Original subtitles

Julie Gonzalez is destined to write her own story.

A story she hopes has a fairytale ending

with a happy family, a fulfilling career, and true love.

♪ What I'm thinking, what I'm saying ♪

She was a straight-A student.

She didn't have a problem meeting boys.

And when she falls for a guy,

her old-fashioned love letters are epic.

She wanted to become a journalist.

I knew she was gonna make something of herself.

But Julie stuns everyone

when she posts that she's running away with some random guy.

She has a kid, she has a job, she has a family here.

Something's wrong.

The police thought, oh, well, this was just a mom

taking off to party for the weekend.

Then, a discovery.

I honestly was spooked.

It just looked like a shallow grave.

In the end, it's Julie's own words

that will help catch her killer.

She solved her own murder from beyond the grave.

The fitness app on the phone, it was overwhelming evidence.

♪ I've been haunted by the visions ♪

♪ That I've seen with my own eyes ♪

♪ And the only way to find you ♪

♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪

She did help catch this killer.

Austin, Texas is a city of infinite possibilities.

It has music and art and the freedom

to be whoever you choose to be.

What better place for 21-year-old Julie Gonzalez

to try to make her dreams come true?

But one sunny spring morning,

Julie neglects to pick up her baby girl Layla

from her mother-in-law's house.

Her sister Samantha immediately feels that something is off.

Julie and I have always been really close growing up.

She is seven and a half years older than me,

so she was always looking out for me.

My name is Samantha Petri,

and Julie Ann Gonzalez was my older sister.

On that day, she hadn't texted me, she hadn't called me.

Julie is from a tight-knit family

and is always in touch with her sister, her mom Sandra,

and her aunt Dora.

My name is Dora Soto, and I am Julie Gonzalez's aunt.

Friday was Julie's day off,

and she would, uh, call me Friday mornings.

She would tell me,

"Aunt Dora, I'm gonna go do this," or "I'm gonna go do that.

What do you wanna do for lunch? You know, I'm free."

That was our Friday.

When she didn't call me, I thought it's kind of weird.

After lunchtime, that's when I called Sandra.

My name is Sandra Soto, and I'm Julie Ann's mother.

I'm waiting for a phone call from Julie,

but she never called me.

I started to worry on Friday evening,

and I asked Samantha to call her.

I wasn't getting any answer from her phone.

When I looked on her MySpace account,

all I saw were these posts.

The posts don't sound like the Julie

they know and love.

I read that, and I was thinking, that's really weird.

But it wasn't until I read the next one.

We didn't know what was happening

but I knew something was wrong.

Julie grew up in a big Tejano family

living in the hill country, 45 minutes outside Austin.

Life centers around the family general store

and roadside bar.

I was 18 when I had Julie.

Her father and I didn't have a relationship.

When Julie was born, I was in love.

I love being a single mom.

She was our first granddaughter.

She spent a lot of time with me and my wife.

You love your sons and daughters,

but when it's in regards to grandchildren,

that's a different kind of love.

Julie has bigger dreams than working in the family business.

She wants to be a journalist,

and when she's 16, she moves to the big city of Austin

to make her dreams come true.

She lives with her aunt Dora

and right off the bat meets a guy, George,

and spends more time passing love notes

than she does writing for the school newspaper.

Her best friend Natasha isn't impressed.

Julie told me when she met George, you know,

she met some guy,

she really likes him, he's really sweet.

And then I met him, and I'm like, I could throw you into next week.

My name is Natasha Navarro, and I am one of Julie's friends.

Julie's cousin Michael is also surprised

by Julie's new love.

George isn't your typical Prince Charming type.

I just remember seeing him and just being, like,

this dude's a nerd.

Like, what are we doing here?

My name is Michael Soto.

Julie was my cousin, basically like my sister.

We were always with each other.

Things move fast.

Within two years, Julie is married and pregnant.

♪ Living in a big brown box ♪

But by the time her baby Layla is walking,

the marriage falls apart, leaving Julie a single mom,

wondering if her fairytale ending will ever happen.

♪ Take me now ♪

♪ Take me all the way ♪

♪ Show me love without a name ♪

While Julie dreams of finding her real prince,

her family can't imagine her leaving her daughter behind.

Twenty-four hours after she goes missing,

Julie's MySpace posts have stopped

and her family still can't reach her by phone or text.

That's when her friend Natasha tries calling.

And it rang and it rang and nobody answered.

So that right there was kind of, like, suspicious to me,

'cause Julie always answered my calls.

But I got a text message, like, immediately after

and it was like, "Hey, what's up?"

And I tried calling again and she didn't answer.

And it was like, "Hey,

"I really don't feel like talking on the phone right now.

Like, what's up?" And I said, "Nah, I need you to call me.

"I have some really good news. This is--

"Like, something crazy's going on. Like, call me,

I need to-- 'cause I wanna talk to you."

And so I called again and she didn't answer.

Then I'm like, what the fuck is going on?

James? Like, to Colorado?

Like, she's never even been to Colorado.

Like, she didn't travel, she didn't do much.

What the fuck is in Colorado?

Has Julie been abducted

or has her fairytale dream taken over her senses,

making her run off with James in search of true love?

Julie's Aunt Dora finally breaks down and calls the police.

A responding officer follows up

and does what anyone would do.

They look at Julie's social media.

What they see makes them think

that Julie is just another runaway mom.

But they still send an officer to speak to Julie's family.

The police were questioning us,

asking us why do you think Julie would leave?

I don't know. She has a kid, she has a job,

she has a family here.

We don't think that she left. We think something's wrong.

Forty hours after Julie goes missing,

Dora takes matters into her own hands.

I skipped out on work, and I, I went to drive her route

that she would take to work.

I was just lookin'.

Lookin' in the streets for her.

I went to her job, to the Walgreens that she worked at.

They didn't know anything.

I was driving back home, and there's a Walgreens

near my home.

I looked over, and her car's in the, in the parking lot.

And so I pulled in there real fast and I got out.

I had her picture with me, and I showed it to the cashier

and I asked him, I said, "Have you seen this girl?"

He says, "You know, she looks a little familiar,

but I couldn't tell you for sure."

I said, "Well, whose car is sitting out there?

Did anybody tell you about that car?"

He said, "They told me that it broke down and they were coming back."

So I went to the car, and I called Sandra

and I said, "Sandra, I found her car."

They found her car.

But where is Julie?

Has her fairytale dream turned into a nightmare?

Romantic at heart, Julie Gonzalez has been missing

for almost 48 hours.

Her MySpace posts say she's fallen for a new guy

and is spending the weekend with him,

but her family thinks it's totally out of character.

I thought, this was not my sister.

And that something bad had happened.

When Julie's family finds her car

abandoned in a Walgreens parking lot,

they immediately call the police to come investigate.

Okay, we got the Walgreens up here on the left.

I'm John Brooks.

I was a patrol officer with the Austin Police Department in 2010

when I was dispatched to speak with a family

regarding a missing person.

So when I walk up to Sandra and Dora,

they ask me to open the car and look inside,

but I can't. I can't do that.

I can't just go inside a car because somebody wants me to.

I have to have more.

We get calls like this all the time

where somebody is looking for somebody they can't find,

and there's usually a pretty good explanation for it.

But Julie's aunt and mom

are desperate for answers.

Sandra spoke to Detective Brooks.

She told him we're suspicious.

Her ex-husband George lives two, three blocks from here.

He still has the baby.

We wanna know what's going on.

The family knows that George

and Julie's love story took a rough turn,

but they pray it hasn't turned tragic.

♪ I gotta think of an escape, I gotta think of a plan ♪

One year before Julie disappears,

after she has baby Layla,

she makes the difficult decision to set her dreams

of becoming a journalist aside

in order to support the family.

George stopped working,

so he was now in charge of taking care of Layla

while Julie worked for Walgreens.

That's when things drastically changed.

When Julie comes home from work,

the house isn't clean.

The baby stuff is everywhere.

Layla hasn't, like, her diaper hasn't been changed in hours.

There'll be times when I'd come over and guess who's playing video games. George.

In October of 2009,

after seven months of feeling neglected,

juggling her job and the baby,

Julie decides it's just not going to work

and moves back home to her grandparents' place with Layla.

♪ I know I can find a way out ♪

Julie has been missing now for 50 hours.

Officer Brooks hears the family's suspicions

about her ex-husband,

but he also thinks they could be overreacting.

If something bad had happened to Julie

and George was involved,

it seems kind of reckless that he would park her car

so close to his house.

Officer Brooks is not a detective,

but he agrees to make the short drive over to George's house

to put their minds at ease.

I asked George if we could come in

and look around.

George tells Officer Brooks the same story he told the family.

The last time he saw Julie was at the custody exchange

on Friday morning.

He says she asked him to take the baby for the weekend.

George De La Cruz informed Officer Brooks

that Julie Ann showed up to his front door

and indicated that she needed some time away from her life

and that she was having some difficulties.

Julie would never turn to him for help or assistance.

They weren't even getting along.

Officer Brooks looks around the house

for any sign of Julie.

I'm looking for anything obvious.

Blood, uh, obvious bloody weapon, signs of a disturbance,

and surely enough, I did not find anything.

Satisfied that Julie isn't here

and the baby looks fine,

Officer Brooks is just about to leave

when something catches his eye.

While we're searching the house,

you can see in the backyard there was a wooden shed

on the right, and when we opened the door

there was actually room to walk in...

...and there was a section of the wood flooring had been cut out.

There was fresh sawdust.

It was about a four-by-four-foot section of flooring that was loose.

So we lifted that floorboard up

and lo and behold,

a trench,

four feet long and about two feet deep.

It literally looked like a shallow grave underneath the shed.

Are the family's suspicions right?

Did George kill Julie and try to bury her in his backyard shed?

So when I asked George what it was,

he said that somebody had tried to dig a trench

to put plumbing in to turn that shed into a residence.

At this point, I've done all that I can do

and the detectives are gonna have to be the ones to follow up.

My name's Rogelio Sanchez,

and I was the lead detective assigned to the Julie Gonzalez case.

We didn't have any solid evidence that anything bad had happened to Julie.

What they did have was texts saying that she had voluntarily left.

Days go by and there's still no sign of Julie.

No more posts and no more texts.

We're reaching out to APD,

begging them to help us,

because her estranged husband, George,

why isn't he being questioned?

Detectives can't help wonder if the family just doesn't like George,

and that no one could be good enough for someone

as special as their Julie.

George didn't have any kind of extensive criminal history.

There weren't any domestic issues that would've suggested

that George was capable of doing anything serious to her.

But as the last person to have seen Julie,

George may have information on the man

who was clearly implicated from the start.

The mysterious James.

So on April 6th, George De La Cruz was brought

to the police station and interviewed by Detective Scott.

But George is wrong.

Police discover through Julie's family

that there is another man, not this mysterious James,

but someone who recently came back into her life.

Their story began four years before she even met George.

♪ Maybe we can roll up ♪

♪ Maybe never go out ♪

When Julie was working at the taqueria...

♪ You could be mine for a lifetime ♪

...she started to see a boy named Aaron,

and he was in his 20s and Julie was still a teenager.

♪ Tell me in a whisper ♪

My mother was concerned that Aaron might take

Julie's attention away from school.

I was totally against it. I was like, this dude's old.

Like, what are you doing talking to an old guy? We're fuckin' kids.

I told him, "Nope, it can't happen.

You and Julie just cannot date."

The Soto family fires Aaron

and Julie's first true love drifts away.

But Julie's love story won't be erased so easily.

♪ Someone pour me a drink right now ♪

Four years later, Aaron is back in her life

after a chance meeting at a grocery store,

and it's right around the time that Julie moves out

of George's house.

She comes out, and she's excited but quiet about it.

What got into you, Julie?

She said, "I just saw Aaron."

And my head whipped around so fast.

What?

When Julie ran into Aaron again,

she called me being, like, super excited.

So I'm just like, okay, but you're in the middle of a divorce.

The investigators discover that Julie spends the night at Aaron's

right before she goes missing.

They bring him in for questioning.

But a few hours after they kiss goodbye for the day,

-...Julie sends a text.

Aaron got some texts from Julie's phone during the time that he was at work,

and I wanna say this was probably before lunchtime.

Officers ask to see the text messages on Aaron's phone,

and Aaron, he said he deleted those text messages.

So certainly that was a big red flag there.

Investigators wonder if Aaron found out

that Julie was seeing James,

killed her in a fit of jealous rage,

and then went back to hide his tracks.

Aaron was genuine when I met him.

He was very respectful. He was very nice.

Who's to say, you know, what does a murderer look like?

What does a rapist look like?

You never know what anyone is freaking capable of.

♪ See the streets they're about to break ♪

Julie Gonzalez has spent her life

expressing herself through writing.

But after four weeks of silence,

her family fears they will never hear from her again.

Every single day, Layla would ask for her mom.

That broke my heart.

All police have are social media posts

and text messages that paint the picture

of a hopeless romantic whose life is on the rocks.

All evidence suggests she's run off with a guy named James.

It's plausible that Julie may have met somebody

that swept her off her feet,

you know, despite her relationship with Aaron.

And it could have been something spontaneous.

Julie's family is suspicious of her ex-husband, George,

but police have pivoted to an even more compelling suspect,

her current boyfriend, Aaron.

I didn't think that he was a bad person.

I just didn't like him for Julie.

♪ This is the end ♪

Suspicious texts all deleted?

And a sudden breakup?

This could hold the key to a potential motive,

jealous rage over a new man in Julie's life.

But suspicion and theories are not enough,

and the investigation goes nowhere.

Sandra's sister Margarita is done sitting around doing nothing.

My name is Margarita Soto,

and I'm Julie Ann Gonzalez's aunt.

When we realized that the cops weren't really searching for her,

that's when I came up with the idea that, okay,

I'm gonna get a hold of all these news stations

and let them know there's a missing mom,

that we need to find her, and we need to blast her face out.

Austin mother vanishes with no explanation.

Hoping that she'll contact one of us,

hoping she'll stop by, hoping someone hears something.

We had tip lines set up.

Family members and the father of her child

are now pleading for her to come home.

We had private detectives searching the streets of Austin.

I want to see my daughter. I want to know where my daughter is.

That's my little girl.

You need to find her.

We first got the attention of local media

and then national media.

The media blitz helps get Julie's face out there,

but it doesn't bring Julie home.

One more week passes.

No word, no peace.

Just when the family is about to give up hope,

Aaron comes forward with a piece of evidence

that corroborates what the family has been saying all along.

An old-fashioned love letter, in Julie's own handwriting.

Aaron eventually turned over a note

that Julie had written him,

obviously before she left that morning,

talking about how much she loved him

and how she couldn't wait to get married and have children.

You know, that's not a relationship

that Julie just would've abandoned all of a sudden.

With no trace of James,

and this new profession of love for Aaron,

the family is even more convinced

that George knows more than he's letting on.

I knew that George was hiding something.

We didn't know what, but he was hiding something.

Five weeks after Julie goes missing,

an unexpected phone call provides a new opportunity,

a chance to pressure George into admitting what he knows.

The Dr. Phil show called me

and asked me, "How can we help you?

We wanna help you. How can we help you?"

I told them, "Get George to take a polygraph test."

I just wanted to go to Dr. Phil to just confront George.

I just wanted to stare at his face

because he was avoiding us.

Now, on a popular talk show

seen around the world,

the Sotos will discover the truth.

I'm gonna tell you what the results are right now.

And I looked at him and I said, "You're full of shit."

I told him, "You're a motherfuckin' liar."

♪ Can you hear the sound of thunder ♪

On May 7th, after 43 days living in agony,

Julie's family comes face to face with George

and his mother, Victoria, on Dr. Phil.

They're hoping a polygraph test will expose him

in front of the entire country.

But will it?

I'm gonna tell you what the results are.

He was asked, "Are you responsible for Julie's disappearance?"

He answered, "No."

Those were not truthful answers.

He failed the polygraph test.

-We knew he would. -We knew it.

This was not a close call.

This was not a close call at all.

For Julie's family, the results are vindication,

but George's mom, Victoria, is furious with her son.

-What did you do? -I didn't do nothing.

I didn't do anything. I just felt that I should've stopped her.

-Where is she? -I don't know!

Tell me the truth, Georgie.

I don't know, Mami. I don't know.

Shaken by the polygraph results,

George's mother scours her house for signs of her daughter-in-law.

She finds nothing.

Then she remembers seeing George in the shed

around the time Julie disappeared.

She went to the shed...

opened up the door,

and began to dig.

And when she began to panic and began to hyperventilate,

she called the Austin Police Department.

Victoria has discovered the suspicious trench

under the floorboards that Officer Brooks inspected

six weeks earlier,

yet no one followed up on.

She was pretty distraught about it

because she said it wasn't there when her husband built the house

before they got divorced.

She was just afraid that George may have been involved,

and something may have happened.

That call from George's mom

spurs on the Austin Police like nothing else has in this case.

That hole should have been inspected properly weeks ago.

Detectives arrived here this morning.

Now this is the home of Julie Ann Gonzalez's estranged husband.

Fifty days after Julie vanishes,

detectives move the case from the missing person's division

to homicide.

I was there, along with our forensics team

and other detectives.

George answered the door, and we went to work.

They were able to go inside of George's home

and inside the shed.

The trench was five feet long, two feet wide,

and a foot and a half deep.

Julie Ann was about five feet tall.

The forensics team takes soil samples

looking for signs of human remains and sends them to the lab.

But the trench isn't the only thing they find.

In the house, they discover some receipts.

What we did find was evidence

of one of the financial transactions of some items

that were purchased at a Walmart using her debit card.

Julie's texts to Natasha say

she went to Colorado that day with a guy named James.

If that's true, why was her bank card

being used in a South Austin Walmart?

Detectives went to the Walmart

to track down surveillance video.

What they did find was George using Julie Ann's debit card

and pushing Layla in a shopping cart,

and Julie Ann was nowhere to be found.

Given the fact that George was unemployed,

did not have money, detectives had to keep an open mind

to the possibility that in order to purchase items for Layla,

Julie Ann left her debit card with George.

The dirt samples come back negative for Julie's DNA,

and cadaver dogs let loose on the property find nothing.

Two months after Julie disappears,

all investigators have is a handful

of social media posts and texts.

Detectives strongly suspect George is involved somehow,

but they have no proof.

Her family can now feel it.

She's not ever coming home.

- What's your name? -Julie.

- And how old are you? -Five.

- Five? -Mm-hmm.

You know how a twin, they lose their other

and they feel it.

Get down, Mike, get down.

It's like, that's how I felt.

Like, I just felt like something was missing.

♪ Every day ♪

♪ I take that with me ♪

I told my mom that we had lost Julie.

Detectives hope that Julie's cell phone

can help them break the stalemate.

But they need an expert to crack the code.

So that summer of 2010,

one of our digital forensics detectives that was involved in the case,

he was quickly able to identify that Julie's cell phone...

had never left Austin.

That means someone else has been pretending

to be Julie all along,

just like her family and friends have been insisting

this whole time.

And James is and always was a big fat lie.

But without a body or a crime scene, how will detectives ever prove it?

I mean, this is not your typical case where you have the body,

and you have a murder weapon, and you have witnesses.

I mean, we had none of that.

What they do have is a single piece of paper

that may hold the key to unlocking the identity of her killer.

♪ Like a restless wanderer ♪

♪ Through sandy storms I walk ♪

♪ I see them burning down ♪

It's been four months,

and finally, a break in the Julie Gonzalez case.

After learning Julie's cell phone never left Austin,

detectives are convinced George is involved

with her disappearance.

But with no proof, they turn to a digital expert

to help lead them to the truth.

My name is Jim Cook.

I'm a digital forensics expert,

and I work with various law enforcement agencies

throughout the United States.

In today's environment, it's not just about DNA.

It's about the digital footprint we leave behind.

So one of the first things that we did

is we got the call detail records

related to Julie's device.

And what we found is that on the day that Julie went missing,

her device is at the Walmart...

and George is on video at the Walmart,

and George is using Julie's credit card at the Walmart.

And you can see the cellular activity

connecting to that antenna that covers that Walmart,

exactly during that conversation.

Therefore, it wasn't Julie trying to pretend to be Julie.

It was actually George pretending to be Julie.

Julie's cell phone data corroborated

our suspicions already,

that she never left Austin

and that George was our primary focus.

But investigators still need more to make an arrest.

They go over all the evidence they found at George's mom's house,

and one thing stands out.

George was an excessive gamer,

oftentimes gaming up to 18 hours a day.

The day that Julie goes missing,

and he has over 20 hours between gaming sessions,

which did not occur on any other day for the records we reviewed.

Twenty hours without an Xbox fix?

For George, that's really weird.

After Julie goes missing, George takes his Xbox

and goes to North Austin to his friend's apartment

where they hack into the WiFi of the neighbor across the hall

so they can actually play their video game.

But at the same time, Julie's phone connects to a tower

covering the vicinity of that apartment complex.

Julie's device and George's Xbox

are in North Austin at the exact same time.

It takes two years for detectives

to gather enough digital evidence to arrest George

for the murder of Julie Gonzalez.

Whenever we take a case to trial,

we know that we have one shot to prove this case

beyond a reasonable doubt.

Without a body, it was going to be an uphill battle.

It took a toll on a lot of us.

The holidays were very hard.

Julie was the glue around the holidays.

She is what kept us together.

It wasn't the same without her.

Two years later,

the prosecution is finally ready for trial...

but circumstantial evidence doesn't sway the hearts of jurors.

It's Julie's own words to Aaron

written on the morning she disappeared

that shine through the fog of doubt

and help catch her killer.

"I still can't believe how lucky I am to be with you."

"I'm really glad I got to spend

"the last couple days with you.

"Since you're still asleep,

"that gives me a chance to write your letter.

"I'm happy to say that you make me feel beautiful,

"and no one's ever been able to make me feel that way before.

"I believe we do have a great love.

"August will be here in no time.

"I'm so happy that it's so close.

"Then we will be together.

"Okay, mi amor, I really gotta get ready for work now.

"So, I love you, always and forever.

Love, Julie."

We, the jury, find the defendant, George De La Cruz,

guilty of the offense of murder.

Six years after Julie went missing,

George is sentenced to life in prison for her murder.

Justice has been served for Julie.

-Amen. - Amen.

And for Julie, the criminal was gone.

To this day, Julie's body has never been found.

♪ We never had the chance ♪

♪ To say our last goodbyes ♪

Layla is now a teenager.

She was raised by George's mom,

and she has only recently started taking calls

from her mom's family.

As far as she's concerned,

the Sotos put her dad behind bars,

and she will never forgive them for that.

There's no peace in my family.

He's robbed Layla of a mom, of having a normal life.

We deserve to know where Julie is. We all do.

We need to put her body at rest.

♪ But how long can I go ♪

♪ Without thinking I'm alone ♪

I want Layla to know that...

her mom was great.

And that Julie would do anything in her power

to make sure Layla is loved, taken care of.

I just wish Layla would know that.

George's mother, I hope she listens to what I'm gonna say,

that Layla is the key to find out what happened to Julie.

When Layla gets old enough,

I would love for her to say...

what did you do to my mom?

Where is she?

Tell me what you did to her.

I'm sorry. Please.

♪ I don't know where my head is lately ♪

♪ Have I lost my mind ♪

♪ But I know that I have a secret ♪

♪ And it's only mine ♪

♪ And the only way to find me ♪

♪ Is to go beneath the lies ♪