Original subtitles

[ wind whistling ]

Napoli: This is a mother's story.

I never want any parent to ever have to walk in my shoes,

Looking in desperation for her only child

In the cold and the dead winter.

♪

Napoli: I'm determined. I'm relentless.

I want justice, and I will get it.

It just seemed like a one in a million chance that

It wouldn't be our guy.

We were grasping at straws and had no real, solid leads.

I'll never get over this...

For the rest of my life.

-- Captions by vitac -- www.Vitac.Com

Captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

A typical winter in troy is very, very cold -- below zero.

♪

Winter brings up a lot of memories -- sad ones.

♪

All right, I think that's just about everything.

[ breathes deeply ]

October 6, 2015,

I was packing up a u-haul truck to move to malone, new york.

My daughter noel was a beautiful, beautiful

21-year-old -- smart.

She was a forensic student in the criminal-justice field.

Hang on, mom -- one more thing.

[ chuckles ]

Oh, noel... [ laughs ]

I thought you were gonna be an artist.

Instead, you'll be tracking down bad guys.

[ chuckles ]

Noel didn't come with me because her finals had to be done.

Oh, honey. [ crying ]

Honey, it's okay.

She broke down crying.

I wasn't sure if that was a separation from me for a moment

Because we're very close and tight-knitted

Or something was bothering her.

I'm just gonna miss you so much, mom.

I know, baby.

But I'll see you at thanksgiving, right?

Hey, is sara gonna be there?

Noel was living with sara moore.

Actually, I don't think she's gonna make it.

Noel was bisexual,

And I supported my daughter's choices to the fullest.

Just you and me, then.

Come here.

♪

♪

It was about two days before thanksgiving.

My daughter -- she was scheduled to come to me for the holidays.

[ cellphone rings ]

♪

I got a phone call from sara moore.

Hello.

It's sara, noel's girlfriend.

Something's wrong.

She said noel had been missing since the night before.

She didn't come home from work.

What?

Are you sure?

Napoli: She worked as a part-time hostess.

Noel would never not just go home.

That doesn't make any sense.

Let me try her phone.

Napoli: So I kept calling and texting.

She's not answering her phone.

Come on, noel. Pick up.

Napoli: I knew something was wrong immediately.

Noel, this is mom. Call me when you get this.

My mother mode was in full force,

You know, like a lion with a cub.

[ exhales ]

Then I just grabbed...

A black hoodie, black jeans, boots, a coat.

I'm going to flip the world upside down

Because I'm gonna find my baby.

♪

Narrator: Debra races 200 miles back to troy.

♪

Bornt: Noel alkaramla was reported missing

By her girlfriend, sara moore, on the morning of November 23.

A short time after that, I drove to sara's residence

And interviewed her at her residence.

Do you have any idea where she might have gone?

[ sniffles ] no. This is all so bizarre.

I don't understand why she wouldn't just call me.

She said noel got off shift at about 9:00 that night.

Never came home after work.

Let's not panic.

My impression with sara was she was legitimately concerned

About the whereabouts of noel.

She hasn't been gone long.

Let's take it one step --

Wait. I have something you should see.

♪

[ papers rustle ]

A neighbor of ours found these in the snow

On washington street.

I think someone may have dumped out her purse.

♪

Bornt: The fact that those documents would just end up

On a sidewalk somewhere was very alarming.

That's not something that happens

On a standard missing-person case.

It suggested that maybe something truly horrible

Had happened to her.

Had noel been fighting with anyone?

No.

Listen, we're gonna do everything we can to find her.

Yeah. Well...

We'll see, won't we?

Sorry?

[ chuckles ]

Forget it.

Sara moore was reluctant to give us

A lot of detailed information.

I definitely got the impression that she didn't have

A lot of trust for the police department.

May I?

Mm-hmm.

Thank you for your time. Yeah.

I'll be in touch.

♪

♪

Napoli: I arrived in troy.

I went to their apartment -- sara and noel.

Sara!

Napoli: The first thing I noticed when I first went

To the apartment -- sara wasn't doing any searching.

Sara was just home, chilling in the apartment.

Sara...

You've got to get dressed. We've got to go look for noel.

I can't.

Some of us have jobs, debra.

She didn't even want to help find my daughter.

Listen, however you feel about me -- it doesn't matter.

Noel needs us.

She needs you?

No. She never needed you, [sniffles] debra.

The way that sara spoke to me, knowing that noel is missing,

I was hurt, mortified.

Get your damn coat on and help me look for her!

Sara said, "excuse me."

This is exact words --

"get the [bleep] out of my home, [bleep]."

♪

Sara's stand-off reaction when I went there --

It was beyond fishy.

♪

Sara...

Please.

Let's just --

I was very suspicious of sara having something to do with

Noel going missing.

♪

I walked into the police station,

And I just immediately went up the stairs.

And I met detective bornt.

Detective, noel's girlfriend knows something.

I can feel it.

Sara?

We interviewed her earlier.

Well, there's plenty I'm sure she didn't tell you.

Well, my initial impression of debra was that

You know, she was a concerned mother.

Her daughter was missing, and she was

Doing everything in her power to try to locate her daughter.

Well, why don't you tell us what you know?

When we started speaking with debra,

She gave me quite a bit of history in regards to noel.

Napoli: I told detective bornt sara and noel

Had physical altercations, and sometimes hitting her

In the head with the phone and stuff like that.

It was, you know, "dysfunction junction."

Noel and sara had lots of problems,

Lots of arguments.

And sometimes, sara got physical.

Would you categorize sara as the aggressor?

She's the violent type.

Bornt: Debra did not like sara at all

And made allegations that their relationship

Was physically abusive and that sara was the abuser.

I don't trust that girl.

And she felt sara was directly involved

In noel's disappearance.

That raised red flags for us.

♪

Bornt: In most homicide cases, the spouse is the suspect.

So we looked at sara as we would look to

Any significant other as a potential suspect.

We had a three-hour interview with her.

We talked about anything and everything.

Sara, you told us noel hadn't been fighting with anyone.

And?

That was a lie, wasn't it?

We understand that you may have had

An altercation with noel in the past.

Well, I mean, sometimes we'd fight, but that's it.

Really?

Noel's mother says --

I don't care what noel's mother says.

I never hit her.

She said they would verbally argue,

But she wholeheartedly denied any physical abuse.

What about the day noel went missing?

That morning, we had a...

Disagreement.

She was acting flirty around a friend of ours.

I got upset and told her that I would show up at her work.

She had threatened to cause a scene

At noel's place of employment.

Sara -- she seemed like a very jealous significant other

To noel, and there always seemed to be some tension

In regards to the jealousy.

You fought that day?

She told us maybe noel was

Just going somewhere else for the night to decompress.

It would have helped, had you told us this before.

Well, now you know.

♪

[ exhales ]

♪

I had some skepticism

As to whether she was being honest with us.

There was always a nagging feeling in the back of my mind

That sara may have been involved with this.

♪

Is there anyone else...

She might have talked to frequently,

Anyone who might have heard from her?

Um...

Her stepfather, johnny oquendo.

And where might we find him?

He works as a butcher.

Well, thank you. We'll pick this up later, yeah?

♪

[ exhales shakily ]

♪

♪

Mr. Oquendo?

Mr. Oquendo, we're here in regards to your stepdaughter.

Noel?

She's been missing for over 24 hours.

Missing?

Have you seen or talked to her recently?

No. It's been awhile.

Johnny oquendo was very calm, very collective.

He was an articulate individual and seemed very charming.

You know, she would tell me about these fights

That she would get into with her girlfriend.

♪

We heard.

Well, thank you for your time.

No problem.

If you need anything else, you know where to find me.

♪

Napoli: When noel went missing,

I kept calling the police station.

And I kept calling everywhere, and I was getting no answers.

Reporter: As soon as she arrived this afternoon,

Debra started passing out these flyers

Of noel throughout troy.

So I started calling up the media.

Reporter: Instead of sharing thanksgiving dinner

With her daughter,

Debra will be scouring the streets of troy looking for her.

♪

I can't explain what that feels like to be out here 24 hours

And searching for your only child.

♪

On thanksgiving day, 2015,

I wasn't surrounded by friends and family

Or holding my daughter or having dinner.

I was searching for noel,

Walking all around troy and putting up her picture.

Sara didn't participate in putting up flyers for noel.

I believed I would find my daughter.

Narrator: Debra focuses on the street

Where her daughter's personal items were found.

I retraced my daughter's footsteps.

I started on washington street.

I was standing across the street,

And there's an abandoned building there on the right.

When I looked up, the second-floor middle window

Had a curtain that was pulled over.

The curtain on the second floor didn't belong in that building.

My daughter is missing.

I'm mom.

Mom's searching that building.

♪

[ door opens, closes ]

♪

The building was really cold, creepy.

Noel?

Are you in here?

♪

And I was calling out noel's name.

♪

It was vacant, except for that one room.

[ floorboards creak ]

There's water damage everywhere. It's dark and dreary.

The door was closed.

♪

[ door hinges creak ]

♪

I was just shocked.

There was no one in there, just a single mattress,

An air-box thing.

It had a stand.

It had a cigarette in the ashtray.

Automatically, my mind's, like, horror.

I'm thinking,

"I see the news all the time. Oh, my god, women...

Something's being done in here. Something's wrong in here."

♪

Hey! [ gasps ]

What are you doing in here?

[ shakily ] I'm --

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm, um -- I'm looking for...

[ paper rustles ]

This girl.

I've seen a few people come and go through here,

People with nowhere else to go.

But not her.

Noel wasn't in there.

I wasn't disappointed.

I was grateful. There was nothing in there.

I was grateful.

Good luck finding her.

♪

Bornt: I proceeded to the restaurant where noel worked.

I spoke to a couple of her co-workers to try to get an idea

Of when she may have left that night,

Did she leave with anybody in particular

That they're aware of --

Basically, any information that they could provide to me.

All the co-workers that we spoke with

Got along with her very well.

Nothing was generated, as far as leads.

♪

But we received a number of tips and leads.

One was quite credible.

A woman who had been going to work

The day after noel disappeared

Said she saw noel standing on the street corner, crying.

It was in an area where there's multiple hotel/motels

I went to the area where the hotels are located,

And I started to ask the hotel clerks and managers

If they had seen noel.

♪

Sir?

I'm here as a detective investigating

A missing-persons report.

There was a woman in the area, we think on Tuesday night.

You recognize this girl?

Oh, yeah.

She was here, alright.

Most witnesses will hem and haw over a positive identification,

But this particular hotel manager

Was 100 percent positive that noel had been at his hotel.

Yeah, without a doubt.

She was here with a man.

This is very important.

I need to know what that man looked like.

I don't need to describe him to you.

Got his photo.

He had, actually, a copy of his driver's license.

♪

♪

I ran the individual's license.

The name is warren mark loughty.

Man: All right, give me one sec.

[ sighs ] oh, you are not gonna believe this.

Just got out of prison.

He had been previously convicted of manslaughter

And had just recently been paroled and lived in the area.

Get in your car.

We're going to his house now.

At that point, I was like, "this has got to be the guy."

Bornt: The suspect was a felon

That was convicted of manslaughter.

His criminal history suggests that he may be involved in this.

This could be our guy.

So we proceeded to his residence.

I didn't really want to talk to a felon

That was convicted of manslaughter by myself.

This guy could be dangerous.

Be ready for anything.

♪

♪

♪

[ lock clicks ]

[ door hinges creak ]

Who are you?

Detectives with the troy police department, mr. Loughty.

We have to speak with you.

♪

Just about to sit down to dinner with my wife and kids.

Can this wait?

Uh, no, sir. No, it can't.

Uh, it's a missing-persons case.

We have information that you were at a hotel

Wednesday morning with a woman, mr. Loughty.

Bornt: We initially spoke with him.

He did seem very nervous,

But he seemed very open and honest with us.

Okay.

Okay, I was at that hotel.

And if you have to know...

[ sighs ] yeah, I was with a woman.

And is this the woman, mr. Loughty?

Looks a bit like her, but definitely not.

You don't know this woman?

No.

Then who were you at the hotel with?

[ whispering ] she's someone I know.

Bornt: He was extremely embarrassed about his actions

And the fact that his wife now knew about

His adulterous actions.

But he provided the name

Of the individual that he was with at the hotel.

And then this particular female

Worked as a waitress in a bar close by.

Please wait here.

We're gonna corroborate the story you've told us.

♪

Not going anywhere.

We went and visited this young lady.

She could have been noel's identical twin.

She looked exactly like noel.

It just seemed like a one in a million chance

That it wouldn't be noel,

But unfortunately, that was the case.

We were just hugely discouraged by the whole thing.

I mean, everything was lining up really well.

But we had to start all over again.

♪

What are the odds?

Fresh out of jail, and he's not our guy.

Guess it's back to noel's girlfriend, huh?

About that...

We've got some new info.

What is it?

Sara said that the night noel went missing,

She only left her apartment once to walk their dog.

So?

Cellphone data matches her statement.

She was home all night.

It got to the point where she was no longer a suspect.

Damn.

We were grasping at straws and had no real, solid leads.

So...

What now?

We go back to the beginning,

Talk to the people that saw her last.

♪

I returned to the restaurant where noel worked.

One of her co-workers came forward and told us

That he may have been the last person to actually see her.

♪

We spoke to your co-workers already.

Yeah. Sorry I couldn't talk to you sooner.

I've been away for a few days.

That's all right.

So, you and noel were both working here

The night that she disappeared?

That's right.

As a matter of fact, I dropped her off that night.

Didn't the girlfriend say that she didn't come home that night?

Well, she didn't.

She asked me to drop her off a few blocks past her apartment.

Why?

She said if her girlfriend sara ever saw her with anyone,

She'd get jealous and flip out.

Well, why a few blocks from her home?

That's where her stepfather lived.

That was a significant clue for us.

You dropped her at johnny oquendo's apartment?

That's right.

There was a distinct possibility that noel had gone

To her stepfather's apartment that night.

♪

Bornt: My partner and I returned back to the station,

Where we ran johnny oquendo's name through

The national criminal database.

We discovered that he was currently on probation,

That he had a previous arrest for a robbery,

And that he was also on the sexual offender registry list.

We didn't expect that.

We've learned that noel may have gone

To her stepfather's house that night.

What?

Debra wasn't even aware

That johnny was living in the city of troy.

There's something you may not know

About your ex-husband, debra.

What is it?

Johnny oquendo was a registered sex offender.

No.

No. No.

I would have known.

Debra had been married to johnny oquendo,

And even though they were still legally married,

They had been split up for several years.

I...

I knew about the robbery.

Even though he was guilty of the crime he committed,

He had a desire to better himself.

But I had no idea that johnny oquendo

Was on the sexual-offender registry.

What did he do?

I was flipping out. I was floored.

Talk about deception.

That's the problem.

I'm not entirely sure.

The case is sealed.

I was in shock when I had got wind that noel

Was in contact with oquendo.

Noel hated johnny.

There'd be no reason for her to see him.

None of this makes any sense.

Don't worry.

We're gonna talk to him again.

I give you my word.

Thank you.

We make the decision that we're going

To johnny oquendo's residence.

♪

[ knocks on door ]

Mr. Oquendo.

Mr. Oquendo, come to the door.

There's nobody in the apartment. We don't have a search warrant.

We don't search the apartment.

You see that?

Yeah.

The one thing I notice

Was the staircase banister is just absolutely destroyed.

The hell is this?

It -- it almost looks like something crashed into it.

Maybe the neighbors saw something.

Yeah.

The first-floor tenants told us a story.

The particular evening that noel went missing,

They heard this huge crash and bang outside their door.

They opened the door to see a very large suitcase

Had just smashed through the staircase banister.

Suitcase? Yeah.

Whose was it?

The guy upstairs -- oquendo.

He was pushing it down the stairwell,

And I guess he lost control.

It was highly suspicious.

My gut told me that it was probably noel in that suitcase.

What happened next?

Well, I saw johnny wrestling with the suitcase.

He was trying to pick it up, so I offered to help.

What'd he say?

Oh, whatever was inside it, he didn't want us to touch it.

Do you know where he went?

Uh, yeah.

The first-floor tenants said that

When he exited the apartment building,

He took a right and proceeded north on 3rd street.

Thank you for your time.

This was a real turn of events for us.

♪

Our victim's stepfather was now our primary suspect.

Narrator: Detectives track down johnny oquendo

And bring him in for questioning.

Bornt: He says he has information

As to her whereabouts and that he did see her that night.

They're huge statements that he was going to tell us

Exactly what we needed to know so we can locate noel.

But unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

I knew at that point we weren't gonna get any additional

Information from johnny oquendo.

♪

I thought he had probably killed noel,

But we still hadn't obtained noel's body,

So we still would have a difficult time

Charging him with homicide.

We recruited the assistance of the fbi.

[ cellphone rings ]

Go for bornt.

They provided a number of special agents to assist us.

Man: We found a surveillance tape.

Is oquendo on the tape?

We were able to obtain a surveillance video.

You might want to come in and take a look.

And on one of the video cameras that was owned by the city,

The analysts spotted what appeared to be a male figure

Dragging a suitcase behind him.

Look at him.

There's the suitcase.

Is that oquendo?

In my opinion, it seemed he was heading towards the hudson river

To dispose of the suitcase because 10 minutes later,

We see the same subject on that same camera

Returning from the area of the hudson river without a suitcase.

Oof.

The video was not clear enough

To identify him as johnny oquendo,

But it just seemed very far-fetched at 11:00 at night

That anybody else in the city of troy

Would be pulling a suitcase.

It's not enough.

It's simply not enough.

To get a conviction for murder, we need beyond reasonable doubt.

If she's dead, we need to find the body.

We were near positive that the suitcase

Had been disposed of in the hudson river.

♪

On that day, we contacted the new york state dive team

To assist us in searching for the suitcase.

Guys, focus up.

All right, come together.

This is where we think the suspect may have been heading.

So we start here and then expand.

It's cold out there.

It's not getting any warmer.

Let's get things going.

Let's go.

It was December.

The hudson river is extremely cold.

It's just barely above freezing.

[ police radio chatter ]

The hudson river is hundreds of miles long,

And we cannot search the entire thing.

You guys find anything yet?

Man: Negative, sir.

♪

Wait a minute.

♪

I think I have an idea.

What do you got?

We need a pig.

A pig?

♪

We took a deceased pig

And put it into a suitcase and dropped that into the river

And monitored its progression down the river.

Pigs that density, muscle density, and organ size

Are very similar to that of an adult female.

Status.

Man: No change.

The case is still floating. [ sighs ]

After probably about 3 or 4 miles,

It showed no signs of submerging.

Oh, god.

[ sighs heavily ]

Her body could have floated hundreds of miles by now.

After several weeks of the divers searching the area

Where we thought the suitcase might be,

We came up with nothing.

What do we do?

It started to become very daunting

'cause now we're looking for a needle in a haystack.

If we have to...

Search the entire river.

[ sighs ]

Napoli: This had been going on since thanksgiving.

It was holidays, and new year's was coming,

And christmas was horrific.

I sat alone, indian-style, crying.

I didn't even have nothing to eat.

That's what I did for christmas.

I cried.

I prayed.

[ sniffles ]

I kept trying her phone, even though there was no answer.

♪

"it was hard" is an understatement.

I took the missing-persons thing from my daughter

And I taped it in the window.

And then the church bells would go off,

And I just had hope.

Bornt: We searched for the suitcase for nearly a month.

I was on the shoreline pretty much all day, every day.

The new york state divers are very meticulous.

They were pulling up debris, such as eyeglasses,

Necklaces, bracelets,

Things as small and as minute as that.

So there's no way possible they would ever miss a suitcase.

♪

The fact that our pig experiment traveled such a great distance,

We thought that maybe it is quite plausible

That the suitcase was in the area of the albany port.

After several weeks,

We were 8 miles south of where it was originally dumped.

Man: Detective bornt, detective bornt, come in.

Go for bornt.

Got something.

I'm on my way.

They had located the suitcase.

♪

As soon as that suitcase came out of the water,

I knew exactly what that smell was.

It was death.

♪

It was noel.

She was totally naked.

She was in the fetal position

With her face down in the suitcase.

That's something I'll never forget.

[ coughs ]

You can't imagine the mind of the person that would

Do such a thing.

But we finally have the capability

To initiate homicide charges against johnny oquendo.

We got him.

I've got to call her mother.

♪

I was in my living room, and my cellphone rang.

It was detective bornt,

And he told me that a body had been found.

It was noel.

I was in denial

Right up until the very last second

'cause that's something you don't want to hear.

[ sniffles ]

I just, like, crumbled.

That's where my whole life changed.

That's everything. I don't even...

Catastrophic's an understatement. [ sniffles ]

No, no, no.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

No.

[ sniffles ]

[ exhales deeply ]

No, I'm fine.

♪

I couldn't have asked for a better daughter at all.

♪

♪

And I don't have that anymore.

And no one understands that...

Because it wasn't their daughter.

It was my daughter.

♪

♪

We had no real theory as to why

She would want to go to johnny oquendo's apartment.

It could have been any number of things.

Maybe she just didn't want to go home

Because of a potential argument with sara.

♪

Sorry for stopping by like this.

It's no problem. Sit down.

[ sighs ] I just don't want to go home now.

[ scoffs ] you fighting with sara again?

Yeah.

She's so jealous.

Constantly thinks I'm cheating on her.

Noel, you could do so much better than her.

You're so beautiful.

Ever think about getting back at her?

What do you mean?

I mean...

Giving her a reason to be jealous.

Hey, what are you doing?

I know why you come here. It's okay.

Shh.

The final determination for the cause of her death

Was asphyxiation.

The medical examiner did a vaginal swab.

There was determined to be semen from johnny oquendo.

Locating his dna

Was exceptionally damning to his defense.

I think there was two different scenarios

That could potentially have played out.

The first one is that they could potentially have already been

In a consensual sexual relationship

And she was going there to engage in sex.

The other scenario is she was stopping by to visit johnny,

Johnny raped her, and then he killed her

To cover up his crime.

It's unthinkable and horrific for a stepfather to rape

And kill his own stepdaughter.

Napoli: Johnny oquendo betrayed me.

He was, you know, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

I had love for him.

Yeah.

I hate him.

I hate him.

How do you come out and murder my daughter?

How do you have sex with my daughter?

How do you do these things? How do you live with yourself?

She was bent up like a pretzel,

Her right foot on her left shoulder.

It takes a really sick [bleep] to do some [bleep] like that.

♪

Bornt: I think sara certainly was heartbroken.

They had a relationship for many, many years.

I truly believe she cared for her a great deal.

Must have been a lot of pain for sara.

I'm sure it was one of many factors

That pushed her to that limit.

Reporter: Johnny oquendo waiting to hear his fate.

Judge: As to count one, murder in the second degree,

How do you find?

Man: Guilty.

The jury finding him guilty on every count against him

For killing his stepdaughter noel alkaramla.

How do you find?

Guilty.

I would say he's a monster

That has no concern for human life.

♪

I truly believe that if new york state

Had the death penalty that johnny oquendo would be

The perfect candidate for it

Because of the true heinousness of his crime.

♪

Napoli: I'll never get over this for the rest of my life.

I messed up by bringing oquendo into my life.

I destroyed my only daughter's life.

I feel horrible.

I blame myself every time my heart beats.

That's how responsible I feel.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't blame myself.

I feel so horrible.

♪