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The Garner City Double Murder - Samuel and Maria Mendoza

April 8, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Samuel and Maria Mendoza, a couple who was randomly targeted in a gang related shooting.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. I'm the husband.

Before we get into my 10 seconds, for those who don't know,Peyton has her own solo show called "Into the Dark" - amazing TrueCrime, some hauntings every once in a while, some conspiracy theories every once in a while, and also some updates on recent and trending cases. Go and check it out, the links will be below. Again, it is called "Into theDark".

Alright G, what's your 10 seconds? So I know not everyone's an animal lover, not everybody is a dog lover. And I understand it, some people don't like dogs, um, other animals, that's okay. Everyone can have their own opinion. But I will say, something that I've been on TikTok, and I'm somehow I got on it and I'm trying to get off of it, but I'm on, like, I don't know what it's called - Sad Dog TikTok where there are dogs that need to be adopted or dogs that are left in the middle of nowhere and someone goes and rescues them.And I just don't understand how you can do that to a dog, you know what I'm saying? Just, ah, I don't want this anymore and it makes me feel like if you can do that to a dog, you can do it to a kid. I don't know what type of a hot take is that, a hot take you're going to get shredded, but I agree, I agree.

I think for some of my 10 seconds every once in a while Imight do a hot take, this is my hot take. Alright, if you can get rid of a dogin the middle of nowhere and just drop a dog off, I think that you wouldprobably do that to a kid and you probably need your license suspended, okay, Paytonwill take a little far, she would, she, this is a subject for her is verysensitive but that's my hot take. Yeah, that's kind of what I got for my 10seconds this week, nothing crazy, I was just thinking about it because onTikTok it's all I've been seeing and I need to get off of it. On a happiernote, I bought some new shirts that I like, that's about it.

Alright, let's get into today's episode and I hope everyoneenjoys. Oh my gosh, I think you should call it "Hottie Hot Takes",okay, it's a Hottie Hot Takes. Am I the hottie? Are you the hottie? You're thehottie. Alright, Garrett Moreland's Hotties. I can't even say that hot takes.

Alright, our sources for this episode are Long CrimeNetwork, ABC1 Eyewitness News, The News and Observer, W News, Find Law, CBS 17,the City of Garner North Carolina, and Court Chatter Life. This episodeincludes discussions of murder and self-harm, so please listen with care.

Now, when it comes to true crime, it's always tempting tocome up with some kind of cause and effect narrative like this person did X andthat's what got them killed. This isn't always a great attitude to have, it'sreally, really easy to slip into victim blaming or make it seem like a murderwas the direct result of someone's poor decision-making. Needless to say, it'snot good. The only person to blame for a homicide is the person who committedit. But also, we get it, the world can be a scary place and it's nice to thinkthat maybe if you just do everything the right way, you'll be safe. But that isnot the case, it is not the world we live in and we will see that in today'sepisode.

It all began with a married couple named Jose Samuel FloresMendoza and Maria Saravia Mendoza. From what I can tell, he went by Samuel, sothat's how I'll refer to him in this episode. The husband and wife were both 34years old, and we are in the year 2013. They had two children, Jorge, who was12, and Jacob, who was 3 years old. The couple was originally from El Salvador,but they immigrated to the United States about 15 years ago to escape violencein their home country. Now, they lived together in a rented duplex in Garner,North Carolina. That's actually a small community just outside of Raleigh.Garner has been around since 1847 when it was a railroad stop.

The Mendozas had just settled into their new home sometimearound late 2011 or early 2012, and about a year went by without incident.Maria's family actually lived nearby, and so they helped out with childcare.They all attended the same church together, and Maria and Samuel both worked inthe kitchen at the Golden Corral restaurant. Golden Corral, classic. Yeah, itwas a gig that they had for years. It was a good setup because their managerwas careful to never schedule them for the same shift, so one of them couldalways be home with the kids, and they were still making good money. They werejust this happy family who didn't have any major cares in the world. But on thenight of January 5th, 2013, Jorge, the 12-year-old, went to his uncle's housefor a sleepover. And this hadn't been planned in advance. That evening, theuncle got a sudden impulse to pick up Jorge. He thought it was because he andJorge had plans at their church the next day, but that moment of intuition mayhave actually saved Jorge's life. So the uncle swung by the duplex, picked uphis nephew, and said hi to the rest of the family, except for Samuel, who wasworking a late-night shift that night.

So, while Maria and 3-year-old Jacob were home together,Samuel shut down the restaurant, and afterward, he kindly offered a ride hometo his coworkers. He got back to the duplex a little after midnight. Samuelcame inside, then locked and dead-bolted the door behind him. He needed to eatand then unwind before he went to bed. So he sat on a couch in the living room,watching TV while he had dinner. He actually had a blanket over his shoulders;he was just being very cozy. His wife, Maria, was in the kitchen at this time,putting the last few finishing touches on the rest of his dinner when suddenlytheir front door swung open. A pair of home invaders had literally kicked itdown. Samuel couldn't make out their faces; they were wearing masks, gloves,and hairnets, presumably to prevent them from leaving DNA behind. And if hewanted to ask who they were and why they were there, he never got the chance.The two strangers opened fire with a .45 caliber handgun and an AK-47.

Oh, jeez, man. They come into the house and they just beginfiring wildly, showering the room in bullets. The two invaders didn't have toaim at Samuel specifically; they still struck him 16 times. He was shot. Crap.And he didn't survive the attack.

Now, once Samuel was dead, the two intruders marched throughthe duplex, checking to see if anyone else was there. And each time they walkedinto a new room, they just did the same thing. They would just unleash a streamof bullets, striking furniture, walls, the floors, everything. Some of theirshots even went through the walls into the other duplex unit. The Mendoza'sneighbors actually heard everything, and they took cover, diving underfurniture. I mean, you can imagine how scary that would be.

Yeah, thankfully, they didn't hit anyone in the otherhousehold. But the Mendoza family wasn't so lucky. When the gunmen got to thekitchen, Maria was in the doorway with her back to them, facing the stove. It'sunclear how she hadn't noticed the earlier gunfire or if she was just trying torun or hide away. Either way, we know she was facing away from them when shegot struck. They shot her fatally seven times. They then turned their attentionto the only other person who was home, 3-year-old Jacob. Oh, get, no way. He'sobviously too young to understand what was going on. He watched the twomurderers as they pointed their guns at him and they pulled the trigger. No.There's a special place in hell for people like that. Well, luckily, when theygo to pull the trigger, they're either out of bullets or one of the guns hadjammed. Later on, the police weren't sure exactly what happened, but theimportant detail is the gun didn't go off. They did attempt to shoot, but itdidn't go off. Again, it was like fate had intervened to save the Mendoza kidsbetween the uncle's sudden impulse to have Jorge come over for the night andthis misfire. Now, it was uncanny, but the killers left 3-year-old Jacob homealive, alone with his parents dead.

So, meanwhile, the neighbor who lived in the next unit overran out of his duplex. He got outside just to see one of the shooters fleeing,and the killer climbed into a vehicle and drove off. It was too dark to makeout any of his features. The neighbor didn't even see what color the vehiclewas or if it was even a car or a truck. But he knew now that the shooters weregone. So he went into the Mendoza's unit to see if they were okay, and he couldtell at a glance that they weren't. Samuel was dead in the living room, and3-year-old Jacob had left his room and was now hugging his dead dad. Oh, mygosh, that is heartbreaking. He was desperate for his father to wake up. Mariawas still lying on the floor of the kitchen. She was also dead.

So the neighbor took Jacob away from the scene, wrapped himin a soft blanket. But by now, someone had called 911. Lots of people on thestreet had overheard the gunfire. The police responded to the scene right away.They were there by 12:30 a.m. Just as the neighbor was walking Jacob out of thehouse, police had arrived. Once they realized that Maria and Samuel had bothbeen killed and Jacob was an orphan, they arranged to call Maria's sisterJulia. By now, they'd done some preliminary investigation. It was about 4 inthe morning, and they didn't want to relay the bad news over the phone. Soinstead, the officials just told her there'd been some kind of accident. Shehad to get to the hospital for Jacob's sake.

Julia's first thought when she gets this call from police isthat this is just strange. If Jacob was hurt or sick, Maria, her sister, wouldhave called her. Later on, she was called to testify about that night, and sheexplained her confusion using an interpreter. And I said it should be, it mustbe a mistake, it must be some other child named Jacob. Why don't we go check atthe apartment?

So she rushed over to Samuel and Maria's place, and she wasshocked to find it was surrounded by police officers. They had yellow cautiontape stretched all around the property. It prevented her and everyone else fromcoming inside. That's when she learned the horrible news. Her sister and herbrother-in-law had been murdered. The officers reassured her that the children,her nephews, were fine. Jacob was at the hospital waiting for someone to takehim home, which was where she was originally supposed to go. But she rushedover to the house, and Jorge was still with his uncle, who'd been notifiedabout the murders.

The detectives gave Julia a ride to the clinic so she couldpick Jacob up. But they also made her wait a while before she could see him.The police didn't want to upset Jacob, or at least not make him more upset thanhe already was. So Julia had to pull herself together first before she couldsee him. Once she could act fairly normal without bursting into tears, she wentto see her nephew right away. He said he thought his older brother Jorge hadmurdered his parents. So, three-year-old initially tells her. So I'm not surehow exactly, but the police obviously eliminate Jorge as a suspect prettyquickly. Three years old, like, are you that coherent? I don't know. I justthink it was more like at three, he's trying to put the pieces together, andthe only other person in the family was his brother. So maybe he thought hisbrother had done it. I mean, he's three, what I'm saying? Three, that would bevery hard to hold up in court to anything. Do you understand what's going on?And police take it with a grain of salt. They're like, okay, we can check in a12-year-old Jorge, but yeah, he was with the uncle. The uncle provides thealibi.

So their best guess was that Jacob was just confused. Maybethe real killer looked like Jorge, maybe it was a pre-teen or a teenage Latinoboy. Beyond that, there weren't any clear leads. Samuel and Maria werewell-liked, they didn't have any enemies. Their family members couldn't imaginethat anyone would ever want to hurt them. Also, the fact that they went in andshot so much, that doesn't even make sense, feels like a hit, yeah. But yeah,it just seems weird. They were spraying bullets everywhere too, just go in andI don't know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you would think they would go in,shoot the person, leave, right? Not cause the commotion they did. Well, evenstranger, the police actually matched the bullets from their murders to anothershooting earlier that year.

So when they run the ballistics, they're like, wait a second.That shooting earlier that year, a known gang member was shot by rivals fromanother group. But Samuel and Maria weren't involved with gangs. There was noclear connection between the two crimes other than the bullets. So once theirmurders made the news, a person of interest came forward, someone who, to allappearances, had nothing to do with Maria or Samuel. He was a member of a gang,a man named David Gonzalez, but on the streets, he was known as Sancho, and hebelonged to a gang known as the Very Dangerous Mexicans, or the VDM for short. Okay,Sancho, unique name, yes. Don't come after me. I mean, it's just like, okay, tothe point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To the point. It is a little scary, I'm not goingto lie.

So Sancho told the police he recognized the duplex that theMendozas had been killed in, as he should have; he used to live in it. Sanchohad moved out just a year earlier. Apparently, his neighbors didn't get alongwith him, and they complained to the landlord until he was pushed out of theduplex. And afterward, the new renters were Maria and Samuel. Sancho explainedthat for years now, he'd been caught in the middle of a gang war. So he tellsthe police, like, yeah, I'm involved with these people.

A rival group called the Super Very Dangerous Mexicans, arival group called SE-13, had already made multiple attempts on his life. Okay,at one point, they even broke into his unit, that duplex, to threaten him. Heassumed that his SE-13 enemies had sent someone to kill him, and they made themistake of going to his old address, meaning, of course, Samuel and Mariadidn't have any enemies. The murderers didn't care about the couple at all;they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That, I mean, that makessense.

So this is what initially police gather. They're like, okay,these bullets are connected to gangs, and then they realize that a member ofone of these gangs used to live in this duplex. They bring him in, and he'slike, yeah, those people were probably trying to kill me, and they just went inand shot everyone in that house, and I moved out of there. It's funny, wouldn'tyou, I mean, maybe they wouldn't, wouldn't you think they would double-checkand be like, okay, let's maybe not make sure the person we want to kill ishere? I mean, I don't, okay, I'm not going to say like I know really how gangswork, but those people could have not even really known who they were going tokill; they could have just been told to go kill, you know what I mean? SoSancho even provided the name of the person who made that previous attempt onhis life. It was a SE-13 gang member who he called Trigger.

When the detectives talked to Trigger's girlfriend, she wasall too happy to cooperate. She gave the investigators an entire list of names,the ex-girlfriend, not girlfriend. It was all people who were part of the gangSE-13, all of whom had collaborated with Trigger, all of whom probably wantedSancho dead. From there, it was just a matter of working their way down thelist. Pretty early on, the investigators focused on a teenager named IsraelVasquez. When they searched Israel's home, they found two guns and a bunch ofammunition. The firearms were a .45 caliber handgun and an AK-47. Surprise,surprise, the exact same kind of weapons that had killed Maria and Samuel.

It looked like someone had tried to scratch off the guns'serial numbers to make them harder to identify. It turned out these guns werestolen, but ballistics tests still proved these were the murder weapons. Andthe guns and bullets weren't all the police found in Israel's house. When theyheaded toward the attic, they found two men hiding in his home, like they werehoping to avoid the detectives entirely. And one of them was Israel himself. Hewasn't actually in the attic yet when police charged his home; detectives foundhim standing on a chair in his closet, which had a door to the attic in it,like he was midway trying to get into the attic to hide when they caught him.He told the police he was only trying to hide because he had some marijuanastashed up there, but they didn't buy it.

The other man who actually made it into the attic was his15-year-old nephew, Jonathan Sanon. Fifteen, man, that is so young, gettingwrapped up with the wrong people. So both of the men, or I mean, the18-year-old boy, was arrested and charged with the murders. Now, Jonathan wasonly 15, and he'd had a rough life up until this point. For a big chunk of hisearly childhood, Jonathan's father was in prison, and he and his mom would govisit him regularly. Okay, but in spite of that, Jonathan was actually a goodkid. He attended church, he rarely got into trouble, although he and his motherdid live in a trailer surrounded by poverty and drug dealers. Every day,Jonathan avoided the bad influences around him. When Jonathan was eight, hisfather was released, and he was so excited. His dad made all kinds of planswith him, they even attended some Boy Scout events together. It seemed likeeverything was turning around; the family was healing. But it didn't take longfor their relationship to take a dark turn.

They only got to spend about a year together beforeJonathan's father went missing without a word. Nobody knew what happened tohim, but Jonathan's family had a theory: they believed he was murdered. Theculprits may have been involved with a drug cartel. So afterward, Jonathan kindof sank into a deep depression. Again, this is a pretty young age still. Hebegan sleeping with a knife under his pillow, presumably. He told people heneeded to defend himself if whoever had murdered his dad came after him. Overtime, his dark feelings grew worse. He tried to kill himself multiple times,and the first attempt was when he was only 10 years old. He spent some time ina mental health hospital and missed weeks of third grade. That's so young, sosad. But it didn't seem to help very much; he was still deeply troubled when hegot out, and he continued his attempts. And to make matters worse, from thatpoint onward, it was like Jonathan couldn't get away from the gang activity.

I'm not really sure why these guys were interested in him; Imean, Jonathan was still an elementary student, he was just a little boy. Butfor whatever reason, members were recruiting him pretty aggressively andviolently attacking him when he tried to keep his distance. When he was 13years old or so, he moved to Houston, Texas; that's where his dad's side of thefamily lived. The hope was that a change of scenery might help him turn hislife around.

Instead, gang members there kept bothering him even in hisnew home. He'd be minding his business, shopping, or hanging with his friends,and older boys would start harassing him or try to pick fights. One time, abunch of guys jumped him at a grocery store and beat him up. A few days later,one of them showed up at his house, hoping to continue the brawl. So Jonathanends up moving back to Garner, North Carolina, to be close to his mom. Butagain, it doesn't help. I feel like it would be so hard if you're wrapped up ina gang and you're trying to get out of it or escape it. You'd have to, like,move across the country. Well, and even then, it's like it followed him, youknow? You'd have to go, like, Alaska or something. I don't know, that's tough.

And by the summer of 2012, someone shot Jonathan. Okay. Buthe survived. But it felt like it didn't matter what he did; gang violencefollowed him around. It probably didn't help that his mother's brother wasIsrael Vasquez, and his uncle Israel was also a member of SIR 13. I also wantto note, even though Israel and Jonathan were uncle and nephew, they were veryclose in age. So Israel felt more like a peer or a friend, yeah, than anauthority figure to him. And they also lived right across the street from oneanother. They hung out after school and on the weekends. So you're kind ofunderstanding how he's getting wrapped up in this. And when Jonathan had movedto Texas, Israel actually visited him there regularly. So those guys who weretrying to recruit Jonathan likely weren't just strangers; they were probablyfamily and friends.

By the time he was 15, Jonathan had finally joined the SIR13, too. It seems he'd given up on trying to keep them out of his life. Nopoint in fighting the inevitable now. He and Israel and the other members werethe violent ones, attacking the people they'd identified as enemies, likemembers of VDM. A few weeks before the Mendozas were murdered, Jonathan wasinvolved in another shooting. This time around, he didn't kill anyone; he onlyinjured his target, shooting him in the ankle. But he was definitely on a badpath, which is... I mean, we always say these cases are so gray, and this is sotragic because Jonathan's childhood was destroyed because of senseless gangviolence, and now he's the one perpetrating that cycle onto other people.

Around 2011, Jonathan's gang decided to go after Soncho. I'mnot sure why exactly, but they attacked him in his home. It was the sameincident Soncho later told the police about, where Trigger broke into hisduplex, and afterward, he moved out. But Jonathan and his accomplice didn'tknow that when they decided to kill Soncho, they went to the old address theyalready knew about, and by accident, they ended up attacking the Mendozafamily. Now, oddly, Samuel Mendoza didn't even look like Soncho. This is whatyou were saying earlier. It's unclear if Jonathan knew his target very well,though. Maybe when he broke in, he had no idea this was the wrong family; hejust saw a Latino man in the living room and opened fire. Either way, it's notclear why he and his accomplice killed Maria. Even if they thought she wasSoncho's wife or girlfriend, they should have known she had nothing to do withtheir gang war. And then, also pulling a gun on a three-year-old... Again, it'shard to say what Jonathan and the other shooter were thinking. Neither one everexplained their motives, and frankly, there's nothing they could say to justifytheir actions.

That's a good point, because they pulled a gun on thisthree-year-old. Don't you think at that point, they go, "Maybe we have thewrong house." Yeah. And instead, they went probably full steam ahead, as"We're going to kill this three-year-old too." So, obviously, theyarrest Jonathan, and the police interrogate him for 8 hours. Initially, herefused to talk at all. He said he wanted to speak to a lawyer, and the policeleft him alone while they waited for an attorney to arrive. The minutes tickedby, and Jonathan paced in his cell. He was nervous during that time. He musthave had second thoughts about waiting for counsel because at one point, afterhe'd been on his own for about 40 minutes, he knocked on the door to get thepolice's attention.

He wanted to talk after all, and the detectives weresurprised. They asked if he was sure. Can you go back? Yes, you can go back. Ithink you just have to be read your rights again and go through the wholeprocess. You have to be coherent, or the cops have to make sure you're saneenough to say no, "I want to talk to you now." Yeah, okay. And thecops do follow protocol here. They're not like, "Okay, let's go."They say, "Wait, are you sure? Sure. Are you sure you don't want a lawyer?"They explain the legal implications of giving a statement now, and Jonathansaid, "Yeah, it's fine. Like, I want to talk." He agreed to signpaperwork saying he was waiving his right to an attorney. Then he confessed toknowing a bit about the murders, but only because, according to him, he'd heardthrough the grapevine. Jonathan said he didn't have anything to do with thehome invasion or the double homicide. He just knew the people who had done it.

When the detectives asked him about the layout of theMendoza's duplex, he described it perfectly. He even drew a sketch that matchedthe real unit's blueprints. Jonathan claimed he only knew these details becausethe real killers had been bragging to him. But the detectives are like,"Dude, we don't buy your story.” That's hard. How do you know the layoutof a home by somebody telling you? Someone will tell me the cross streets of aplace and where a restaurant is, and I still get lost. Not to mention the gunsused in the murder were found in a house you were hiding in the attic of. Yeah,there's no way they were bragging about, "The kitchen was on the rightside, the living room was on the left. No, right."

So the detectives pressured Jonathan to give better answers,and eventually, he changes his story. He admitted, "Okay, fine. I knowthese details because I was in the Mendoza home." But he's like, "Ididn't kill anyone. I was just there. I was a bystander." It was the mosthe would ever confess, but it was enough for the police. He knew so much aboutthe duplex's layout, he'd been found with the murder weapons. It was enough forthem to charge him with the homicides. And he's obviously not ratting out who didit. No, yeah.

So in 2015, Jonathan went on trial. When prosecutorspresented the evidence against him, they also read some rap lyrics that he'dwritten before his arrest. This reminds me of the court battle that is going onwith, I forget who, another rapper. Um, it's blanking me. I should know, butthey keep reading his song lyrics out in court. And if you watch TikToks anddifferent videos on it, it's hilarious. Like, it matches his crimes. And Imean, yes and no, but it's just hilarious them reading these lyrics. And notlike in a song format, it just, it's kind of awkward and funny. I get it.

In his lyrics of his rap, he described how he'd quote"kick in the door and kill people by spraying bullets", in otherwords, he wrote about a homicide that was strikingly similar to Samuel andMaria's murders. But that wasn't the only evidence they brought against him.The investigators had identified on their own another conspirator, a getawaydriver who testified against Jonathan. Okay, he said Jonathan and his uncleIsrael broke into the Mendoza home because they thought a rival gang memberlived there. He confirmed the murders were premeditated and that he drove thekillers there and then took them home afterward. So this guy says, "Yeah,not only was it Jonathan, but it was Israel." I'm guessing he got completeimmunity for them. Oh yeah, I didn't read anything about him getting any timefor this.

So, thanks to evidence like this, Jonathan was found guiltyof both murders plus lesser charges related to burglary and stolen weapons.During his sentencing hearing, Maria's sister Julia talked about how it felt tolose her sister and Samuel. She said she was afraid of everyone now all thetime. She couldn't find a babysitter for her 12-year-old daughter because thatfear was always in the back of her mind. 100%. I mean, if someone can just kickyour door down and spray you down with bullets and you had absolutely no tie tothem and no reason, yeah, that's terrifying. This is what I was going to say atthe beginning of the episode.

I've been watching a lot of different YouTube videos aboutthis, the different types of front doors and locks, and how big of a differenceit makes on someone kicking it down. There's doors where you kick it once, thatthing is opening right up, and there's doors where they're kicking it 15, 20times, and nothing's opening. And I don't know, it's just, it's kind of crazyhow big of a difference that stuff makes. Also makes me realize I don't knowwhat type of door we got. She even says that, like, she understands that nobodyhas a good reason to hurt her, but nobody had a good reason to hurt her sisterand brother-in-law either. Yeah, that didn't stop them from getting murdered.And she focused on how much their two sons, Jacob and Jorge, were still strugglingwith their parents' deaths.

The trial took place three years after the homicides, so bynow Jacob was six years old. But Julia explained how he was still devastatedand lost because of what he went through. Oh, I can't imagine the trauma, justhorrible. Again, she used a translator for her testimony. So according toJulia, he actually spoke openly about the murder he'd witnessed, like thetraumatic event was blazed in his three-year-old mind. The six-year-old, yes,wow. He also became frightened whenever Julia or her brother left home, likesomething bad might happen if they weren't around. PTSD, sure.

His older brother Jorge was also trying to cope. After thistime, he was struggling too.Top of FormJulia tried to help Jorge by getting him into therapy, but he just keptshutting down her efforts. He insisted he was fine, even though to allappearances, he wasn't. So this may be the most tragic element of this entirestory. Jonathan's whole life changed for the worse when his father wasmurdered. Right up until that point, he'd been a pretty sweet, innocent boy.And now two more little boys were in the same exact situation, lost withouttheir parents, dealing with these big feelings of grief and anger. The crazypart is the family wasn't even in a gang or involved in drugs. They were justliving there, yeah. And all of this is happening to these boys at an age whenthey shouldn't have to grapple with that kind of loss at all. I hope they wereable to get the support they needed so the cycle didn't continue with them.

So Jonathan was sentenced to two life terms without thepossibility of parole. Okay, when he learned he'd be going away to prison forthe rest of his life, he only had one request. He asked the judge if he couldhug his mother, but the judge declined to give him permission. Not because hewanted to be cruel, but because courtrooms had strict rules about that sort ofthing. He did say Jonathan could ask the bailiff if it was okay with him. AndI'm not sure how that conversation went.

A year later, his uncle and alleged conspirator IsraelVasquez faced a jury too for his role. But even though they heard a lot of thesame information, they came to a very different conclusion. It seems theydidn't totally buy the prosecutor's arguments against Israel. The getawaydriver testified against him, the same guy who'd been the star witness againstJonathan. But Israel's lawyers did a good job of undermining his credibility.Before he supposedly decided to come clean, he changed his story a lot. Givenhis history of lying, there was no real reason to think he was telling thetruth.

Now without his testimony, there was nothing definitivelyputting Israel at the scene of the crime except for the fact that his guns werethere. Okay, except for the fact that his guns, that he owns, and his housewere there. But nah, he probably wasn't there, right? So the court still foundhim guilty on stolen gun charges and acquitted him for the murder. So he walkedfree with a sentence of time served.

So to date, Jonathan is the only person who's been convictedfor Maria and Samuel's murders. That's even though there were clearly twoshooters. There was no way Jonathan could have aimed and fired both those gunssimultaneously. And I do want to note that since his conviction, Jonathan'sbeen working his way through the appeals process. In 2018, he managed to gethis sentence thrown out. In simple terms, this means he was still consideredlegally guilty of the murders, but he convinced the courts to reconsider thosetwo life terms without parole.

During the new hearing, the prosecutors argued hard againstgiving him a more lenient penalty. They pointed out that during his time inprison, Jonathan still hadn't been able to stay away from gang activity. Hejoined a prison gang, and he had tattoos to prove it. Ultimately, the judgeupheld the original ruling. Jonathan was stuck with his two life sentences andno parole.

As of today, he's still in prison serving his time. It'sunclear to me if he ever distanced himself from those prison gangs or if he'sstill caught up in the cycle of violence. And that brings us back to the pointI opened this episode with: Jonathan made his choices, but Samuel and MariaMendoza didn't do anything wrong. They rented a duplex; they probably didn'tknow the previous owner was being targeted by a violent gang. Even if they didrealize that, they had no reason to think their address would put them indanger, especially an entire year later. They kept their doors locked, theystayed out of trouble. There's nothing they did that a reasonable person couldargue was wrong. Anyone would have made the same choices, which can be reallyunsettling.

I feel like, and I don't know the rules and regulationsbehind this, but I feel like if you know someone from a gang member is livingat your duplex and then they move and someone else is coming in, I feel likestuff like that should have to be disclosed. I don't think it does unlessthere's rules around people who have died, but I don't think there's rules suchas that. Well, I added in that I couldn't find whether or not they knew; thereis a chance they were told, but it had been a year. Like, at this point, theyprobably weren't thinking anything was going to happen. You would what the...Yeah.

So sometimes the world can be a violent place. Everyone, tosome extent, wants to tell themselves they'll be okay so long as they just keeptheir doors locked, they don't share identifiable information with strangers.You know, if you take basic steps to protect yourself, nothing bad will happen,yeah. And majority of the time, I think that's true. But clearly, the Mendozafamily showed this isn't always the case. And maybe we'd all benefit fromfocusing less on questions about what the victim could have done or what theyshould have done differently. Instead, let's make a point of appreciating thepeople we have, the time we get with them. You never know when it might beabruptly cut short.

And that is the case of Samuel and Maria Mendoza. I hatewhen they, like, they weren't involved in anything at all. They were justchilling, they were just living their life, and they got brutally killed, mhm.And then the kid lost his family, and then that's just trauma, and that's justgoing to continue to snowball forward. Like, it's not just as simple as"Oh, two people got killed." No, it's never just as simple as that.The trauma of being in the house when your parents were killed, yep. And thenthe trauma of being at your uncle's house while the rest of your family wasgoing through this traumatic thing, and you're a survivor. Like, there's somuch wrapped up in this, I know.

All right, you guys, that was our case, and we will see younext time with another episode. Stay safe out there.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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