Original subtitles

36-year-old army veteran and grad student,

Maribel Ramos, is treating her niece, Giselle.

- Ta-da! - It's so pretty.

My aunt Maribel was like a big sister to me.

She taught me how to play softball.

We would read books together, we would have sleepovers

and I would do face masks to her.

She was really funny.

You look like a model.

With her, I would kind of clown around a bit more.

Let's go get it.

Whenever we needed her, she was a call away

or maybe like ten minutes away from our house.

Maribel and I were extremely close.

You know, I was her little sister,

Mom was at work,

so Maribel had to take me with her everywhere.

She definitely was goal-driven

and she had her map of what she wanted to do with her life.

As a young girl,

Maribel wanted to be actually a police officer.

At some point she decided that the Military would be a good route for her.

She was in the Military for eight years.

With two deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan...

she decided to come back home,

finish up her school, graduate college

and then focus on this other part of life

which hopefully included a husband and then children.

In a few weeks,

Maribel is due to receive a degree in Criminal Justice

from Cal State University.

Graduating for Maribel was not only the end of,

I would say, this chapter of school and work.

This was the moment where she was gonna start just really enjoying life.

I mean, everything looked amazing, a beautiful future.

KC and Maribel were roommates for about two years

and he was also Giselle's math tutor.

KC texted me saying, you know,

"Your sister, Maribel, didn't come home."

I just told KC that

Maribel had a lot of things going on

and she's a grown woman.

So I didn't worry, you know, about her not coming home.

But Maribel did not show up to her baseball game

and my cousin said, "Can you please drive to Maribel's house?"

We are at her house now.

Her car is outside. Parked.

The light in her room is on.

But no one's home.

That's when I... I just got this horrible feeling.

Lucy's cousin calls Orange PD

to report that Maribel is still missing.

Patrol officers were dispatched to Maribel's apartment.

They knocked on the door. They talked to some neighbors.

They didn't see anything suspicious.

No broken windows, no forced entry into the door.

The roommate's nowhere to be found.

The officers made a choice to force entry into the apartment.

Police. Anyone here?

It's a typical two-bedroom, small apartment.

Nothing looked disheveled or really out of place at all.

Maribel's sister, Lucy, arrives at the apartment.

I walked straight into her room

and Maribel's bed was undone, there were sheets on top of it

and her pillow was like didn't have the pillow case.

It was like, her bed not being done was such a big deal to me.

That's not Maribel.

I didn't see anything that indicated that Maribel took a trip.

I was like what? You know, something was wrong.

Lucy indicates to the officers

that her wallet, her cell phone,

all these items were typically with Maribel

and they weren't in the apartment.

So that kind of raised our suspicions.

A Patrol Supervisor makes a decision

to call homicide.

It was after hours, I was home.

I got a call from the office to come in.

We had a suspicious missing person's case.

The fact that Maribel was 36 years old,

and the fact that she had some military training,

she was the type of person that was very punctual,

she just disappeared with no trace.

That made everybody feel like she was in trouble.

Lucy has indicated her car was still there

and parked in her normal parking spot.

For her wallet or her cell phone

all to be missing and her vehicle still there,

that was definitely strange and out-of-character.

What's going on?

Her roommate, KC Joy, shows up unannounced.

When was the last time you saw Maribel?

Thursday, about 9:00.

He indicated that he'd left around 9 PM and gone on a drive.

Later on, around 10:00,

he responds back to the apartment and Maribel's not there.

If there's anything you know, please let us know.

Thank you.

So, it's very important,

who was the last person that saw the victim or the missing person?

Because that sets the timeline.

This is the last day Maribel was last seen alive.

And then they can work from that point forward.

Because Maribel lived in a large apartment community...

they typically have surveillance footage of the grounds.

That was one of the first things we looked at when we were on-scene.

We try to find cameras

to help us either see her leaving or coming to the apartment.

The apartment manager gives detectives a copy

of the surveillance footage.

There was one camera that covered the gate to the complex.

You would hope that we'd be able to see either Maribel's car

or KC's car going in and out of there.

But they didn't need to go into the complex

because they could park right outside their front door on the street.

So, the camera videos that we were examining were not helpful.

We were able to locate one that was above the manager's office

and that camera focuses on anybody that's walking up to the door.

Try Thursday around 8 PM.

We were hoping that, you know, we'd find her

exactly where she was or it leads us in a certain direction.

At this point, this was all we had.

Punch in.

Play it again.

I think that's her.

Residents would leave their checks or their rent,

they'd put it through a slot in the manager's office.

When we first see Maribel,

she appears to be in kind of casual pajamas, almost.

She dropped off an envelope in the slot and then walked off.

She is not scared.

She doesn't look like she's looking over her shoulder.

She's not hurrying.

She looks like she just put on some sandals to walk outside

and put the mail in and just go to bed.

It shows her alive the day before she went missing

on May 2nd about 8:30 PM.

After a sleepless night,

Lucy turns to social media to help find Maribel.

I posted a picture of my sister,

and I asked friends to contact me

if they've talked to her, seen her.

You know, share... share the information.

I was extremely upset. I was so mad.

On many levels, you know,

because I don't know where my sister is.

I did cry a lot.

But nothing mattered.

You know, so it was just I had to just keep going

and get things done.

Any time you're working a missing person's case,

one of the main things to kind of consider is victimology.

We want to know about the victim,

we want to know what her life was like,

who she spoke with.

What kind of boyfriends, dating habits.

We pulled initial cell phone data.

It showed that Maribel's cell phone was either off or inoperable.

Most people take their cell phones with them everywhere.

Now, if she was abducted,

or someone had taken her,

she may not have had time to take her cell phone,

but we knew that her cell phone wasn't at the apartment.

So, the fact that it wasn't pinging was very suspicious.

- Shaun. - Hm?

Come have a look at this.

Paul Lopez was a boyfriend

or was dating Maribel Ramos.

It is very important

to talk to the last person that talked with Maribel.

And Paul was the last person to talk to her on the phone.

Paul is asked to come to the PD for questioning.

He was very cavalier

and just, "Hey, we were very early on in the stage of our relationship...

we were free to kind of date on our own."

Paul confirms that he last spoke to Maribel by phone

on the Thursday she went missing.

Just because he's very cooperative

doesn't mean he couldn't have hurt Maribel.

The truck he drove was GPS.

We could find out exactly where he went,

almost like on a minute-by-minute basis.

The conversation turns to Maribel's roommate, KC Joy.

Paul tells detectives that when he spoke to Maribel on Thursday,

she was arguing with KC.

He asked Maribel if he needs to come over,

she says, "No, I'm fine, I'm just gonna go to sleep."

And that's the last conversation we know of

between Maribel and Paul.

This led us in the direction of KC

because there was some contention between KC Joy and Maribel Ramos

because of him not paying rent.

KC Joy had come here from Korea

and when he was like a teenager,

he went to school in Tennessee

and was a chemist of some sort.

There was nothing to indicate that he had any criminal record.

A scan of KC's social media accounts

reveals a close relationship with Maribel.

KC Joy took Maribel on an Alaskan cruise.

There were photographs of that in his phone and on his computer.

One day when KC called me,

he started telling me that, "Oh, I'm in love with your sister,"

and you know, "I would really like to be that man she has a family with."

So, I'm like, "Oh dear,"

because, you know, he's a great guy

but I know that KC

is not the type of man that my sister's looking for.

At some point, he started acting different.

He did lose his job.

He didn't give her money for the rent.

So, that's where the problem started.

Hey, Joey, come take a look at this.

Officers had done a background check on Maribel's apartment

Listen to this.

It shows that approximately a week prior,

there was a 911 call from there.

She was combat-trained,

so for her to be fearful of this guy...

was a real red flag.

The fact that Maribel was in the Military,

and possibly suffered some mental health issues because of it,

is an important fact.

Our veterans nowadays go through a lot overseas

and bring some of that back

and have trouble dealing with everyday life.

It certainly paints a picture

that things could have gotten pretty ugly.

Investigators immediately call in KC for questioning.

He's a very friendly man.

He loves to talk.

But then, when you hear the phone call,

you gotta wonder, how does this guy

make her feel so scared?

He cares about her.

So, when things started going bad,

it really upset him.

He says, yeah, they were having issues with the rent,

because he lost his job and couldn't pay the rent.

He makes a statement that,

maybe we should be looking at Paul a little closer.

Because, you know, Paul had threatened him.

KC Joy had indicated that he had gone on a drive

to get out of the situation to kind of cool off.

That is very difficult to corroborate

because it wasn't like he stopped at a McDonald's

or got gas to corroborate that he left or where he went.

He's wearing a very tight, black, short-sleeved shirt

and I could see these scratches

and they're obviously fresh.

He says that the ducks,

they get this fishing line wrapped around them

and so he feels like he needs to get rid of all that

and when he does that, he says there's thorns in those bushes

and so, that's how he got these marks.

We're looking for signs of a struggle.

I wasn't sure what kind of foliage they have there at the park,

and I needed him to show it to me.

KC meets investigators at Eisenhower Park.

One of the officers is wearing a covert wire.

So, when we got to the park,

one of the first things he said, he points to this duck,

and sure enough, its back foot is tied up in a fishing line

and I'm like, "Oh my God, it's true!"

So it was like, "Wow," those thorns could make those marks.

You absolutely could lose your balance and fall into them

and you would come up with some pretty vicious scratches.

Detectives return their attention to Maribel's boyfriend,

Paul Lopez.

As a homicide detective,

it's very important to be open-minded.

You have to follow every lead.

Paul was the last person to talk to her on the phone

and then Maribel just disappeared.

This is Detective Ramirez from Orange PD.

I need some information on one of your employees.

When we followed up on Paul's alibi,

we were able to prove

that he was an employee of the gas company,

he was working at that time.

We were able to identify the truck that he'd used that day

and those trucks have GPS on them,

and find out exactly where he went

almost like on a minute-by-minute basis.

And he was nowhere near the city of Orange

or near Maribel at the time.

At this point, he was not a suspect.

As days went by, it was getting more frustrating

because we just weren't coming up with something solid.

You know, there was no smoking gun.

The more time that went by,

the less likely we were looking for a missing person,

and the more likely we were looking into a death investigation.

Detectives conduct a forensic search of Maribel's apartment.

KC allowed our crime scene people to come in

and they used all this high-tech stuff

to try and see stuff that we can't see with the naked eye.

They take DNA, get fingerprints,

photographs, everything,

he was 100% volunteering

to help the investigation

and we weren't finding anything.

He had a car at the time that was rented

through a local rental company.

And we had searched it,

we had got a cadaver dog in there

and unfortunately, there was no information

that we were able to gather from there,

so that was another dead end.

In the closet, they notice a pajama top

with a blood smear on it.

And they also notice

the pajama bottoms are consistent

with the pajama bottoms that she was wearing when she dropped of her check.

That could be her blood combined with somebody else's blood.

Forensics results come back

on the bloodstains on Maribel's pajamas.

That blood came back to Maribel and Maribel only.

The fact that there was no one else's blood on her pajamas

was also an important fact as well.

She could have cut herself.

They're not sure where that blood came from.

Everybody had high hopes.

They were hoping it would kind of break open this case

and unfortunately, when it came back to Maribel Ramos

and Maribel Ramos alone,

another kind of disappointing moment in the case, if you will.

No matter who you ask, the response is the same...

The local news pick up the story.

Roommate of a missing Cal State Fullerton student

is now speaking out about her disappearance.

Maribel Ramos has been missing since last Thursday.

She's the only family I have.

She's my best friend and I want her to come back, that's all.

KC would always tell them that

he loves her, you know, he's trying to find her himself.

He's talking to any reporter that'll talk to him.

I'm volunteering, they want a DNA sample,

they took pictures of my body,

they already searched the house without a search warrant

and I gave them permission to do it,

go ahead, go for it.

He has this contentious relationship with Maribel at the time.

Nothing to prove that he did something bad to her,

so right now we were kind of... kind of at a stalemate.

Even though there's no evidence on KC...

you just couldn't help but keep... continue to look at him.

And for that reason,

he was under 24-hour surveillance.

We were hoping that he would slip up,

that he would take us somewhere that would be noteworthy.

The fact that he had given us his phone and laptop

made him have to go to the library

to be able to go on to the Internet.

To see what KC is doing,

detectives pull footage from the library surveillance cameras.

We see him walk in casually.

He's wearing a backpack.

Doesn't seem to be suspicious of anything.

He then goes to the desk to check out a computer.

It's important to note what he's doing, where he's looking.

Is he trying to hide evidence?

Is he, you know, switching bank accounts?

He actually walks to the back of the library

at a desk where he positions himself

in a way that he would know if somebody were behind him

observing what he's looking at.

We got any cameras at the back?

The library doesn't have a camera that we're able to zoom in

and see what he's doing or which computer he's on specifically.

Two hours later, KC leaves.

Detectives attempt to check his search history.

After each person uses the computer,

it's turned back in to the librarian

and the software is applied and it wipes out everything that was on that computer

and every search that that person has done.

Okay, thank you.

We were coming up empty-handed over and over and over again.

Maribel's family hold a vigil

to keep the search for her alive.

We really need everyone's help, please.

We need to find Maribel.

There were a lot of people that didn't know her personally

but they were just trying to be there for us and my family

and do anything they could to help us find her.

She fought for us, our family, our country.

Everybody was...

like, just together, very united.

Even a lot of strangers.

My cousin at some point said,

you know, "What's her favorite hike?" I told him Peter's Canyon.

And the word got out

that we were going to do an awareness walk at Peter's Canyon.

At Orange PD, a call from KC's car rental company

provides a fresh lead.

We learned through the rental car company

that he had just swapped a car from a previous car.

So, any time you turn in a rental car

and then get another one assigned to you right away,

it's a little suspicious.

Was there something he was trying to hide?

We were able to go back to the rental car company,

we were able to find the car that he had.

We also had a cadaver dog search the car

and he did alert to the back area of the car.

It's still not great physical evidence,

but it's a big moment for us

because it tells us that we are going down the right road.

So, it was very important

to keep 24-hour surveillance on KC

being the person of interest number one.

But KC ends up calling me

and he says, "Hey, Joey, can you tell the guys to quit following me?"

I immediately called the guys and said,

"Hey, we gotta back off a little. He burned us."

With KC continuing to visit the public library,

detectives come up with a plan.

So, one of the guys says, "Hey,

we can monitor his computer

from a whole other building remotely."

He just needed to receive the right computer

that we're monitoring.

So, library staff was brought on board

that, "Hey, if this man comes in,

here's his computer."

Sure enough, he came in,

checked out the computer.

We could watch exactly what he was accessing,

each key stroke,

and we actually recorded it and watched it live.

He's filling out job applications,

he's on some social media sites,

I think he's on Facebook posting some stuff.

There was a Maribel Ramos Facebook page at the time.

Nothing really stood out.

KC writes in a search bar,

"How long does a body take to decay?"

That's important,

but could it be that he's, you know, looking to see if she was left somewhere?

You know, what state her body would be in?

He ends up seeing on Facebook

that the family was having an awareness walk

at Peter's Canyon Park.

And he's kind of like pausing and thinking

and I have to assume he was thinking, you know, "Should I or shouldn't I do this?"

Well, he chose to do it.

He gets that address to Peter's Canyon,

places the address into a Google Maps search bar,

zooms in on it.

He looks at where they were gonna meet to do this awareness walk.

Then he backed out,

and he navigated eight miles into Modjeska Canyon

and he zooms in to this big tree.

And he gets as close as he can with the software.

And then he goes to his history

and deletes the search history.

And so, the guys monitoring it

are like, "Did he just do that, oh my God!"

This is way off in the middle of nowhere.

No houses or trails anywhere around here.

So it was kind of an odd place, we didn't know what to expect.

When you get there and there's barbed wire fence on this like large berm

next to this tree which is kind of the center of where he zoomed in at,

in order to get through the fence we had to kind of tuck through the barbed wire.

While we were out here kind of walking in the brush,

there absolutely was a smell of... of death.

I don't know how else to describe it.

We kind of looked over and saw...

kind of a shallow gravesite

and what appeared to be a body underneath some rocks.

Whether that was Maribel's body, we didn't know at this point.

She had a tattoo that you can vaguely make out

so that coupled with everything else,

I had a very strong suspicion that it was her at the time.

We brought KC Joy in to really hit him hard

with some strong questioning

to hopefully listen to his side of the story,

get some information as to how this came about.

KC was very confident

that, you know, he was smarter than us.

When somebody continues to lie

and kind of point us in the direction

of, "I didn't have anything to do with this,"

it's frustrating.

It didn't feel like I had to tell him that we'd found the body.

And pretty much gave him just a last chance

to put the truth down.

He got up, he walked out the door,

we let him and there were some patrolmen waiting outside for him

and they took him into custody.

Dental records confirm that the body found in the canyon

is Maribel Ramos.

KC Joy is charged with her murder.

Based on the decomp and the weather and the animal activity,

we couldn't find a cause of death.

It seemed most probable

that she was suffocated.

That a pillow was probably put over her head.

It's bitter-sweet

you know, because you always hope,

someway somehow she shows up.

Channel 5 was delivering the news

that they found the corpse.

I didn't cry, I just sat there.

And...

I just like, knew it was her.

I just think I was just...

just kind of numb.

It just didn't make sense to me

that this is what happened to her

or whoever had done it would do that

when she was about to do so much for herself.

So it was just very heartbreaking.

I was very close to her

so, me going through that, it was very hard.

And especially at the age that I was at.

Over a year later in July 2014,

Maribel's case goes to trial.

The prosecution put forward their version of events.

Maribel had harmless intentions

spending time with KC

and just do some things that friends do together.

He took these gestures as a little more

and kept building on a relationship

that he wanted to happen.

He was maybe rejected by Maribel.

He recently lost his job,

he was refusing to leave the apartment.

Paul Lopez on the phone told KC Joy,

"Look, if you don't get out, I'll get you out."

I believe he... as soon as he hung up with Paul,

they probably had some sort of argument again.

When you see that video, she might be a little bit, you know, perturbed

but she'd already told Paul that she was going to bed

that she was going to be fine.

I believe she went to bed.

He came in and...

a pillow was probably put over her head.

And she suffocated.

I think if she was awake,

she would've been able to defend herself

and there would've been a lot more in the room

as far as evidence goes of a struggle.

KC has to carry the body to the car

and then to that remote location.

And then he has to get through the barbed wire fence.

That's when he makes all these cuts on his arms

they were consistent with barbed wire.

On the day that KC walked into the library,

learns about the awareness walk out at Peter's Canyon,

puts in into Google Maps,

sees that there's no way they're gonna walk and find the body,

but he just showed us where he put her.

He did a virtual drive-by of his crime scene.

Surveillance from computers

is always helpful for law enforcement.

The fact that he thinks

he's doing something completely in private,

led to his demise.

A jury finds Kwang Choi Joy guilty

of second-degree murder.

Ramos' family trying to hold back tears in the courtroom

before the judge sentenced Joy to 15 years to life in prison.

When they found KC guilty,

I was really happy, of course

because I knew in my heart

that it was him.

There was no other way

that someone else could've done this.

He maintained he was innocent to the bitter end,

he said he was not guilty

and to this day, maintains that he's not good for this crime.

The fact that he led us to her body

and still didn't...

take any responsibility

for Maribel's disappearance just made me believe

what a sociopath he really is.

It kind of made no sense

because he was just so passionate

about my aunt

and being her best friend.

I mean, he was an honest person then,

so I was just thinking, like "Why can't you be honest now?"

Maribel did complete her Bachelor's in Criminal Justice

but she wasn't there to graduate.

I was the one that received her degree.

I felt honored, but at the same time,

I was kind of upset

that it was robbed from my aunt Maribel.

I've lost, you know,

a big sister, a best friend...

you know, another role model,

another mother figure in my life.

I just want people to know

that she was a beautiful soul.

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