sneakers dangled from a telephone wire overhead. There on the
dead grass between two buildings was this blue and gray
patterned rug. It was big, five feet wide by eight
feet long, and from a few steps back it was
hard to tell that there was anything underneath it. As
(00:51):
the officer got closer, he put on a pair of
blue latex gloves. He lifted up a corner of the rug,
and there beneath it was the body.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Do you have two forty five?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
You're gonna have a two forty five?
Speaker 5 (01:10):
Hey, start keeping it off.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You're gonna have a two forty five, he said, Police
code for assault with a deadly weapon. Officers started cordoning
off the area with yellow tape. They wrapped it around
palm trees and around the metal bars, over apartment windows,
and around the basketball hoop on the concrete walkway. The
apartment complex had become a crime scene. Tenants began to
(01:35):
wake up and mill about that morning. An officer showed
them away. Oh, you can't cross here right now. Sorry, Yeah,
you got it that way, just the trust.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
No.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
The Compton Fire Department showed up next. One of the
firefighters wore a blue hoodie over his uniform and carried
it to fibrillator even he was spooked by what he
saw when he approached the body. Oh shit, oh shit,
he said, And then he wondered aloud, what had happened?
Did he get shot? Did he fall? A female officer
(02:07):
in a khaki uniform stood next to him. She pointed
out that there was a knife lying next to the body.
It was a nine inch Farberware steak knife, like the
kind you might have in your kitchen drawer, and that's
what appeared to be a lack of blood. The condition
of the body made the firefighter think it had been
out there for a while.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, you got grigor's ability.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
He put his defibrillator down with a sense of resignation.
He seemed to accept what had been painfully apparent all along.
This was not a situation that called for resuscitation. It
was one that required an investigation. I'm Jen Swan from iHeartMedia, London,
(02:58):
Audio and executive producer Paris Hilton. This is My Friend Daisy,
Episode two, Jane Doe Leopoldo Sanchez hadn't left for work
yet when he got the call. It was early on
(03:19):
a Tuesday morning, and he immediately knew what it meant.
There had been a homicide and he was about to
be assigned to the case.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
The way our office works is you're on call for
two straight days, and depending on where you're at in
what we call the lineup, you kind of know, Hey,
the phone rings, you're up next.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Sanchez is a detective with the Li County Sheriff's Department.
He's got a buzz cut and he's built like a
football player. He actually used to be one in high
school in a suburb just east of Los Angeles. His
former coach is now his partner at the Homicide Bureau.
Sanchez has been working for the ELI County Sheriff's Department
for almost three decades. He didn't always think he'd end
(03:58):
up a cop. He was the civil engineer. Then he
took a criminal justice class in college and everything changed.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I got an eight in the class, and I was like,
holy smokes.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It wasn't the only thing that drew him to the field.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
My best friend at the time was a year or
two older than me, and he had just graduated from
the Sheriff's Department academy. And I mean he had a
brand new car, he had a boat jet. Skin was like,
what's he doing?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Then, I'm not doing It didn't take long for him
to get hired. He logged hours working at the jails
and on patrol, which is where he realized he wanted
to do something else. He wanted to solve murders.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
I had a lot of interaction with homicide investigators and
it was just kind of like, wow, man, these guys,
you know, these guys are the guys. These are the
top of the top, right.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
He eventually landed the job, and when he got this
call about a homicide in Compton, he was still a
rookie detective. It was February of twenty twenty one, and
he'd only been working in the bureau for eight months.
He didn't know Compton well at all.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Initially it was kind of like, we're going where I
grew up east of the seven ten. I didn't. I
don't know many in that area west of the seven ten.
So I know, yo, you hear about Compton, but I
don't know the streets Like Long Beach goes through Compton,
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Sancha's got in his car and typed the address of
the crime scene into his GPS. As he sat in
morning rush hour, he molled over the scenario he'd been
briefed on. A body had been possibly literally swept under
a rug. There was no identifying information found nearby, no wallet,
no ID, no cell phone.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
So in my mind, I'm thinking, well, could this be
a body dump? Right? Could this individual have been harmed,
murdered somewhere else and then their body disposed of there?
Speaker 3 (05:49):
A body dump? It was the signature move of the
so called Grim Sleeper, the serial killer who for decades
stocked South Los Angeles, a collection of neighborhoods, some of
which border Compton. He prayed upon poor women of color,
sex workers, drug users, people whose absences almost surely wouldn't
(06:10):
get the attention they deserved, and he left their bodies
thrown in dumpsters and alleys. Before Sanchez and his partner
arrived at the apartment complex, the sheriffs who were already there,
tried to find out as much as they could. I
obtained body camera footage of the crime scene. One of
the videos, she was a female officer walking up to
a group of residents gathered on the other side of
(06:32):
the police tape.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Familiar to any of you guys, You guys know this
the woman?
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I didn't see her. She was facing down.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
If you didn't catch that, The officer asked if the
lady looked familiar to anyone, meaning the lady who had
been found dead. One of the residents was clearly confused
by the new information. It's a woman, he said. Another
officer tried a different line of questioning.
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Did you guys hear anything last light or anything?
Speaker 3 (07:14):
The officer pivoted. He looked out at one of the boxy,
oatmeal colored apartment buildings and pointed to a surveillance camera
mounted overhead.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Hey, do you guys know obviously on these cameras here,
do you guys know who they were activator or said,
yeah they are who.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Who I talked about?
Speaker 4 (07:29):
The camera?
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Wh yeah, oh here list on top.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Of the officer walked up the steps to the second
floor apartment where the camera was mounted. He banged on
the metal door with his flashlight. When it opened, there
was a guy in a blue beanie, a green army
jacket and black Adidas track pants.
Speaker 5 (07:52):
How's it going, man, I have a question, man, I
know that you yes, I.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
Just heard yeah, let me actually let me come up brother,
or not to wake him up.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
See if you could get your guys in the footage anything.
It's a little hard to make out what they're saying.
But the guy in the blue beanie, the guy who
answered the door, he said he'd have to ask his
brother in law about the surveillance footage, and in the
meantime he had a question of his own.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Approximately how long do you think the body has been out?
Speaker 5 (08:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
I don't I stepped out like a two in the
morning with smoker.
Speaker 4 (08:22):
Cider and you were around there and it was smoke
my cigarets.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Right, They're like, well the basketball courtside, OK, you didn't
hear anything or no?
Speaker 3 (08:30):
At that time. I didn't. The officer continued knocking on doors.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
That's how I like. It's like okay, also.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Each time he knocked, he got the same answer. Nobody
had heard or seen anything. Yeah, I just have a question.
You have cameras that the camera's work. No, we don't.
I don't know if the manager does.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Oh, those cameras that are not connected to you guys. No, Well,
then yesterday you guys.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Didn't do or anything. No one seemed to have any intel.
The officer realized he needed to widen his search, so
he drove to the residential street behind the apartment complex.
He double parked in front of a one story house
painted green. Kids toys sprinkled the driveway. A small black
(09:32):
chihuahuah barked incessantly from inside the house.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
I have a question.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
We have cameras, but it only gets the answer of
the lord.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
You think you'll find.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
The officer waited outside while the resident went to get
his phone. He showed it to the officer, saying, there's
no view of the alley right.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
So on the whole alleys blocked off.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
We have nothing happening last night, so we're trying.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
To either so you won't be able to go that way. Yeah,
so we're just trying to That's why we're trying to
investigate it.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Is there a dead body back there?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Man?
Speaker 3 (10:15):
The guy said something around that nature, the officer replied,
and then talk turned to politics. The guy blamed the
DA at the time for releasing people from jail.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Who is kills people at them?
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Yeah, it's starting to get back to how it was,
you know, after everybody didn't release long Yeah, yeah, he's
releasing everyone.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Man.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
At another house down the street, the officer unlatched a
white metal gate and walked up the driveway to the
front door.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Hey man, how's it going.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
It's sorry to bother you.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm thinking.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
The artist hover, with conversation with Allie Kelly, shared the department,
I have a question, man, they have cameras in the
back of yours.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
There's no cameras here.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Again, he was met with the same one word answers, No, no, no.
Speaker 5 (11:04):
Did you hear anything by anytime of any noise history
like going on back there, like yesterday around midnight around
that time, any screaming or anything.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
I've seen always something happening back there.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Okay, just a verifying ma'am. All you say going on
for years. Right, it's pretty chaotic there.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It's difficult to hear, but she said there's always something
happening back there. This has been going on for years.
It's unclear what exactly this is that she said was
happening for years. Gang violence maybe the kind of violence
that is sometimes seen as constant in this area, the
kind of violence that fills the Chirones of local TV
(11:51):
news shows our top story at five that Toddler is
shot on the streets of Compton. He and his mother
were in a car.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Erald's detectives are investigating a murdered tonight after.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
Three shot to death in a Compton park late last night,
and now deputies are looking for the killer.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The crime scene that morning resulted in a headline of
its own. Women found stabbed and beaten to death in Compton.
The article appeared in the Lly Times. It said that
deputies found the body of a quote latina who had
died from blunt trauma and stab wounds. The article said
that authorities were still trying to figure out whether she'd
been robbed or sexually assaulted prior to her death, and
(12:30):
that they had no leads on a suspect. It included
a short statement from an Elli County Sheriff's Department spokesperson.
He said, she's Jane Doe right now. When detectives arrived
on the scene, the first person they wanted to speak
with was the person who found the body. Jose Tais,
(12:53):
the building manager. He was the one who called nine
one one earlier that morning. You have a what dead men?
A dead man in your building. But like his tenants,
Jose didn't know much. He didn't think he knew who
the victim was, and he definitely didn't think they lived
in the building. He told the detectives that there were
(13:15):
sex workers who sometimes worked in the alley behind the apartments,
and he suggested that maybe the victim could have been
one of them. But Jose had another hunch, this feeling
that compelled him to make a phone call to do
some investigative work of his own. Maybe it was an
(13:35):
apartment manager's intuition, the kind of instinct you develop when
it's your job to know everyone else's business. Whatever it was,
he decided he needed to reach out to one of
his tenants, Juan de la Oh, Daisy's grandfather. Jose said,
may one have you got or you're finding in your
(13:55):
house at that time, he said, yeah, everybody here, what
was you Norma?
Speaker 5 (14:01):
Are you sure? Yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
At this point, Juan already knew that something horrific had happened.
He'd walked past the crime scene that morning while trying
to leave for work. He couldn't get to his car
because the police tape was blocking the parking lot. He shuddered.
It looked to him like the body of a young
person lying there on the ground. In his mind, it
must have gone somewhere dark, because he went back inside
(14:27):
and asked a family member on the studies, where's Daisy?
Did she come home last night? Around the same time,
Wendy Valdivia was in her car. She was on her
way to take her to Chihuahuas to the park. Wendy
was in her early thirties with long, dark blonde hair,
(14:50):
and as she drove past her mother's apartment complex, she
noticed yellow tape surrounding it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So I called my mom and I was like, hey,
Mom's like, what's going on.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
She's like, oh, nothing, white was what happen?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
And I was like, there's yellow tape in cops outside
and she's like, well, I didn't hear anything. I was like,
are you sure, like, no shooting nothing. She's like no,
I'm like, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So Wendy kept driving. She figured that whatever was going
on it was nothing serious, but on her way home
from the dog park, she decided to pull over and
flag down a police officer. What's going on, she asked.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
They were like, oh, well, it's just I think somebody
was killed here, but we don't know. We're trying to
like figure out what happened with the person.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
This, as you might imagine, was not the most comforting answer.
They said it was like.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
An older woman, like in her forties that wore glasses.
So they described like a lady that lived in the
third building type of thing. So I'm like, oh man,
I was like, I hope it's not her.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Wendy, you used to live in this building. She moved
out just a year earlier, and she still knew a
lot of the people who lived there. She pictured a
former neighbor who fit the officer's description, and she immediately
began imagining the worst.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So when they said that, I was like, oh my god,
Like what happened to her? Like I wonder if somebody came,
like if they raped her, Like if they killed her there, Like,
what was going on?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I got? I was so confused. She went over to
her mother's first floor apartment. That's where her thirteen year
old son, Jeffrey, had spent the night, and the room
where he slept was located directly next to the area
where the body had been found, and.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
He was like, well, I heard like somebody like moving
something outside, but I didn't pay much attention. So I'm like, oh, okay,
so I left it at that.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Now, it might seem odd that Jeffrey didn't pay much
attention to the noises outside, but when I asked Wendy
about this, she told me that the boulevard nearby was
frequented by sex workers. And I think what she was
getting at was that sometimes if you hear other people's business,
you just have to tune it out. Close the window,
(17:01):
shut your eyes. It wasn't something you got involved in
or tried to listen to, especially if you were a kid.
Before long, there was a knock on Wendy's mother's door.
It was a police officer and he had an update.
He now believed that the person who had been murdered
was a younger girl, not a woman in her forties.
(17:22):
Wendy immediately thought of her mom's upstairs neighbor, Daisy.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
I remember she has like a little blonde or blue
strand of hair in her veins. And I also told
the sheriff, so I was like, well, you know, she
has green eyes.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Wendy had known Daisy ever since Daisy was little. Daisy
and her brothers had grown up alongside Jeffrey and his sisters.
They all used to play together at the apartment complex.
Wendy aske Jeffrey if he'd seen Daisy the night before.
It turned out he had. He'd been over at his
cousin's apartment on the other side of the complex. They'd
been playing video games. Call of was Jeffrey's favorite. A
(18:02):
little after eleven thirty pm, Jeffrey headed back to his
grandmother's apartment, and that's when he spotted Daisy. She looked
like she was lying down on her side taking a
nap in the grassy area between two apartment buildings. Someone
was standing over her, pacing back and forth around her body.
Now this sounds really ominous, but in the moment, Jeffrey
(18:27):
didn't think anything of it. Besides, it wasn't really his business.
He understood that staying out of other people's business could
mean staying out of trouble, especially in a neighborhood where
trouble could sometimes feel inevitable. When the police heard about
what Jeffrey had seen, they wanted him to answer some questions.
They also wanted him to do something else, something Wendy
(18:50):
was unsettled by. They wanted him to go look at
the body and see if he could identify it.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was hard because I was like, why can't I
do it? Because I think I offered, like why can't
I do it? Like I know her?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
But the police were insistent. They wanted Jeffrey to do it.
He was the one who had seen Daisy the night before.
Wendy thought about it, and she reluctantly agreed if Jeffrey
could help solve the mystery of who this person was,
if he could lend a name and an identity, some
(19:23):
humanity to this Jane Doe, then it would be worth it.
Jeffrey walked out of his grandmother's apartment and ducked under
the yellow police tape. He looked down at the body
that had been lying there for hours, and in that moment,
he gave the confirmation police were looking for afterward. He
(19:46):
was quiet, stoic, like a boy changed by what he
had seen.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Well, I think he wasn't shocked at the moment because
he didn't say much. He didn't say much. I remember
him just telling me like, oh, you know one mom,
it is Daisy.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
After hours of uncertainty, the police were finally able to
identify the body. As Sanchez put it, it was all
because of Jeffrey that kids.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
That kid's amazing. I mean that kid. If he hadn't
come forward when he did, it was she would have
been a Jane Doe, right, so she would have been
she would have identified it by the corner's office. That
kid deserves a lot of credit.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Daisy dela O was not a Jane Doe and this
was not a quote body dump. Daisy lived there, She
had been with her family just the night before, and
her family they still didn't know anything was wrong. Susanna
Salas was at work at a food manufacturing warehouse when
(20:59):
she got a phone call. The voice on the other
end said he was a detective with the La County
Sheriff's Department. He wanted to know when was the last
time Susie had seen her daughter. Susie thought of the
previous night, The night she and her family spent watching
television in the living room, The night Daisy had gotten
that text message, The night she gave her mom and
(21:22):
grandmother a hug, the night she said I'll be right back.
Susie had assumed that Daisy met up with her ex
boyfriend and they'd spent the night together. But now Susie
was worried. She told me. She remembered thinking what did
she do? Had Daisy and her ex gotten into some
kind of trouble, committed some kind of crime and made
(21:44):
a run for it? Why was the detective calling her?
But he wouldn't say. All he said, according to Susie,
was you need to come home. At some point, it
dawned on her, maybe Dais he hadn't done anything, Maybe
something had been done to her. After Susie hung up
(22:06):
the phone, she marched into her boss's office and broke
down crying. A detective called me, she said, and I
don't know what happened. I don't know. Susie knew she
needed to get home, but she was shaking so badly
that she couldn't drive. I was a wreck, she told me.
A coworker offered to give her a ride, and as
(22:27):
they drove through the late afternoon gridlock on the seven
to ten along the concrete basin of the Elle River,
Susie just kept saying, over and over, something happened, Something happened.
Earlier that same day, she'd been talking to her coworkers
about Daisy, telling them that Daisy was about to buy
(22:49):
a car, and that that made Susie a little melancholy.
Daisy was already so independent, and when she got a car,
she'd only become more so. Small part of Susie was
already mourning the version of her daughter, who still had
to ask her for rides, who had to spend time
with her in the car, had to show her where
she was going and when and with whom. Now, as
(23:13):
Susie and her coworker exited the freeway and turned onto
the boulevard where she lived, that worry seemed so distant.
They pulled up to Susie's apartment building and she saw
the police tape wrapped all around it. She remembered thinking
it looked like something out of a scary movie. She
began cursing to herself, and then suddenly she was running,
(23:37):
running and running, until she reached the yellow tape and
the crowd of police. That's when she heard the words
she's the mom.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
I remember when she got there and they told her
they were already taking Daisy in the little what is
it in the little bags, that they'd take them.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
A body bag. Wendy said that they were putting Daisy
in a body bag. When Susie got there.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
I was like, oh my god, because we stood out there,
and then when she got there and the cops told
her and she just fell on the floor and started
crying and yelling, and I'm like, oh my god. I'm like,
oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I'm like, what do I do?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
I was like, well, I mean, she was over there
with the sheriff, so I'm like, I don't want to
get in near, you know. I was like, I'll just
let her cry it out or whatever.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And I'm like, oh no. Susie told me that her
legs gave out, that they felt like jello, like mush.
She said it was like something she'd seen in movies,
something she'd probably assumed was some kind of dramatic Hollywood cliche.
It felt surreal. Susie remembered screaming cursing, begging to know
(24:45):
what had happened, But detectives had no answers for her,
only more questions, things like did Daisy have any tattoos?
They wanted to double check that they'd id'd the body correctly,
that it was in fact yeah. She told them there
was a bunny on her forearm because Daisy's niece loved bunnies,
(25:07):
dancing skeletons on each of her hips, two angels on
her neck, a spider web on her shoulder near the crescent,
moon and the stars. It was a matching tattoo she'd
gotten years earlier with her best friend. They had showed
them off in their side by side yearbook photos. There
were stories behind the ink memories, but now they'd become
(25:29):
identifiers number one through ten on an autopsy. Daisy was
so much more than the markings on her body, the
descriptions on a stack of government paperwork. I wanted to
know the things that body cameras and autopsies couldn't tell me,
And for that I knew I had to talk to
(25:51):
the people who knew Daisy. The first place I went
to find them was TikTok. Next time on my friend
Daisy and.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
I didn't think much of it because I was like, okay,
like when in high school, we all have problems with
the partners. But like when I found out what happened,
that's when I was like damn, Like I felt guilty,
I felt remorse, and I was like Dawn, like I
wonder if I could have helped her.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
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
(26:43):
Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Culkin.
Production assistants and translations by Miguel Contreras, Sound design, composing
and mixing by Hans Dale she Are. Fact checker is
Fendel Fulton. Our head of production is Sammy Allison and
(27:05):
our production manager is Tamika Balance Colosny. Special thanks to
Steve Akerman, Emily Rossick and Jamie Myers at Sony, Ben
Goldberg and Orley Greenberg at UTA, and Jen ortiz at
the cut
Host
Paris Hilton
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