April 16, 2025 • 31 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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 culors, the high school graduation photo, and then the
cut to photos of Victor. Each of the tiktoks had
(00:23):
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 slide
(00:43):
show 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 photo showed off some identifying feature, gauged ears,
or a tattoo of what looked like big rats rolling
up his ribcage. The text on the post wasn't all
(01:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And then I started seeing the viral video that went
on TikTok and I was like, what, like it was him.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was like, oh my god, Wendy knew who Victor was.
She used to see him hanging around the apartment complex
with Daisy.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
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 while at least I took that
out of my head that it was like dangerous that
we had to be watching her bags for somebody killing
women or raping them out there and stuff. But I
was just met at the fact that this kid did
something like that and he was thinking that he was
(01:49):
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.
I've heard he her were you know, so now that
he killed her, That's what I was thinking. I was
thinking a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
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 TikTok,
she reposted and reposted and reposted, and.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I would go back and see all the videos because
they would always come up on the fore you.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
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
(02:46):
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
(03:06):
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,
(03:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So I didn't find out about her death until I
saw it on TikTok and I was just like shocked.
I was like, nah, like it's a lie. You know,
it's a lie. And I just got like the chills
and I was like, no, it's a lie.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
When Lollie got over her shock, she was horrified.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
You know, she was a good person.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
She didn't deserve it.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I know, it broke me, and it broke a lot
of people. And just like this case deserves a lot
of awareness, so many other ones do as well, you know,
like so many things happen every day that people don't
even find out, and I feel like TikTok helps with that.
You know, like one person can post a little clip
that they saw and then I'll go viral. So I
(04:31):
feel like, in a sense, TikTok heals more than the
news outlets and stuff like that, Like we find out
so much quicker through TikTok than anything else.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Lollie's in her early twenties and like a lot of
people in her age group that I reached out to
for the story, she was distrustful of the media, you.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Know, sometimes to lie, sometimes they leave things out. Sometimes
they don't even cover what's going on. So I feel
like I'll rely more on TikTok see what's going on,
writ with what's going on around the world.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, is there something that made you not trust the
news or just saying that you felt like the stories
you wanted to say where it represented.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
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. Let's say here
Hunderston Park and the news wonek cover and I'll just
find out because someone posted all this happened or TikTok,
you know. So I feel like the news does doesn't
cover everything. The only cover whatever was viral whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I found Lollly's view disheartening, but I get it. I mean,
in the instance of Daisy's murder, Lollly 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
(05:55):
as a Jane Doe. But once people learn daisy 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 murder. But vigilante justice can be
(06:16):
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?
(06:39):
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 five? Are You Hiding Him?
(07:06):
It was a Sunday afternoon in early June of twenty
twenty one, and Valerie Ariano 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.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I saw half of his face. It looked like him,
Like I saw like his eyebrows on 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.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
He has like deep set eyes now like Dick Guybros.
I've seen a lot of people compare him to Richard Ramirez,
and I'm like, that's a good description, yeah, with that,
especially when he had the long hair.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Richard Ramirez the so called nightstalker. He was notorious for
breaking into homes and assaulting and murdering women in la
in the mid nineteen eighties. 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. They beat him up
(08:31):
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.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I think I just heard through my friends, like for
sure it was the boyfriend, because they said something about
him being the last person this saw her, and yeah,
at night time, I believe. Yeah, So it was just
already established, like it's him, And why is he not
(09:10):
being found, you know, right, Like if he's innocent, why
is he not present?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
And that's usually how it is with women that are
unfortunately killed. They usually should be looking at the boyfriend
or family members first.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Valeriees 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.
Valerie knew these statistics intuitively, and like a lot of
people who had been following this case, she had been
(09:48):
frustrated by the seeming lack of progress made by detectives
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.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I heard on Instagram girls saying that supposedly they had
seen him, and supposedly that he was trying to approach
other girls on the station. I don't know if that's true.
I never heard like someone say like, oh, yeah, he
approached me. I just heard people mentioning that yeah. And
(10:21):
that's what made me feel like, oh, crap, it is him,
because he's taking He's being seen on the blue line
by other girls, and they're probably like, you know, scared
alone to like, you know, want to call the cops
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That sounds Valerie was also scared, or, as a friend
Chantelle Patrace put it, Valerie was freaking out, and at
first Chantelle had no idea why.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
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 and you're like, oh,
I think I think you told me, oh, I think
that's Victor. 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
(11:09):
see what you saw. You saw him pass by you,
and he went down wherever he went. But I remember you, Yeah,
you were like very frazzled, you know, And obviously I
understood that.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Valerie desperately wanted Victor to get caught, but she didn't
want to call nine one one. 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.
(11:40):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
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 was a bad experience,
and we all felt like on edge. And also he
kept like touching his Guntu. We're like, what the huh?
You know also Latino cup but it's like I don't
care if they're like Asian.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
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 lot about a
year ago banning it. So now when police pull you over,
(12:41):
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 in her family.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I wrote, I was by the blue line on Florence
and Graham, and I saw someone that look like him,
meaning Victor. Does he skate I'm gonna call the detective number.
And then she said, yes he does, and I wrote,
I'm calling right now.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Valerie showed me the messages she sent to her best
friend that day. They were dated June sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I called the detective. It left me on voicemail.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
They said, go, please leave a message.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
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 nine
one one.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I left him a recording of what I saw. He
quickly left on skateboard, and I put he was wearing
all black, a black beanie, and then I made a
title here. I put in a black ski mask, but
I did not mean that. I meant a black bandana,
so I had corrected pace. And then I put he
left so quickly, but I saw half of his face,
(14:07):
and I looked at him, and then I put maybe
five six five seven in regards to his height, and
then I just reiterated again, it's on Florence and Greyhound.
But he was covering his hair and half of his face.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And then I said he left quickly.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Yeah, and oh, and she was asking me if he
had if I could identify him by his his ear lobes.
So she told me, did you see his ears by
any chance? And I said no, the beanie was covering it.
He had like a beanie and then a hoodie, and
then he had a black bandana. So that looks suspicious
to me because it's like, dude, it's hot as hell
(14:48):
and we're like in an outside area. Why are you
concealing yourself that much?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Lugo called Valerie back. She told him what she'd seen.
Her heart was pounding, her adrenaline pup thing. It was
hard to get words out.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I think I I was just so nervous. I set
ski mask because it was scary that it was potentially victor.
And he did tell me like, oh, we'll try to
send cops to the area.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And did you stay did you see cops end up
showing up?
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Oh? No.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Her and I don't even remember.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
We worked down to a day for sure, but I
remember how you were very obviously very upset, very frazzled,
and yeah, you were shaking quite a bit, and yeah,
obviously it's a very traumatic thing to see possibly, I
mean obviously we don't know right for sure, but possibly
seeing somebody who killed this poor young girl, like you know,
and you know when you when you when you experienced
(15:39):
something like that, it's just kind of like it's jarring
because like, what if it was him and he's just
going about his day. It was really it was a
really emotional intense day.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
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 La riverbed, she wrote,
and now she wanted to go hunt him down. We
(16:14):
have to lay load to get him.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
She wrote.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
We need rope in a bat because he won't go
down without a fight. When I stumbled upon these comments
posted in June of twenty twenty one, I was really
taken aback by Valerie's aggression. This like take no prisoner's
attitude she had. It made me think about how so
many people were terrified of running into Victor, and yet
(16:37):
here she was seeking him out. I immediately wanted to
know who was this woman, why was she acting like
this vigilante superhero, and how did she become so invested
in catching a murder suspect. On a smeltering summer day,
(17:05):
I stood in the parking lot of a mobile home
community near Compton, and when I spotted someone who looked
like Valerie Pinatto'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 banks.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I'm john nice too.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We walked across the black top and made small talk
so hot, I know. Once we got to her place,
she led me to a small wooden table in her
living room.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I want this open.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Eventually we got to talking about Daisy. So and then
tell me, tell me how you first heard that that
Daisy had been murdered.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
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,
(18:11):
watch out for this person and yeah his his story,
like in her story, ended up being posted in that group.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
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 seems possible they lived
close to each other, and they seemed interested in the
same kinds of music. To valerate, Daisy's story felt personal.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I started investing my time to you know, get her
justice basically. What did that look like for you? I
feel like for me, it was you know, going out
there and trying to see where he was at, you know,
look for him, asking around like hey, have you seen
this dude hanging around? Or like are you hiding him?
(19:01):
Like let me find out.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You know, you actually went to people's houses and said
are you harboring this person Victor?
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Well, it was more like I would ask other punks
like hey, are like, like have you seen Victor? Like
are you hiding him?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And what do people say?
Speaker 5 (19:18):
They would just you know, they're like, no, like I
haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
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 write him out, she'd
find him herself.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Definitely, Yeah, I would go look for Victor, like I actually,
you know, I would be like, yeah, w is he
hanging around Long Beach or in the trails?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
You know?
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Really?
Speaker 7 (19:42):
Mm hmmm, So were you just in your car kind
of like scouting on the sidewalk like oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
I would tell other people too, like hey, you want
to meet up and look for him? I'd be so down.
I feel like street justice works better than the actual system,
So yeah, I would. I would keeping an eye out
on the street for him because you know, like I
don't know, that's like really scary to have someone that
(20:10):
does something so fucked up to someone else, you know.
I couldn't allow that, not in my neighborhood.
Speaker 7 (20:19):
What was sort of going through your head? Like, had
you thought through what you would do if you actually
saw him?
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah? I was already thinking. I was like, I'm gonna
beat the shit out of this guy. We'll call the
cops and be like, hey, he's over here. But yeah, no,
I was. I was super angry. I was just mad.
I was like, you know, like, how could you do
something like that to her? Like she didn't deserve it,
you know. I felt like, yeah, I wanted to get
(20:45):
justice for her, like just beat his ass, make him
feel pain.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It was that anger, that desire for revenge that I'd
read and 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
if 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, Like she told me about this
(21:13):
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 into attack a
guy she'd seen hitting girls in the pit.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Seriously, I jumped off the ladder so fucking quick and
I started punching him.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Oh my god, that's like a wrestling move.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, I jumped off. He didn't even really notice. You know,
because that 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.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Valerie showed me the spot on her eyelid where she
said she got punched.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And Yeah, after that, a lot of a lot of
girls they whizeed me around at shows and they're like, yeah,
like I'm I'm so glad that you did that. They're
like you're fucking crazy, or they would say the same
thing you did, like oh, you're so like Teff, you know.
And I was like, I I couldn't just sit by
and just watch that shit.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Tough felt like an understatement. I wanted to know what
was behind it, So I asked her, how did you
become so fearless?
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think I became fearless because, you know, of the
type of environment I grew up, and because I went
to military school.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So military school the kind that teenagers get sent to
when their parents think they need to be straightened out,
their 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, Like it seems like you
have a strong sense of like the community has this
(22:45):
power that the police don't have.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
Like where did that come from? I think for me,
it came from, you know, living in domestic violence. So
I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in a broken home.
I guess you could say parents got when I was
nine and just yeah, like you know, my mom being
a landlord too. Growing up, we would have instances where,
(23:10):
you know, the neighbors they would fight and then I
would hear some of them beat on their girlfriends. And
as a child, you know that mentally scars you sometimes.
And I feel like, yeah, growing up too, seeing women
get beat you know, like all kinds of violence. Yeah,
it makes you want to It makes you want to
car and have justice for other women that go through that.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Especially because of what she saw some of her own
family members go through.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
I can obviously say, like what one of my grandpa's
glad I never met him, he tried to kill my
other grandmos with a machete. He left a scar on
her forehead, So pretty much, yeah, it's a generational trauma thing, right.
So that's why when I heard Daisy story, I was like,
I can also relate to that through my grandma's history
(24:03):
because they you know, they have almost gotten killed. You know,
I'm glad they were able to escape that. But so, yeah,
that's what That's why I tell people, you don't you
don't understand until you are in their shoes, and when
you are powerless, when you don't have anywhere to go,
you don't have anyone to defend you, that's what's going
(24:24):
to happen. Yeah, So I hope people will realize that that. Yeah,
like sometimes you're you just yeah, you just get put
in a situation and and your life just just goes
like that. Yeah, women are just going through that every day.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
It was a hard decision to make. I think it's
because it's like you want to keep giving their person
you love a chance, and then you know, it's like
that unconditional love you have for someone, but then it
just kind of runs out where you can't take it anymore.
You know. I finally decided to put my foot down
(25:19):
and I said, you know what, I can't keep living
like this, Like I don't want to go to jail
and beat his ass back. So yeah, it was a
hard decision. I just you know, planned it, packed my
shit and then I escaped to a domestic violence shelter.
Speaker 7 (25:37):
How did you find it?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Well, pretty much like I was already seeing a DV
therapist and then I just had told her when day,
like hey, I'm fed up, Can we, like, you know,
call some places? And she did, We called and pretty
much yeah, then they accepted me.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
Seem like so proactive, Like how did you have this
knowledge to be like, oh, to even get a dB
counselor I think is something that or therapist is something
that I think a lot of women or some women
in that situation maybe wouldn't know to do. Like how, yeah,
how did you navigate that?
Speaker 5 (26:17):
So this is this is a funny part.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
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 and security because of domestic
violence and in order to maintain her government benefits. She
was told she had to sign up for it.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
And at first I didn't want to. I was like, nah,
I don't need it. I could deal with my problems.
But then he really pushed me to get it, and
that's when I when I started going, I was like.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
All right, I needed it.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
I was just being hardheaded, like, you know, thinking that
I can keep putting, like I could deal with it
myself self. And I still tell my my case worker
thank you all the time, Like I'll text them sometimes
I'd be like, you're you're the you know, you're you're
the you're the shit basically, and he's like, oh, thank you.
(27:13):
You know, I'm glad that you you actually listen to
me this way.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Valerie said that the experience of doing it, of going
to therapy and getting out of a bad relationship, it
taught her a lot.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
It like shows you how strong you could be as
a person, you know, like it shows you like how
much life tests you and see if you'l like make
or break it type of shit pretty much like and
it just shows you, like, yeah, how strong you are?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
That is really what true 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.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
That's kind of the reason why I wanted to get
justice for Daisy, Like that was my whole point of
looking for Victor and all that, because I saw something
in myself that I saw in her. I guess you
could say, not only like personality, but just her you know,
like I was like, yeah, I can't let I can't
(28:15):
let that shit side like that. It really like touched
the corn me.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah. What was when.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
You say you saw something in her that you saw
on yourself, was it was sort of how she looked
or also just like her situation.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Your situation mostly you know, like she got hurt and
she you know, unfortunately, like she couldn't get her life back,
and you know, I didn't get justice for some of
the things that happened to me, but I'm still alive.
So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get
(28:50):
justice for her, just as I wish somebody would get
justice for me.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
But as much as she looked and as determined as
she was vollering, 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
(29:19):
couldn't ignore. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
They put out something on social media, so and they
put out my cell number so I'd get called in
the middle of the night all the time. Hi everyone,
this is Paris. Thanks for listening to My Friend Daisy.
If you are someone you love is experiencing abuse, you
are not alone. Help is available twenty four to seven.
Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for free confidential support.
(29:51):
Call eight hundred seven nine to nine seven two three three,
text start to eight eight seven eight eight, or visit
the hotline dot org your safety matters reach out today.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
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
(30:27):
Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kulkin.
Production assistants and translations by Miguel Contreras, Sound design, composing
and mixing by Hans Dale she Our fact checker is
Bendel Fulton, Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and
(30:48):
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. 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 twenty seventeen,
(31:12):
and you can find them online under the title Racial
and Ethnic Differences in Homicide of Adult Women and the
Role of Intimate Partner Violence. 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
(31:33):
Family Violence in January of twenty twenty three. Thank you
so much for listening.
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 culors, the high school graduation photo, and then the
cut to photos of Victor. Each of the tiktoks had
(00:23):
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 slide
(00:43):
show 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 photo showed off some identifying feature, gauged ears,
or a tattoo of what looked like big rats rolling
up his ribcage. The text on the post wasn't all
(01:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
And then I started seeing the viral video that went
on TikTok and I was like, what, like it was him.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I was like, oh my god, Wendy knew who Victor was.
She used to see him hanging around the apartment complex
with Daisy.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
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 while at least I took that
out of my head that it was like dangerous that
we had to be watching her bags for somebody killing
women or raping them out there and stuff. But I
was just met at the fact that this kid did
something like that and he was thinking that he was
(01:49):
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.
I've heard he her were you know, so now that
he killed her, That's what I was thinking. I was
thinking a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
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 TikTok,
she reposted and reposted and reposted, and.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I would go back and see all the videos because
they would always come up on the fore you.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
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
(02:46):
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
(03:06):
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,
(03:27):
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.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So I didn't find out about her death until I
saw it on TikTok and I was just like shocked.
I was like, nah, like it's a lie. You know,
it's a lie. And I just got like the chills
and I was like, no, it's a lie.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
When Lollie got over her shock, she was horrified.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
You know, she was a good person.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
She didn't deserve it.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
I know, it broke me, and it broke a lot
of people. And just like this case deserves a lot
of awareness, so many other ones do as well, you know,
like so many things happen every day that people don't
even find out, and I feel like TikTok helps with that.
You know, like one person can post a little clip
that they saw and then I'll go viral. So I
(04:31):
feel like, in a sense, TikTok heals more than the
news outlets and stuff like that, Like we find out
so much quicker through TikTok than anything else.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Lollie's in her early twenties and like a lot of
people in her age group that I reached out to
for the story, she was distrustful of the media, you.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Know, sometimes to lie, sometimes they leave things out. Sometimes
they don't even cover what's going on. So I feel
like I'll rely more on TikTok see what's going on,
writ with what's going on around the world.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Yeah, is there something that made you not trust the
news or just saying that you felt like the stories
you wanted to say where it represented.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
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. Let's say here
Hunderston Park and the news wonek cover and I'll just
find out because someone posted all this happened or TikTok,
you know. So I feel like the news does doesn't
cover everything. The only cover whatever was viral whatever.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I found Lollly's view disheartening, but I get it. I mean,
in the instance of Daisy's murder, Lollly 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
(05:55):
as a Jane Doe. But once people learn daisy 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 murder. But vigilante justice can be
(06:16):
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?
(06:39):
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 five? Are You Hiding Him?
(07:06):
It was a Sunday afternoon in early June of twenty
twenty one, and Valerie Ariano 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.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
I saw half of his face. It looked like him,
Like I saw like his eyebrows on 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.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
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.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
He has like deep set eyes now like Dick Guybros.
I've seen a lot of people compare him to Richard Ramirez,
and I'm like, that's a good description, yeah, with that,
especially when he had the long hair.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Richard Ramirez the so called nightstalker. He was notorious for
breaking into homes and assaulting and murdering women in la
in the mid nineteen eighties. 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. They beat him up
(08:31):
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.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
I think I just heard through my friends, like for
sure it was the boyfriend, because they said something about
him being the last person this saw her, and yeah,
at night time, I believe. Yeah, So it was just
already established, like it's him, And why is he not
(09:10):
being found, you know, right, Like if he's innocent, why
is he not present?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
And that's usually how it is with women that are
unfortunately killed. They usually should be looking at the boyfriend
or family members first.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Valeriees 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.
Valerie knew these statistics intuitively, and like a lot of
people who had been following this case, she had been
(09:48):
frustrated by the seeming lack of progress made by detectives
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.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I heard on Instagram girls saying that supposedly they had
seen him, and supposedly that he was trying to approach
other girls on the station. I don't know if that's true.
I never heard like someone say like, oh, yeah, he
approached me. I just heard people mentioning that yeah. And
(10:21):
that's what made me feel like, oh, crap, it is him,
because he's taking He's being seen on the blue line
by other girls, and they're probably like, you know, scared
alone to like, you know, want to call the cops
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
That sounds Valerie was also scared, or, as a friend
Chantelle Patrace put it, Valerie was freaking out, and at
first Chantelle had no idea why.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
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 and you're like, oh,
I think I think you told me, oh, I think
that's Victor. 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
(11:09):
see what you saw. You saw him pass by you,
and he went down wherever he went. But I remember you, Yeah,
you were like very frazzled, you know, And obviously I
understood that.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Valerie desperately wanted Victor to get caught, but she didn't
want to call nine one one. 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.
(11:40):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
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 was a bad experience,
and we all felt like on edge. And also he
kept like touching his Guntu. We're like, what the huh?
You know also Latino cup but it's like I don't
care if they're like Asian.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
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 lot about a
year ago banning it. So now when police pull you over,
(12:41):
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 in her family.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
I wrote, I was by the blue line on Florence
and Graham, and I saw someone that look like him,
meaning Victor. Does he skate I'm gonna call the detective number.
And then she said, yes he does, and I wrote,
I'm calling right now.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Valerie showed me the messages she sent to her best
friend that day. They were dated June sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I called the detective. It left me on voicemail.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
They said, go, please leave a message.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
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 nine
one one.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
I left him a recording of what I saw. He
quickly left on skateboard, and I put he was wearing
all black, a black beanie, and then I made a
title here. I put in a black ski mask, but
I did not mean that. I meant a black bandana,
so I had corrected pace. And then I put he
left so quickly, but I saw half of his face,
(14:07):
and I looked at him, and then I put maybe
five six five seven in regards to his height, and
then I just reiterated again, it's on Florence and Greyhound.
But he was covering his hair and half of his face.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And then I said he left quickly.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Yeah, and oh, and she was asking me if he
had if I could identify him by his his ear lobes.
So she told me, did you see his ears by
any chance? And I said no, the beanie was covering it.
He had like a beanie and then a hoodie, and
then he had a black bandana. So that looks suspicious
to me because it's like, dude, it's hot as hell
(14:48):
and we're like in an outside area. Why are you
concealing yourself that much?
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Lugo called Valerie back. She told him what she'd seen.
Her heart was pounding, her adrenaline pup thing. It was
hard to get words out.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
I think I I was just so nervous. I set
ski mask because it was scary that it was potentially victor.
And he did tell me like, oh, we'll try to
send cops to the area.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
And did you stay did you see cops end up
showing up?
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Oh? No.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Her and I don't even remember.
Speaker 6 (15:17):
We worked down to a day for sure, but I
remember how you were very obviously very upset, very frazzled,
and yeah, you were shaking quite a bit, and yeah,
obviously it's a very traumatic thing to see possibly, I
mean obviously we don't know right for sure, but possibly
seeing somebody who killed this poor young girl, like you know,
and you know when you when you when you experienced
(15:39):
something like that, it's just kind of like it's jarring
because like, what if it was him and he's just
going about his day. It was really it was a
really emotional intense day.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
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 La riverbed, she wrote,
and now she wanted to go hunt him down. We
(16:14):
have to lay load to get him.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
She wrote.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
We need rope in a bat because he won't go
down without a fight. When I stumbled upon these comments
posted in June of twenty twenty one, I was really
taken aback by Valerie's aggression. This like take no prisoner's
attitude she had. It made me think about how so
many people were terrified of running into Victor, and yet
(16:37):
here she was seeking him out. I immediately wanted to
know who was this woman, why was she acting like
this vigilante superhero, and how did she become so invested
in catching a murder suspect. On a smeltering summer day,
(17:05):
I stood in the parking lot of a mobile home
community near Compton, and when I spotted someone who looked
like Valerie Pinatto'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 banks.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
I'm john nice too.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
We walked across the black top and made small talk
so hot, I know. Once we got to her place,
she led me to a small wooden table in her
living room.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
I want this open.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Eventually we got to talking about Daisy. So and then
tell me, tell me how you first heard that that
Daisy had been murdered.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
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,
(18:11):
watch out for this person and yeah his his story,
like in her story, ended up being posted in that group.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
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 seems possible they lived
close to each other, and they seemed interested in the
same kinds of music. To valerate, Daisy's story felt personal.
Speaker 5 (18:39):
I started investing my time to you know, get her
justice basically. What did that look like for you? I
feel like for me, it was you know, going out
there and trying to see where he was at, you know,
look for him, asking around like hey, have you seen
this dude hanging around? Or like are you hiding him?
(19:01):
Like let me find out.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
You know, you actually went to people's houses and said
are you harboring this person Victor?
Speaker 5 (19:07):
Well, it was more like I would ask other punks
like hey, are like, like have you seen Victor? Like
are you hiding him?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
You know?
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And what do people say?
Speaker 5 (19:18):
They would just you know, they're like, no, like I
haven't seen.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
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 write him out, she'd
find him herself.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
Definitely, Yeah, I would go look for Victor, like I actually,
you know, I would be like, yeah, w is he
hanging around Long Beach or in the trails?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
You know?
Speaker 5 (19:42):
Really?
Speaker 7 (19:42):
Mm hmmm, So were you just in your car kind
of like scouting on the sidewalk like oh yeah.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
I would tell other people too, like hey, you want
to meet up and look for him? I'd be so down.
I feel like street justice works better than the actual system,
So yeah, I would. I would keeping an eye out
on the street for him because you know, like I
don't know, that's like really scary to have someone that
(20:10):
does something so fucked up to someone else, you know.
I couldn't allow that, not in my neighborhood.
Speaker 7 (20:19):
What was sort of going through your head? Like, had
you thought through what you would do if you actually
saw him?
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah? I was already thinking. I was like, I'm gonna
beat the shit out of this guy. We'll call the
cops and be like, hey, he's over here. But yeah, no,
I was. I was super angry. I was just mad.
I was like, you know, like, how could you do
something like that to her? Like she didn't deserve it,
you know. I felt like, yeah, I wanted to get
(20:45):
justice for her, like just beat his ass, make him
feel pain.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It was that anger, that desire for revenge that I'd
read and 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
if 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, Like she told me about this
(21:13):
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 into attack a
guy she'd seen hitting girls in the pit.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Seriously, I jumped off the ladder so fucking quick and
I started punching him.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Oh my god, that's like a wrestling move.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Wow.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, I jumped off. He didn't even really notice. You know,
because that 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.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Valerie showed me the spot on her eyelid where she
said she got punched.
Speaker 5 (21:47):
And Yeah, after that, a lot of a lot of
girls they whizeed me around at shows and they're like, yeah,
like I'm I'm so glad that you did that. They're
like you're fucking crazy, or they would say the same
thing you did, like oh, you're so like Teff, you know.
And I was like, I I couldn't just sit by
and just watch that shit.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
Tough felt like an understatement. I wanted to know what
was behind it, So I asked her, how did you
become so fearless?
Speaker 5 (22:15):
I think I became fearless because, you know, of the
type of environment I grew up, and because I went
to military school.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So military school the kind that teenagers get sent to
when their parents think they need to be straightened out,
their 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, Like it seems like you
have a strong sense of like the community has this
(22:45):
power that the police don't have.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
Like where did that come from? I think for me,
it came from, you know, living in domestic violence. So
I grew up. Yeah, I grew up in a broken home.
I guess you could say parents got when I was
nine and just yeah, like you know, my mom being
a landlord too. Growing up, we would have instances where,
(23:10):
you know, the neighbors they would fight and then I
would hear some of them beat on their girlfriends. And
as a child, you know that mentally scars you sometimes.
And I feel like, yeah, growing up too, seeing women
get beat you know, like all kinds of violence. Yeah,
it makes you want to It makes you want to
car and have justice for other women that go through that.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Especially because of what she saw some of her own
family members go through.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
I can obviously say, like what one of my grandpa's
glad I never met him, he tried to kill my
other grandmos with a machete. He left a scar on
her forehead, So pretty much, yeah, it's a generational trauma thing, right.
So that's why when I heard Daisy story, I was like,
I can also relate to that through my grandma's history
(24:03):
because they you know, they have almost gotten killed. You know,
I'm glad they were able to escape that. But so, yeah,
that's what That's why I tell people, you don't you
don't understand until you are in their shoes, and when
you are powerless, when you don't have anywhere to go,
you don't have anyone to defend you, that's what's going
(24:24):
to happen. Yeah, So I hope people will realize that that. Yeah,
like sometimes you're you just yeah, you just get put
in a situation and and your life just just goes
like that. Yeah, women are just going through that every day.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
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.
Speaker 5 (24:57):
It was a hard decision to make. I think it's
because it's like you want to keep giving their person
you love a chance, and then you know, it's like
that unconditional love you have for someone, but then it
just kind of runs out where you can't take it anymore.
You know. I finally decided to put my foot down
(25:19):
and I said, you know what, I can't keep living
like this, Like I don't want to go to jail
and beat his ass back. So yeah, it was a
hard decision. I just you know, planned it, packed my
shit and then I escaped to a domestic violence shelter.
Speaker 7 (25:37):
How did you find it?
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Well, pretty much like I was already seeing a DV
therapist and then I just had told her when day,
like hey, I'm fed up, Can we, like, you know,
call some places? And she did, We called and pretty
much yeah, then they accepted me.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
Seem like so proactive, Like how did you have this
knowledge to be like, oh, to even get a dB
counselor I think is something that or therapist is something
that I think a lot of women or some women
in that situation maybe wouldn't know to do. Like how, yeah,
how did you navigate that?
Speaker 5 (26:17):
So this is this is a funny part.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
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 and security because of domestic
violence and in order to maintain her government benefits. She
was told she had to sign up for it.
Speaker 5 (26:40):
And at first I didn't want to. I was like, nah,
I don't need it. I could deal with my problems.
But then he really pushed me to get it, and
that's when I when I started going, I was like.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
All right, I needed it.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
I was just being hardheaded, like, you know, thinking that
I can keep putting, like I could deal with it
myself self. And I still tell my my case worker
thank you all the time, Like I'll text them sometimes
I'd be like, you're you're the you know, you're you're
the you're the shit basically, and he's like, oh, thank you.
(27:13):
You know, I'm glad that you you actually listen to
me this way.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Valerie said that the experience of doing it, of going
to therapy and getting out of a bad relationship, it
taught her a lot.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
It like shows you how strong you could be as
a person, you know, like it shows you like how
much life tests you and see if you'l like make
or break it type of shit pretty much like and
it just shows you, like, yeah, how strong you are?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
That is really what true 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.
Speaker 5 (27:54):
That's kind of the reason why I wanted to get
justice for Daisy, Like that was my whole point of
looking for Victor and all that, because I saw something
in myself that I saw in her. I guess you
could say, not only like personality, but just her you know,
like I was like, yeah, I can't let I can't
(28:15):
let that shit side like that. It really like touched
the corn me.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah. What was when.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
You say you saw something in her that you saw
on yourself, was it was sort of how she looked
or also just like her situation.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
Your situation mostly you know, like she got hurt and
she you know, unfortunately, like she couldn't get her life back,
and you know, I didn't get justice for some of
the things that happened to me, but I'm still alive.
So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get
(28:50):
justice for her, just as I wish somebody would get
justice for me.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
But as much as she looked and as determined as
she was vollering, 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
(29:19):
couldn't ignore. Next time on My Friend Daisy.
Speaker 8 (29:28):
They put out something on social media, so and they
put out my cell number so I'd get called in
the middle of the night all the time. Hi everyone,
this is Paris. Thanks for listening to My Friend Daisy.
If you are someone you love is experiencing abuse, you
are not alone. Help is available twenty four to seven.
Contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline for free confidential support.
(29:51):
Call eight hundred seven nine to nine seven two three three,
text start to eight eight seven eight eight, or visit
the hotline dot org your safety matters reach out today.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
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
(30:27):
Music Entertainment is Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producer is Zoe Kulkin.
Production assistants and translations by Miguel Contreras, Sound design, composing
and mixing by Hans Dale she Our fact checker is
Bendel Fulton, Our head of production is Sammy Allison, and
(30:48):
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. 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 twenty seventeen,
(31:12):
and you can find them online under the title Racial
and Ethnic Differences in Homicide of Adult Women and the
Role of Intimate Partner Violence. 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
(31:33):
Family Violence in January of twenty twenty three. Thank you
so much for listening.
Host
Paris Hilton
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