MURDERED: Marina Ramos

24:45And Esther says that Marina and the girls drove away with a man named Fernando. And while she doesn't know much about this guy, she does remember what he looked like. She's even able to give enough of a description for an artist's rendering of him to be made. He has dark hair, like it's like swooped to the side, glasses, full face. And she said he spoke with some sort of accent, which made her think that he was either from Ecuador or maybe Costa Rica. And she'd seen Marina with him before, which is how she had one more tidbit to give Lori. She said that he always wore a suit, always. Like even if it was 108 degrees outside, this dude is in a suit.

25:27Ashley Flowers:Did he happen to like to wear Nikes with his suits? She didn't know anything about what kind of shoes he wore or even his height. But she remembers the four of them leaving in a black SUV headed for Ontario, California, which is just east of L.A., where she thinks Fernando lived at the time. But after that, she never saw or heard from Marina again. Margarita told us it's not like they never wondered what happened to Marina. She says they even went out driving, searching for her in Bakersfield way back when. But she was just hoping that her sister was okay wherever she ended up. So she's last seen in August?

26:09Ashley Flowers:Right. So where was she between August and December then of that year? Well, that is making the assumption that Marina Ramos is really the Mojave Desert Jane Doe. Remember, fingerprints came back to another name. OK, but like what are the odds? I know. You have to be sure in a situation like this. So she asked Esther to send her some photos of Marina from the late 80s just to compare to the photos of the victim at the crime scene. We actually have the photos that Esther sent. And these pictures do give Lori enough of a gut feeling to move full steam ahead, which will mean doing DNA testing to compare and be 100 percent sure.

26:50But the truth of the matter is even if Marina turns out not to be her Jane Doe, Lori by that point was so invested. And she, just as much as anything, wanted to figure out what happened to this Marina woman and to her two babies who by all accounts went missing around the same time as their mother. And if she is found dead in the desert, if it turns out to be her, Lord only knows what that means for her baby girls. Now, luckily, Marina's oldest daughter, the one that stayed back in Puerto Rico, Maria, she is still safe and sound and accounted for. She is almost 40 when Lori gets in touch with her and asks her for a DNA sample, which she tells her will help in both the ID of her mother and the search for her missing sisters.

27:36Ashley Flowers:Do they have the same dads, though? Well, that's still a big question mark. But if not, it's not really going to interfere with finding them via DNA since they all, we know, have the same mother. Right. So in December 2022, that is when the first domino falls. The Arizona State Crime Lab calls Lori to share that they have confirmed Jane Doe is Marina Ramos. By this point, Lori has already been working with all the other available DNA databases trying to locate her two daughters. But this confirmation gives Lori the full authority to own this case. I mean, this is hers, her jurisdiction. So she launches a brand new homicide investigation in early 2023, coming at it totally fresh now that she can put a name to her victim.

28:27I mean, she rereads the whole case file with this new lens. And she also sends off several items of evidence for new testing, things like the Coke bottle to see if they can get higher quality fingerprints. and that unknown biological material that was found during Marina's autopsy, which reveals now a mixed DNA profile, half of which is male and good enough for CODIS. But of course, there are no hits in CODIS. No, that would be too easy. No matches for now. So Lori then checks with Social Security officers to make sure that the daughter's Social Security numbers have never been used. And when she gets confirmation that they haven't, she gets official missing persons reports with age progression images filed for Elizabeth and Jasmine via NCMEC.

29:19And going off Esther's description, the Mojave County Sheriff's Office blasts out the artist's rendering of the Fernando Guide to local media and on social media. And that spreads outside of the Kingman-Mohave area. Within weeks, a tip comes into dispatch over in Phoenix, Arizona. And the tipster says that they not only know who killed Marina, but they also know where Marina's daughters were taken after her murder.

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30:51The anonymous tipster says that a man named Fernando Coronel killed Marina, and then her daughters were taken to L.A. and left in a park. Now the fact that in this tip this guy's name is Fernando makes Lori feel like there has to be something to this. Except she quickly learns that there probably is no Fernando Coronel, at least not one that she can find anywhere who would be the right age. Like it's a fake name. So Lori follows up with Cousin Esther, seeing if she recognizes the last name or remembers anything more. And listen, she never knew Fernando's last name. But like I said, it very well could have been a fake name because she tells her that one time when they were like, you know, together with him, she did hear somebody call Fernando David.

31:42Now, the only other thing she knew is that this Fernando David has ties to both Bakersfield and Phoenix. I mean, there's the Arizona tie she's been searching for. Yes. Even with that information, Lori has not been able to confirm Fernando, a.k.a. David, his identity or his location. And I am just going to start calling him Fernando David because this is about the time that another Fernando enters the picture. So Marina's sister, Margarita, calls Lori and says that she has started hearing from family members that the father of the youngest baby, Jasmine, is a man named Fernando, but not Fernando David.

32:26This Fernando does not match that sketch, and he has a different last name, one that I agree that we wouldn't use. So instead, I'm going to call this Fernando, Fernando Dad, because Lori tracks him down and he says that, yes, he and Marina were together for some time. In fact, he thinks that he was probably the father of both of her younger two children. And they were all living together in the summer of 1989. He says everything was great until Marina and her daughters vanished. And he didn't report them missing either? No. Why? I wish I knew. And his story is strange for sure. But he said that sometime around August or September, he had to go to Mexico for a death in the family.

33:17And then when he got back, Marina was packing up to leave because she said that there had been a disaster in Puerto Rico, an earthquake, he thinks, and she and the girls had to go. He says that two men in a red car came to pick them up, and then he just never sees them again. Do we believe him? Maybe. I mean, he describes one of the men as being 5 '10 with short hair and looking like he just got out of the joint, he says.

33:46Ashley Flowers:Doesn't sound like Fernando David in his suit, though. No, no. Because he was like fancy. Lori even shows him the composite sketch of Fernando David, and he's like, nope, that's not the guy that Marina left with in the red car. But he also says that he didn't get a good look at the other guy because the other guy stayed in the car. But here is a weird twist that we uncovered in our reporting. While he told Lori that he didn't know who picked up Marina, Fernando's dad told Marina's family something completely different. He tells them that the person who picked up Marina was her cousin, William Kanonis.

34:25And William, by the way, is in prison for murder. Oh. Now, before you get too excited, Lori looked into William. And yes, he is in prison for the murder of his mother-in-law. And yes, he did leave his mother-in-law on a dirt road. Okay, I'm like, check and check. But he was in jail in 1989. So it probably wasn't him who picked her up. Marina, I mean. And it certainly wasn't William who left her body in the desert.

34:56Ashley Flowers:But, okay, sure. Doesn't answer why Fernando Dad is telling two different stories. I have no idea why. I have no idea why he would be covering for William or making it up about William. But Fernando Dad's stories might not all be lies or misdirection or whatever. because investigators looked up natural disasters that happened in August or September of 1989 in Puerto Rico. And lo and behold, on September 18th of that year, Hurricane Hugo made landing. So if this story is true, that would put Marina still in the Bakersfield area in September, which now that would be the last sighting of her instead of when Esther saw her leave in August.

35:42Ashley Flowers:And did Fernando Dad have any sort of like violent or criminal history? So, I mean, he had a assault with a deadly weapon charge from 1989. He told Lori, our detective, that it stemmed from a night out when he hit a friend for making a disparaging comment about his mom. But Lori says that the charging county had purged the court record. So by the time she's learning about all of this, she couldn't go back and confirm his story. Now, before leaving, after Lori talks to Fernando Dad, she gets his DNA and his prints. And fast forward, it does not match their evidence. And they still can't use any, like, databases because of the print quality, right?

36:22Yeah, for DNA, we've got the codas and stuff. But for the prints, we can't use APHIS or anything. Because they're just, like, partial and, like. Yeah, and Lori had even tried getting better prints lifted. in June of 2025, she called an FBI agent in Phoenix trying to enhance the prints. Because like she's fairly confident that the Coke bottle is related, probably just because, I mean, I said - There's nothing else out there. Exactly. So anyways, this agent ends up like tapping somebody in the Secret Service, like with this task because they're better equipped for fingerprint enhancing. They get her some pretty decent prints to work with, like good enough that she is able to put them into APHIS.

36:58Oh, wow. But it's not like luck that she's making breakthroughs in this case that was dormant for 30 years. She is putting in the work, pulling out every stop, using every resource that she has available to her. I mean, she is so persistent, in fact, that Lori jokes that the analysts at the crime labs probably roll their eyes when she calls. But like it keeps paying off. So she keeps doing it. But even when the prints go to APHIS, there is still no match in the system. Now, this whole time behind the scenes, she has been working with every DNA database as well that she can think of to get Marina's oldest daughter's swabs entered and tested.

37:38And in August 2025, she gets her first hit for one of the missing daughters. The match is to a woman named Tina Mangum, who is alive, who looks to be a half sister. Lori looks her up and sees that she is the correct age range and she can barely contain her excitement. Like there are six phone numbers listed for Tina. And of course, she goes one by one. One is bad. Two is bad. Three is bad. She goes through all five. And on the sixth try, a woman picks up. And this woman confirms that she and her older sister, Melissa, were adopted at a really young age. So young that they have no memory of their birth parents.

38:25And the story she tells about how they came to be adopted is wild. And it gives validity to that tip that they had gotten out of Phoenix, the one that said Fernando Coronel killed Marina and left her two girls in an L.A. park. because what Lori ends up learning is that Tina and Melissa were found on December 14th, 1989 by an employee at Colonia Park in Oxnard, California. Now, this is some like six or seven hours away from the area where Marina's body was found. And it's just two days after she was discovered. But clearly nobody was making the connection. So the story goes like this. At 2.15 p.m., that park employee, his name is Larry, he hears kids crying in the women's restroom.

39:19And he sees a woman walking by and he asks her to go in and have a look. And the woman reports that there are two children on the bathroom floor laying in puddles of water and urine. And there are no adults with them. So Larry takes custody of the girls, calls police. He also reaches out to other park employees, can't find any trace of the parents. And word gets through the neighborhood grapevine. And apparently, police soon get a call from a woman named Mary Lou, who her house, like, overlooks the park. Mary Lou reports that just 15 minutes before the kids were found, she saw this small black pickup with two men and a woman inside.

39:59Now, she described all of them as Latin. She says they park. And one of the men and the woman get out. The woman's carrying a small baby in a yellow blanket. The man is carrying the bigger child who has a dress on. And they walk toward the park out of her sight. Mary Lou says that she only noticed them because the woman was wearing this like knee length red skirt with bright white boots, which like caught her eye. And Mary Lou thinks that she would probably recognize the woman if she saw her again. And I had to like, I don't know why, but when I was like researching this case, I had to stop myself 25 times from thinking like, oh, is there any world where this was Marina?

40:38But I had to keep reminding myself, no, this is two days after she's been found dead. Correct. So the girls get taken to the police station and they are unharmed and healthy, but they're too little to know their own names. Right. The police try, they make up posters, of course, to try and find their parents. But when they can't, the girls eventually go through the system and they end up getting adopted. And the girls actually didn't even know that they were adopted until they were almost done with high school. Like that's when they had found some newspaper clippings at their parents with like old stories about them being found at a park.

41:12We had this happen before. We've done an episode like this before. I don't know why. Like people are like, if you're not going to tell them they're adopted, at least like don't keep the newspaper clippings in the house. Anyways, when Lori tells Tina what she's working on, right? Like this is why I called you. And she's telling Tina that I actually believe you're Jasmine. Tina says she has to pull over her car. She's like driving and she's just like in such shock. She can't handle it. I mean, part of her submitting her DNA to a public database was to get answers about her birth family. But of course, never in a million years did she expect a detective to call her and tell her that the mother she never got to meet had been murdered.

41:53Like, I can't imagine the complex feelings that she had to contend with.

41:57Ashley Flowers:Well, and like not just murdered, but murdered and found around the same time. Like, this all happened together. You were essentially, the only reason you were adopted was because your mom was murdered. Yes. And these are all the complicated feelings that, like, her sister Melissa is about to be hit with when Lori reaches out to her. And by the way, just from here on out, I'm going to call the sisters by their adoptive names, which is what they go by, Melissa and Tina. So unlike her sister Tina, Melissa, who is the older of the two, is hesitant to learn more about their past. Like, she knew Tina had put her DNA into online databases hoping to find their biological parents.

42:36But Melissa, who we also interviewed for this episode, says that part of her is still scared of what she will learn. Plus, she and Tina, she said, had this wonderful upbringing with their adoptive family. I mean, she describes it as idyllic.

42:51Ashley Flowers:Yeah, and like, speaking from experience, like, that can open like a whole just treasure trove of stuff. So she's probably like, just don't burst my bubble. Like, we had a good life. Let it be that. Right. Ever since she was a teenager, when they found out they were adopted, she just figured her parents abandoned them. So saying that this information is a lot to process is the understatement of the century. When you talk about like the complicated feelings, one of the things I keep thinking about is there's probably like, I imagine there's probably been resentment for all these years, right? Like, oh, we were just abandoned in this park.

43:22And to know, to your point, this is why this is like, I cannot imagine. Yeah.

43:28Ashley Flowers:You have to like reorganize all of your thoughts around what you had kind of believed your whole life about everything. But here's the thing. Whether she wants answers or not, some are going to come because using DNA, Lori soon confirms that Fernando dad is actually the biological father of just one of the girls. He is the biological father of Tina, but not Melissa. When she met with him, he thought he was the father of both of them. So who is Melissa's biological dad then? So here is where the mystery takes one final twist and where listeners might be able to help. In 2024, a man was killed by the FBI.

44:16Ashley Flowers:And to this day, the authorities have refused to say why. He was a father, an ex-husband, and a Russian-born American citizen. He just seemed like a lonely guy, and he needed a friend. And he kind of talked about death, didn't he? He talked about, you just never know when it's your time. I'm CNN investigative reporter Isabel Chapman, host of the new limited series, Civilian or Spy. They noticed that he was communicating with people that were of concern to the FBI. Oh my God, Jesus. Head over to the CNN Presents feed and listen to our three-part series, Civilian or Spy, available wherever you get your podcasts.

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46:07So obviously, Melissa's bio dad would be someone that Lori would want to talk to, right? Well, when Lori puts Melissa's DNA into Ancestry, what do you know? Ding, ding, ding. Like, they get a hit. Now, it's not directly to a father, but it's a match to someone who doesn't come up on Tina's profile. Which means it has to be connected to the dad side. Correct. The woman that pops up, her name is Victoria Garcia. So, Lori messages Victoria, thinking she's just like a conversation away from her next big lead. But then something shocking happens. Not only does Victoria Garcia not respond, she blocks Lori.

46:49So Melissa also tries messaging this woman on Ancestry because, you know, they're thinking, okay, you know, a homicide detective sliding into your DMs, like that could spook the average person. But then Victoria blocks Melissa too. Everybody agrees this is suspicious behavior.

47:07Ashley Flowers:Well, yeah, because like, what is this person hiding? You're on Ancestry. Right. You're like there's no other reason to do that if you don't want to find like biological relatives and then you block one that reaches out. Well, and here's the thing, too, is Lori thinks that it's very possible the woman might even be using a fake name on Ancestry, though she can't say for sure. So she is currently trying every means she can think of to find this woman and get to the bottom of what is going on here. And when I say she's trying everything, that is including asking for help from crime junkies. Like this, this is what also she's trying.

47:45Ashley Flowers:Right. And so along with trying to track down the real woman behind this Victoria Garcia name on Ancestry, she is also looking for Crime Junkie's help in IDing Fernando David, the man in the sketch who was the one who picked up Marina and the Girls in August from Esther's Place and who is also likely the same person that that Phoenix tip was about. But aren't we saying that the Fernando David sighting now, at least, isn't actually the last sighting of Marina? I mean, it's not as if we completely believe Fernando dad. But even if everything he's saying is completely true, Fernando David is still somebody who was clearly in Marina's life at the time.

48:29Mm-hmm. And if Fernando David is Fernando Coronel, who the Phoenix tip was about, that tip carries a lot of weight now that we know that her girls really were left in a park near L.A.

48:43Ashley Flowers:Yes. So in all of this, what does Lori think happened? Because we have Marina and her daughters maybe leaving Bakersfield in September. Then months later, Marina is found in Arizona. Then two days later, her daughters are left in a park back in California, but not Bakersfield where they took off. Like they're in a different city altogether. Oxnard, which is like two hours away. So, I don't know. Listen, Lori has thought of like every scenario possible. She says she is open to many possibilities. One of which is maybe Marina left the girls with somebody while she hooked up with some shady characters.

49:20Meaning maybe whoever killed her and whoever abandoned the girls could be completely different and maybe even unrelated parties. I mean, I could see that. But here's the thing I'll say. Melissa told us that she thinks it's likely for the best that she and Tina were left in that women's restroom. She says that she chooses to believe that her mom knew she was in danger and put them in the care of somebody who would get them to safety rather than putting the girls in any harm's way too. I can't help but wonder, though, if the people who abandoned the kids at the park had nothing to do with Marina's murder, why not take them to police or a fire station or something like that instead?

50:04Yeah. Like, even if you didn't want contact with police, like, you know, there's different communities who, like, don't want that. But there are other places you could drop a baby that's not a bathroom.

50:12Ashley Flowers:Yeah. And I was even thinking, like, kind of along those lines, the timing of it feels weird. Like if they are completely unrelated, you only waited like two days after you didn't. Maybe three if she'd been dead 24 hours. Yeah. Since you had last heard from Marina before you're like, got to get these kids off my hands. You're assuming that like she dropped them off right before she went with them. That's true. We've got like missing months here. That's true. That's very true. But then again, then the timing becomes coincidence. Yeah. I mean, I think it's just as likely that the person or people who killed Marina are the same ones who left the girls at the park.

50:46We know we have multiple shoe prints at the crime scene indicating a couple of people are involved. Then we know like a car drives back west. Then we've got witnesses at the park who see, again, multiple people dropping off the girls. Like it feels similar, especially because like, again, I don't know why they're discounting the other prints that I showed you. But like the one print to me looks like a boot print. And when we know the woman was wearing white boots at the park, again, maybe that belonged to a police officer. and that's why they're so willing to like write it off. It's just something that has been like nagging at me.

51:20The thing that doesn't line up with this being the same group of people, though, are the cars. Because detectives think that the tracks at the crime scene are from a mid-sized four-door sedan. But we know that it is a small pickup that is seen at the park.

51:38Ashley Flowers:Yes, but it's not like they would have had to have driven straight there. Like, if it's six or seven hours away, like you said, the girls are found two days after. That's still, like, time in between. Like, who knows what happened between them? I mean, to your point, I'm still wondering where they were for the months before the murder. I think answering that could be the key to this case. Lori is actively working all angles of this case today, from DNA testing and genetic genealogy to, like, boots-on-the-ground investigative work. Like even remember that used piece of toilet paper found at the crime scene?

52:15That got preserved and she resubmitted that for testing. Unfortunately, there wasn't any identifiable DNA still intact on it. So this really is where we're going to need our crime junkies to like step up. Lori has homework for all of us. She is still trying to identify the man and woman seen in Colonia Park in Oxnard, California. The ones who left Marina's daughters there in December 1989. She's also trying to identify and locate the woman Victoria Garcia, who matched with Melissa on Ancestry, who blocked them both. And she's trying to identify who we're calling Fernando David, who may be Fernando Coronel.

52:57She thinks David is his real name and that he works in maintenance at a hospital in the Phoenix area. And again, sometimes goes by Fernando Coronel. Now, this man had ties to Bakersfield, California in the 80s and 90s. So anyone with information about these people or Marina's murder, please contact the Mojave County Sheriff's Office Special Investigation Unit in Kingman, Arizona. The number is 928-753-0753. The extension is 4408. Britt, all of the case developments have been received differently by all of Marina's different family members. Melissa was reluctant to learn more about her past, but she has gone on to meet her newfound relatives.

53:45She even flew to Puerto Rico to meet her grandma, her aunt Margarita, and her oldest sister Maria, who actually just passed away this summer while we were reporting on this case. Esther, who was such a wealth of information to Lori in the beginning of this too, has also since passed. Margarita says that she is eager to get to know her nieces, and she still feels like it is a miracle that they have been found. So for all the mysteries in this case still remaining, I do want to celebrate the answers that have come. In June, Margarita, Melissa, and other family members met with Lori in Arizona, and they visited Marina's gravesite together.

54:25For three decades, her grave marker just read Jane Doe. Might have stayed that way forever. But because of Lori, Marina Ramos got her name back. And who knows? Maybe it will be one of our crime junkies who helps solve this case once and for all. Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

54:54It starts with something small. A light in the sky moving in a way it shouldn't. A sound no one can place. A story someone swears is true, even if no one else believes them. And the more you hear, the harder it gets to explain away. On So Supernatural, we dig into the mysteries that live somewhere between fact, folklore, and the unknown. We follow the stories that make you wonder what else is out there. Listen to So Supernatural wherever you get your podcasts.