[music playing]
REPORTER: The person that kidnapped,
then killed, nine-year-old Laura Arroyo made
no effort to hide her body.
It didn't take investigators long
to make the connection to a reported kidnapping last night.
There was a knock on the door.
The nine-year-old female answered the door.
And by the time the parent got to the door,
the child was gone, and the door apparently was still open.
DON HUNTER: She was laying right in this area here.
Her head was open to the point that you could see her skull.
NARRATOR: The news of what police found in this office
parkway travels quickly, eventually reaching
the doorstep of a father, who refuses
to believe he will never see his little girl again.
Ah, that's a mistake.
It's somebody else.
It's not my-- that's for sure, it's not my little girl.
Going to be somebody else.
She was everything for me, you know, my little girl.
MEDICAL EXAMINER 1: She has several chop injuries
of her head that have gone through her skull
and into the brain.
And then she has 10 of these penetrating
spear-type injuries, several that
have gone through her torso.
They've gone through both lungs, went through the heart.
So all of these injuries are considered to be working
as a group to cause her death.
NARRATOR: Laura was found fully clothed
with no sign of sexual trauma, but a rape kit is
done as a matter of procedure.
Each area that we swab, we usually take a pack of four.
NARRATOR: The swabs are taken in the off chance
sperm could be identified.
As you can see on the screen here,
this is what sperm would look like on such a slide.
This is a control that is nothing but sperm.
And you can see how bright fluorescent red they are.
NARRATOR: When Laura's slides are examined, however,
this is not what the medical examiner sees.
MEDICAL EXAMINER 1: There were no sperm.
No sperm were found on the smear.
NARRATOR: Detectives operate under the assumption
that no sexual assault actually took place.
And the swabs are not sent out for additional testing.
Meantime, detectives begin their digging.
WAYNE MAXEY (VOICEOVER): We felt like it
was probably somebody she knew because there's no sounds.
There's no screams.
Somebody, you know, lured her away from that door
very easily.
NARRATOR: Elizabeth Alcaraz is a playmate of Laura's and had
been outside with her earlier the same evening
she went missing.
Well, those were the steps towards Leona's house,
and she lived right in front.
So we were just sitting there, and we
were just talking and playing.
What became significant in talking
with her is that she told us that Jessica's
dad had walked by.
NARRATOR: Jessica's dad is a man named
Manuel Bracamontes, who was dating the mother
of one of Laura's playmates.
ELIZABETH ALCARAZ: So he passed by.
And the first time, he didn't say anything.
And then a little bit later, he passed by again.
And I believe that's when he pointed towards me,
and he said, your parents are looking for you.
I went and knocked at my door.
And I asked my mom.
I kind of opened the door.
And I said, mom, did you call me?
You know, someone-- a man said that you were looking for me.
She said no.
We thought that was significant.
We felt that was probably his attempt to separate
Laura from the other two girls.
DON HUNTER: This is somebody that we've
got to get a hold of, talk to, find out what he saw.
I think one of the first things when we talked
about that it was the murder of Laura Arroyo
and that he knew her, he kind of said something like,
I've kind of seen her around the neighborhood,
something like that.
And we both kind of went, what?
Because we knew that Laura played with his girlfriend's
daughter, Jessica.
We knew he had been around there and played
with the kids and such.
So he was minimizing, basically.
That's what he was doing, and that
kind of perked our interest.
NARRATOR: Detectives asked Bracamontes
if he was in the neighborhood the night Laura went missing.
He either denied being there when we asked him about it
or came out and told us that he didn't know anything
because he wasn't there.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes' story doesn't
play with what detectives are hearing in the neighborhood.
More than two weeks later, they sit
down again with Bracamontes, this time on their turf.
DON HUNTER: Basically, his alibi was, I was home with my mother.
We did talk to two other men who lived in the area.
As they describe the timing, right at the time
that Laura would have gone downstairs to answer the door
and disappeared, they see his black Jetta
leaving the parking lot.
Almost everyone had a very strong response
to what they thought should happen
to the person that did this.
Many people said they should be killed.
People made physical threats.
"If I ever catch the guy who did this,
I'll do some terrible thing to them."
With Manuel, when we asked him that question,
shrug of the shoulders, look at the ground.
"I don't know.
Maybe go to jail forever."
DETECTIVE (ON RECORDING): Because,
Manuel, we have people that put you there right at that time.
And you haven't told us that.
And you can see the lack of response
from him, just nothing.
And an innocent person, you accuse somebody of something
as horrific as this, they're going
to come out of that seat like a spring under their butt
and deny it.
I have the right to an attorney.
That's what I told you earlier.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes ends the talk, but not before detectives
mention one more thing.
This is the part where I told him we have the search warrant.
What we have is a search warrant,
and we're going to take hair samples and blood samples.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes gets the full workup--
hair, blood.
Even his home and car are searched.
WAYNE MAXEY: We believe that the instrument used
to kill Laura was probably a pickax or Pickmatic
that had a bladed surface on one end, a pick on the other end.
We were going to be looking for any kind
of puncturing and bladed type objects
that could have inflicted these kind of wounds.
NARRATOR: Detectives don't find a murder weapon.
Fibers from one of Bracamontes' sweaters,
however, provides a possible forensic link.
The fiber from one of those sweaters matched the fiber--
one of the fibers found on her clothing.
NARRATOR: The link to Bracamontes is tenuous at best,
and the DA decides to take a pass.
A year has passed since Laura Arroyo was found murdered,
but Chula Vista Police still have
Manuel Bracamontes on the brain and decide to give
their suspect another shot.
Well, I told him I want to clarify some things
in reference to the crime.
NARRATOR: Sergeant Bob Rutledge asks Bracamontes to come down
to the station and hopes that his suspect
might finally fess up.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes still denies being at the apartment
that evening, but he does remember seeing
the nine-year-old that day.
NARRATOR: This contradicts Bracamontes'
earlier statements about not seeing
or really knowing Laura Arroyo.
NARRATOR: Rutledge is hoping a few more minutes
with the suspect might lead to more admissions,
but that doesn't happen.
Actually, the interview ended when his beeper went off.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes ends the interview
and walks out of the police station once again a free man.
Laura's case goes cold and remains that way for 11 years
until a second look at some old evidence
takes everyone by surprise.
MEDICAL EXAMINER 2 (VOICEOVER): These
are sperm cells, which were observed
on the oral swabs from Laura.
There were approximately 10,000 sperm cells.
Once the sperm cells were identified,
I proceeded with DNA testing.
And I was able to generate a DNA profile from the sperm
for a single male individual.
NARRATOR: Hair samples taken from Manuel Bracamontes in 1991
are sent into the lab for comparison.
Only a few days after that was my phone call
to you to indicate that, in fact, the DNA from the semen
was a perfect match to your suspect.
I just couldn't believe it when you told me that.
I was so happy.
And everybody was.
Everybody was happy about that.
NARRATOR: On October 24, DA investigator Robert Marquez
prepares to arrest Manuel Bracamontes.
There's a light, like, a bluish-colored SUV,
Ford Explorer-type vehicle comes-- rounds the corner
and proceeds eastbound.
And he stops right in the middle of the roadway
in front of the residence.
I tell my partner, that's our guy.
NARRATOR: Marquez approaches the car
as it parks outside the home.
And as I did so, I pulled my hand back like this
to expose my weapon and my badge so that he could clearly
see that I was a law enforcement officer
because he didn't know me.
As I approached, I saw him rolling down the window.
As he turns to look at my partner, my partner,
I could hear him say, you're under arrest.
And I could hear--
Bracamontes said something, but he-- and I--
the only word I could hear him say was, what for?
My partner says for murder.
NARRATOR: The suspect takes off.
[honking]
Investigators fire two rounds at the vehicle, but miss.
Bracamontes gets lost in traffic,
and alerts are put out.
The Mexican border crossing, only 4 miles away, is notified.
Chula Vista Police Department, we're
doing a search of different motels and hotels in the city
of Chula Vista to see if maybe, by chance,
he had returned to Chula Vista.
And they located his vehicle in a parking lot.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes is nowhere to be found,
and a tracking device is placed on the car.
Investigators hope Bracamontes will return to the vehicle.
The following morning, he does.
The officers were telling us that the suspect, Bracamontes,
had actually rammed one of our police cars and had completed
a U-turn on the ramp and was now going
to go southbound in the northbound
lanes of the freeway.
NARRATOR: Harris spots the car.
Bracamontes is heading straight at him.
I was determined not to let him go free.
I was not going to let him get away from us.
NARRATOR: Sergeant Harris steps on the gas,
holds onto the wheel, and goes head to head with his suspect.
At the last second, he decided that he didn't want to do that.
So he turned hard right, and that's when his vehicle lost
control, and he rolled it over.
NARRATOR: Bracamontes is taken into custody unharmed
and arrested for the murder of Laura Arroyo.
Additional testing finds trace amounts of Bracamontes' DNA
under the nine-year-old's fingernails and on her neck.
PROSECUTOR (VOICEOVER): How could we
go from no evidence in the case to suddenly
an avalanche of DNA?
Of course, the answer to that is the truth, which is things
have changed, the screening process,
as we know a lot more about screening
evidence for biological DNA than we did back then.
You know, to have the guy over there
who killed my little girl, it--
and you have to stop everything, nothing you can do.
You know, I want-- when I see the guy,
you know, I want to kill the guy.
I want to-- you know.
NARRATOR: On September 2, 2005, the jury
hands down its verdict--
guilty.
Bracamontes now sits on California's death row.