- [Narrator] There is a strange and problematic phenomenon
that can occur when the general public
sees a criminal's face
and neglects to acknowledge the dark acts
that the individual may have committed.
It is evident that social media can be more harmful
than beneficial in various ways,
including when the outward appearance
of an indicted criminal causes a significant crime
to be disregarded and ignored.
More so, we often see physically attractive criminals
being praised and put on a pedestals
because of their accepted features.
When this occurs,
we are often left with an inherent disregard
for the evil that may lurk within their minds.
With the clip you just watched,
this is exactly what has happened.
Actual footage from the trial
of 18-year-old Isabella Guzman.
Though her case occurred back in 2013,
the noteworthy footage from her appearance in court
has recently resurfaced online,
specifically on the social media platform, TikTok.
One would hope that the footage would serve as an example
of a criminal who lacks any remorse whatsoever.
Still the video has instead become infamous
as a result of TikTok users,
finding Isabella's demeanor, cute. (spooky music)
Online, the court footage has been dubbed over
with musician, Ava Max's hit song, "Sweet but Psycho",
implying that Isabella's looks make her worthy of praise.
Since going viral, the video of "Sweet but Psycho",
Isabella Guzman has become the center
of a new TikTok challenge.
One in which young girls who resemble Isabella,
dress up in orange T-shirts to mimic the criminals jumpsuit
and give their best impression
of her infamous facial expressions.
Perhaps the most terrifying part
about the "Sweet but Psycho" challenge
is that those who have participated in it,
do not know anything about the heinous crime committed
by the young woman they are fawning over.
So, what is the story behind this seemingly innocent woman
whose face is plastered all over the internet
for all the wrong reasons?
What is Arapahoe crew?
Today, we are going to be discussing
The Chilling Case Of Isabella Guzman.
The goal of this video is to educate the public
on the horrifying story of a temper gone bad,
and to hopefully stress the importance of understanding
the context of crimes in a documentary style format.
If you enjoy True Crime and Mysteries,
be sure to hit the like button and subscribe.
Now, let's get into it.
Isabella Guzman was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado
with her two biological parents,
Yun-Mi Hoy and Robert Guzman.
shortly after Isabella was born, her parents decided
that the family they had built together
was not meant to last.
As a result, Yun-Mi and Robert ended up getting a divorce
when Isabella was a toddler.
Going through a divorce is difficult for any child,
and for Isabella,
one can assume there was a sense of pain and isolation
that came with watching her mother fall in love again.
Within the first few years
after her parents' initial divorce,
Isabella saw her mother begin a relationship
with a man named Ryan Hoy.
Though, Ryan, was legally Isabella stepfather,
Isabella was never very fond
of her mother's choice to eventually remarry.
Throughout her childhood and early adolescence,
Isabella often argued with her mother.
They became extremely heated with each other to the point
that they concerned those who witnessed these disputes.
When Isabella was around seven years old,
the constant fighting with her mother
had become too much for Yun-Mi and Ryan to handle.
As a result, her mother and stepfather
ended up sending Isabella to go live permanently
with her father for a few years.
During some of her key developmental years,
Isabella was mostly removed
from her mother's care in an effort to diffuse
the inexplicably tension between the two.
At the time, no one could have predicted
how detrimental this decision would turn out to be,
as the divide between Isabella and her mother only expanded
as a result of their separation.
In her late teenage years, Isabella ended up
moving back in with her mother and stepfather,
and returned to a semi-consistent schedule
between time spent at her mother's house
and time spent at her father's.
Though Yun-Mi and Ryan had hoped that the general relations
between Isabella and her mother would improve
as Isabella got older,
they were overall disappointed to find out that time apart
had not made the heart grow fonder.
Rather, Isabella had allegedly become more threatening
and disrespectful toward her mother. (spooky music)
Despite the severity of Isabella's behavior,
everyone in her family assumed that the attitude issues
would eventually pass, but everyone was so very wrong.
(spooky music)
Around midday, on Wednesday, August 28th, 2013,
Yun-Mi received a rather ominous and worrisome email
from Isabella seemingly out of the blue.
Upon reading over the cryptic message meant only for her,
Yun-Mi expressed her growing concern to Ryan.
As Ryan read over the email that essentially stated,
"You will pay," a shiver, went down his spine.
The obnoxiously rude behavior that Ryan had witnessed Yun-Mi
fall victim to over the years, never sat right with him.
He simply couldn't understand how a daughter could be
so incessantly cruel to her own mother
for no apparent reason.
Yun-Mi knew that the verbal abuse she suffered
from her daughter was by no means normal,
but she had never truly believed
that anything would ever come from it.
Anything dangerous, that is.
Nonetheless, as Yun-Mi continue to read
Isabella's threatening email over and over again,
she felt increasingly more nervous
and off-put by the message it conveyed.
Whether it was a result of the years of disturbing arguments
between the two, or just the tone of the email
she had received that day.
Yun-Mi made an important decision.
She would protect herself at all costs.
Yun-Mi picked up the phone and dialed 911,
explaining to the dispatcher that she was concerned enough
with her daughter's behavior,
that she was ready to admit that she needed help
and possibly, protection. (spooky music)
When authorities arrived at the Hoy household,
just moments later, they spoke briefly with Yun-Mi,
who once again relayed the context
of her concerns to the officers.
After gaining a better understanding
of the extremely strained mother and daughter relationship,
the officers made their way inside
to speak directly with Isabella herself.
The conversation was primarily one-sided.
As the police lectured Isabella
on the importance of treating her mother kindly,
and the impact that empty threats
can have on the people involved.
What they didn't know at the time
was that Isabella's threats were anything but empty.
Isabella's conversation with police
ended with the officers expressing the notion that,
ultimately, Isabella was living in her mother's house,
if she didn't shape up soon, her mother could very easily
kick Isabella out for her disrespectful behavior.
So, while Isabella was being chewed out
for her ill-mannered attitude toward her mother,
the ever-present anger within her continued to fester.
(spooky music)
After the police left the Hoy residence,
Yun-Mi decided to do something she rarely ever did.
As she made her way out the door to work,
she called her ex-husband.
After recounting the day's events to him,
Robert reassured Yun-Mi that he would have a talk
with Isabella himself.
Robert was well aware of his daughter's tumultuous
relationship with her biological mother,
but he had not known the full extent
of their more recent disputes.
Not long after Yun-Mi had left for work,
Robert made his way to her home to visit Isabella.
On that afternoon, Robert remarked,
I went to talk to Isabella and we sat down in the backyard,
looking at the trees and the animals.
And I started to talk to her about the respect
that people should have for their parents.
And I was trying to let her know that she should be obedient
to her parents, not rebellious,
that she should try to listen more,
and everything was going fine.
And the conversation, I thought that I made progress,
but obviously it didn't do nothing because hours later,
this thing happened.
The thing that Robert Guzman referenced
was the chilling crime scene
that his daughter had managed to create in her own home,
just three hours after their heart-to-heart talk.
(spooky music)
Yun-Mi came home from work that night, around 9:30 p.m.,
to find her husband, Ryan, having dinner downstairs.
As per her usual routine,
Yun-Mi ascended the staircase in their home,
intending to strip the clothes away from her body
and hop directly into the hottest shower,
her home's plumbing could manage.
When she reached the top of the staircase,
Yun-Mi realize that Isabella's bedroom door had been shut
with Isabella likely locked in behind it.
Thankful for the moment of peace she was given
after a long and emotional day.
Yun-Mi let herself into the bathroom down the hall
and prepared for her shower.
Not long after the shower started running,
Ryan heard something strange
from his position in the dining room, just downstairs.
At first, the only thing Ryan heard,
it was a low thumping sound coming from the direction
of the upstairs bathroom, and then he heard the screaming.
(spooky music)
Suddenly, Ryan realized, with terrifying certainty,
that he had heard the sound of his wife
desperately calling out his name,
followed by barely audible moans for help.
Ryan quickly jumped up from the dining room table
and rushed upstairs as fast as he could.
As he did so,
he understood that the sound of the shower running
was making it hard for him
to hear what exactly was going on in the restroom,
just on the other side of the door.
In a desperate attempt to potentially stop,
whatever was going on inside the bathroom,
Ryan tried as hard as he could to push his way in.
Despite his efforts,
he couldn't make the door budge more than an inch or so,
before it was pushed back against him
with an insane amount of force.
As he tried time and time again,
to muster up the strength to overtake the door,
he caught a glimpse of Isabella.
Her eyes were dull and her expression blank that she managed
to push back against the door with all her might
and successfully close it.
Before he knew it,
Ryan found himself stuck on the other side of the door,
locked and completely unaware of the horrific acts
that were happening just feet away from him.
And then, he saw the blood seeping out
from the crack and the doorframe.
In a panic, Ryan dash back downstairs to grab his cell phone
from the couch where he had left it.
As soon as the device was in his hands,
Ryan dialed 911 as he listened to the helpless screams
coming from the upstairs bathroom.
Once connected with an operator,
Ryan expressed that he believed
that his wife was being attacked,
and not just by anyone, but by his own stepdaughter.
Still on the line with the dispatcher,
Ryan ran back upstairs in hopes that this time
he would have better luck opening the bathroom door.
As he approached the bathroom, once more,
he heard Yun-Mi croak out in a barely audible voice,
"Jehovah," and then the bathroom door opened.
Standing over the body of her lifeless mother,
Isabella Guzman emerged from the room with a knife
in her hand and blood pulling at her feet. (spooky music)
With the knife pointed downward in her right hand,
Isabella said nothing that she stared straight ahead
and walked right past Ryan.
Without so much as looking back at either her victim
or her dumbfounded stepfather,
Isabella Guzman walked down the staircase
and straight out the front door,
wearing only a pink athletic bra
and a pair of turquoise shorts.
- [Dispatcher] The female is gonna be armed with a knife.
She is an 18-year-old female who's mixed race.
I think it might be with Asian.
She's wearing a pink tank top shorts, one shoe.
- [Narrator] Taken aback and confused
as to what exactly had happened,
Ryan forced himself to investigate the bathroom
and take in the scene before him.
Lying naked on the cold, blood-soaked linoleum floor,
was the unmoving body of Yun-Mi. (spooky music)
Ryan found himself unable to look away
as he examined the deep slashes on her neck, face and chest,
and the plethora of stab wounds
that had caused her to bleed profusely.
He noticed then that there was even a baseball bat
nestled under the small of her back.
The scene was so gruesome and horrifying,
and it felt as though Ryan
was in some kind of nightmarish horror film
that he so desperately wanted to end. (spooky music)
Following the 911 dispatcher's instructions,
Ryan tried to open his wife's airway and perform CPR.
Despite his efforts, Ryan knew deep inside
that the blank expression on Yun-Mi's face
meant that she was already dead.
No amount of CPR could manage to bring her back to life.
(spooky music)
As soon as the police arrived at the Hoy residence,
they discovered that Yun-Mi had sustained 31 stab wounds
to the face, and 48 stab wounds to the neck.
She was reported dead on arrival.
As he choked back tears,
Ryan Hoy recounted the events of the evening to police.
The investigation regarding Yun-Mi's brutal murder
began right away, and their primary suspect
was nowhere to be found.
It wasn't until the next morning, August 29th, 2013,
that investigators gained some insight
as to where Isabella had managed to run off to.
(spooky music)
Aurora officers received a tip
from an anonymous 911 call around 11:30 a.m.,
that allegedly stated that a body had been discovered
inside a car in the parking garage on South Parker Road.
Police called in undercover officers
to help search the garage alongside a K-9 search party.
The car was then approached,
but there was no body to be found, only other evidence
that pointed towards Isabella and the homicide.
Yet Isabella didn't stay hidden for long.
As soon enough, she was seen walking out of the garage,
causing three surrounding officers to pull out their guns.
After a 16-hour manhunt, Isabella was arrested swiftly,
and rather peacefully,
for the murder of her 47 year old mother. (spooky music)
In the viral video of her hearing,
Isabella is seen wearing an orange jumpsuit
and shackles on her wrists and legs,
listening closely to the presiding judge
read the complaint against her.
As remarked by news outlets and individuals online,
Isabella Guzman does not necessarily
look like a stereotypical criminal, let alone a murderer.
Toward the end of her hearing,
Isabella appeared to tear up a bit,
before looking directly into the courtroom camera
and seemingly making light of her tears.
It is clear from the look on her face
that she felt little to no remorse for her actions.
Later into her trial, Isabella entered an insanity plea.
After much deliberation, the judge accepted the plea
after a psychological evaluation found that Isabella
had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
Since her trial,
Isabella has been receiving treatment for her mental illness
at Pueblo Psychiatric Hospital in Colorado.
And now, all these years later,
the video of 18-year-old Isabella Guzman
has resurfaced online.
More so than that, it has become something of a joke
across social media platforms,
are not so friendly reminder that the sweet but psycho girl
who stood in that Arapahoe County Courtroom,
managed to avoid serving time in prison
for the brutal murder of her own mother. (spooky music)
Next time, be sure to think twice
before blindly hopping onto a TikTok trend.
You never know what truths are hidden behind the surface
of a seemingly harmless viral video.