Speaker 1: Amory Monos was last seen on a crisp Ellie winter day,
Speaker 1: a Friday afternoon in January of two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Do you have memories of that day? Yeah, we were
Speaker 1: all getting ready for school and myself, my brother, and
Speaker 1: my sister, Crystal, her younger sister, was six. They used
Speaker 1: to share a room and I used to sleep in
Speaker 1: the next room with my mom, and I remember I
Speaker 1: woke up and they were yelling at each other, my
Speaker 1: brother and my sister, and I was like, what's happening?
Speaker 1: You know? Then my mom went over and she was like,
Speaker 1: why are you guys fighting? They were fighting because my
Speaker 1: brother unplugged her straight inner, plugged in his game boy
Speaker 1: and they got in like the biggest fight ever. Crystal
Speaker 1: was young, but she remembers the energy of that morning,
Speaker 1: of the last day she saw her sister, the kind
Speaker 1: of explosive feelings I remember having as a team whenever
Speaker 1: anybody moved my stuff. The last memory that Crystal has
Speaker 1: of her older sister isn't from that fight that morning.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, after school, it was right before she
Speaker 1: left that day. I looked outside. We had a really
Speaker 1: long hallway and at the end of the door we
Speaker 1: can see, like that garden that I had told you
Speaker 1: about that we had. It was a big, lush garden
Speaker 1: filled with flowers on one of the highest hills in
Speaker 1: City Terrace. It's where her big sister taught her to dance.
Speaker 1: We had like a wall. I remember she was sitting
Speaker 1: on it. She was sitting on it, and she was
Speaker 1: wearing a white that white hoodie that she had and
Speaker 1: some jeans, and like there's no context behind it, you know.
Speaker 1: I just I remember I looked, and I've seen her
Speaker 1: sitting on that wall. But I do remember. It's my
Speaker 1: aunt next door. She said that she saw her through
Speaker 1: her window. That's Becky, Emory's aunt and godmother her knee.
Speaker 1: She says a family member saw Emory that afternoon standing
Speaker 1: outside of the house. My aunt said that she saw
Speaker 1: Emory inside the fence and this guy outside the fence talking,
Speaker 1: and then she said that next time she looked, they
Speaker 1: were gone. She saw Emory talking to a friend. It
Speaker 1: was reported at the time that he was a member
Speaker 1: of a male party crew. According to Emory's mother, Emory
Speaker 1: left to go to a friend's house and said she
Speaker 1: would be back by seven thirty or eight pm. When
Speaker 1: her mom got home from the market, Emory wasn't there.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Emory's mom reported her missing. I remember
Speaker 1: those copies, the fires. I remember we were walking around
Speaker 1: putting them up. Crystal remembers they went looking for Emory
Speaker 1: and posting flyers in the area. She remembers walking down
Speaker 1: the street by her house. I remember we put one
Speaker 1: on a red pull and we were just it was
Speaker 1: an all night thing, like it was dark. I remember
Speaker 1: it being dark. I remember being cold. We were just
Speaker 1: going up and down the streets putting them on, and
Speaker 1: I think I think it was the next day. I
Speaker 1: was calling her cell phone and I remember I was
Speaker 1: in her room and I was calling her phone, and
Speaker 1: I think I maybe left her about twenty voicemails that day.
Speaker 1: Crystal assumed that Emory run away because she was mad
Speaker 1: at their brother John, And I remember I was calling
Speaker 1: her and I was like, you could come home now,
Speaker 1: John's not mad at you anymore. Can you come home?
Speaker 1: From my heart? Michael Duda Podcast Network, Vice and Ellie's Studios,
Speaker 1: This is Party Cruz The Untold Story. I'm Jenness Malca.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of questions about what happened to
Speaker 1: Emory that night. Where she went and why she didn't
Speaker 1: come home. Emory Miunius's lifeless body was found nearby this
Speaker 1: warehouse on Marosol and Olympic and Boyle Heights, a popular
Speaker 1: area for underground parties. Emory's murder was quickly connected to
Speaker 1: the party crew scene by the LPD and the media.
Speaker 1: Her killing, they think she was strangled, now tied to
Speaker 1: the world of illegal underground parties. She went to one
Speaker 1: and never came home. Oh, this is exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of industrial neighborhood where a rave promoter can find a
Speaker 1: warehouse to use for a night. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: here on Mirosol, just south of Olympic where a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old girl was found dead. Emory's links to the
Speaker 1: party crew world was part of why her murder got
Speaker 1: a lot of media attention. Emory reportedly was part of
Speaker 1: a crew girls who attended underground parties. The Vicious Ladies
Speaker 1: are among the local party crews with their own websites
Speaker 1: and party lines. Vicious Ladies was the name of the
Speaker 1: party crew belonged to. They think her murder may be
Speaker 1: connected to an underground rave party, but what evidence was
Speaker 1: there that her murder was tied to party crews and
Speaker 1: why is her key still unsolved. I want to understand
Speaker 1: what happened with the investigation, what's clear, and what remains
Speaker 1: a mystery to this day. A warning that this episode
Speaker 1: gets graphic and talks in detail about a violent death.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday morning, January twenty fifth, two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: and six days after Emory went missing, an employee of
Speaker 1: a warehouse in boil Heights who went to go pick
Speaker 1: up some lumber found Emory's body. She was less than
Speaker 1: five miles away from her home. Becky got the call
Speaker 1: with the news when she was at work. I don't
Speaker 1: even remember. I just remembered going crazy and staircal and
Speaker 1: the customer came and tried to call me down. But
Speaker 1: then everybody I'll start coming to my office, and then
Speaker 1: my supervisor wouldn't let me drive home about myself and stuff.
Speaker 1: So my son came and picked me up, and then
Speaker 1: that's when we went over there, and he's crazy. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like you're trying to think that it's a nightmare
Speaker 1: that you're having, just can't believe it. That's when the
Speaker 1: investigation began. I remember it so vividly because this was
Speaker 1: one of the times where you didn't expect to be
Speaker 1: called out on a suspicious death, especially involving a child.
Speaker 1: This is Carrie Ricard. He's a former LPD homicide detective.
Speaker 1: He retired in twenty thirteen after working for LPD for
Speaker 1: over thirty five years. He's still volunteers as a reserve officer.
Speaker 1: He started at the Holland Back stationeteen seventy nine. Most
Speaker 1: of our homicides here gang related. Majority of them are,
Speaker 1: you know, and the victims have either ties to gangs
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe even we're looking at as a
Speaker 1: suspect and a murder themselves. As a rule, you don't
Speaker 1: get many child homicides. I met Carrie at the station
Speaker 1: and Boil Heights. Hollenbeck serves the community surrounding Elsarino, Lincoln
Speaker 1: Heights and Boil Heights. Carrie wore a striped long sleeve
Speaker 1: button up with a blue tie. He rocked a mustache
Speaker 1: and his hair was neatly combed to one side. He
Speaker 1: also had a gun on his hip. He may be retired,
Speaker 1: but he still looks like an old school TV detective
Speaker 1: to me. We met in the afternoon, and by that
Speaker 1: time most of the officers had gone home and in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. You were one of the detectives. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was the original lead detective on the Emory Muno's death.
Speaker 1: He was the first detective to be called out to
Speaker 1: the scene where she was found. It was midweek is
Speaker 1: the Wednesday, to be precise, and I was at my desk.
Speaker 1: I had the watch commander called up upstairs and told
Speaker 1: me that the body of a young female had been
Speaker 1: found in an abandoned warehouse area in our industrial section
Speaker 1: of the division. When I got to the scene, you know,
Speaker 1: I knew this was a young girl. I put her
Speaker 1: at thirteen or fourteen years old. Emory was fourteen, just
Speaker 1: a few months shy of fifteen. There was a hole
Speaker 1: in the fence that led from where we parked on
Speaker 1: the street and walked up the street a little bit
Speaker 1: to the hole in the fence, through the hole in
Speaker 1: the fence back into the loading dock. Carrie was joined
Speaker 1: by his partner and fellow homicide detective, Joe Braciato. He's
Speaker 1: also now retired after over thirty years with the LPD.
Speaker 1: And that's where Emory's body was located. In the loading
Speaker 1: dock area, Emory's body was lying on the concrete. She
Speaker 1: was wearing jeans, white tennis shoes, and a white hoodie.
Speaker 1: You just remember, I know she had like was a
Speaker 1: Tinkerbell sweatshirt. When the corner investigator got there and one
Speaker 1: of the first things we found was a school lunch card,
Speaker 1: no picture on it, it had a name on it,
Speaker 1: it was It turned out to be her card, and
Speaker 1: so they did some background found out she had been
Speaker 1: reported missing. She didn't have a cell phone on her
Speaker 1: or any type of backpack or purse, so the school
Speaker 1: lunch card helped them to identify her. And the clutter
Speaker 1: and the loading dock area was a lot of drug
Speaker 1: paraphernalia that we're on the ground. I remember the building
Speaker 1: had discarded needles and it was a warehouse. The detective
Speaker 1: set at the time had been used as a quote
Speaker 1: grave site before. Despite all the litter and dust and
Speaker 1: dirt around her, her clothes were very clean, even the
Speaker 1: bottom of her white tennis shoes, So Carrie thought it
Speaker 1: was likely that she didn't die here, that her body
Speaker 1: was brought here after her death, maybe even by several people.
Speaker 1: The chain link fence nearby had some holes in it
Speaker 1: big enough for a person carrying a body, though is
Speaker 1: awkward yeah, and you know, one can surmise things from well,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you carry a body and get
Speaker 1: it through a hole in a fence and not snagged
Speaker 1: the clothing on exposed chain link wires or not wrinkle
Speaker 1: the clothing unless you've got maybe someone helping you. At first,
Speaker 1: the detectives had difficulty understanding what had happened to Emory.
Speaker 1: One of the issues I had is we couldn't determine
Speaker 1: what she died from on the scene. It wasn't immediately
Speaker 1: clear how she had died at first glance. There was
Speaker 1: no gunshot or blood on her body, anything that told
Speaker 1: him what had happened to Emory or how long she
Speaker 1: had been dead. There were visible marks around Emory's neck,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't clear at first if they were the
Speaker 1: cause of death or if the marks happened after her death.
Speaker 1: And you know, at first I thought, probably would be
Speaker 1: an overdose, and but why would why would that be
Speaker 1: something that comes to mind? Well, when you have no
Speaker 1: apparent cause of death, you know, when there's there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of foul play. I mean, she was impeccably dressed,
Speaker 1: her clothes weren't dirty. Kerry thought Emory's death might have
Speaker 1: been an accident. We know that back in that era
Speaker 1: that nitrous ox side was widely widely being used, and
Speaker 1: different ways of using it too, where they could put
Speaker 1: a bag over their head elastic band, well they could,
Speaker 1: and then so they could better inhale it. I just
Speaker 1: want to jump in and say, I've watched friends and
Speaker 1: a lot of different people do not and I've never
Speaker 1: seen or heard of anyone putting a bag over their
Speaker 1: head with an elastic band and the balloons people were, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of methods. So yeah, Carrie thought maybe
Speaker 1: Emory had accidentally taken too much of something with a
Speaker 1: friend and they had panicked and left her body there.
Speaker 1: If we suspect foul play from the beginning, then we'll
Speaker 1: handle it as a homicide, even if we don't call
Speaker 1: it a homicide, such as in Emory's case. To better
Speaker 1: understand the details of what might have happened to Emory,
Speaker 1: we filed a public records request for the autopsy report.
Speaker 1: The report was clinical, but there were small details about
Speaker 1: how she was found that stuck with me. She had
Speaker 1: her jeans bunched up at the bottom with an elastic band.
Speaker 1: It was a style thing. When I was in high
Speaker 1: school in the midouts rubber bands around the ankles to
Speaker 1: make her pants slimmer, DIY cuffs for jeans. Her fingers
Speaker 1: had tandlnes like maybe rings were missing from her hand.
Speaker 1: She had on a gold chain with a religious pendant,
Speaker 1: the type of jewelry that's gifted by family, and she
Speaker 1: had a pair of eyebrowt tweezers on her and the
Speaker 1: Tinkerbelt key chain on her belt loop that matched her
Speaker 1: Tinkerbelt hoodie. It reminded me again that she was fourteen
Speaker 1: a teen, a child, and the autopsy would reveal that
Speaker 1: she hadn't died from an overdose. It was a homicide.
Speaker 1: It was difficult to say how long Emory had been
Speaker 1: dead when she was found, but she had been strangled.
Speaker 1: Emory has a cause of death that's listed as asphyxia
Speaker 1: due to net compression. This is Denise Brutone that I
Speaker 1: worked for the Coroner's office investigating pediatric deaths for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: and prior to that, I was an emergency room nurse
Speaker 1: at Los Angeles County Hospital. She specifically worked on deaths
Speaker 1: involving children, which is anyone under fourteen years old. Denise
Speaker 1: was the coroner investigator who came to the crime scene
Speaker 1: the day that Emory was found. She's seen over twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred cases in her career, but she immediately remembered
Speaker 1: this case. These don't happen very often, so when you
Speaker 1: called me, I didn't remember the year it happened, but
Speaker 1: you called and started talking to me about it, and
Speaker 1: I can still picture the warehouse and I can still
Speaker 1: picture her there on the scene. Denise did a cursory
Speaker 1: exam on the body and wrote the initial report. Denise
Speaker 1: told us it wasn't clear what Emory had been strangled with,
Speaker 1: but it was likely with something about the width of
Speaker 1: a shoelace at an upward angle. So is it that
Speaker 1: the perpetrator, her assailant, was behind her and a little
Speaker 1: bit taller than her. That would be a reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to conclude. She also has on a gold chain and
Speaker 1: that chain is not disturbed, it's not broken. Denise also
Speaker 1: pointed out that the autopsy showed no signs of struggle
Speaker 1: from Emery, no fingernail marks, no struggling to breathe, no
Speaker 1: other wounds that were the signs of a fight. We
Speaker 1: have to wonder about her level of consciousness. When this
Speaker 1: assailant kills her. As part of her work, Denise in
Speaker 1: her colleagues took all evident samples, samples from her fingernails,
Speaker 1: stems from her clothing, a hair clipping, and a sexual
Speaker 1: assault kit. I don't know if it was ever run.
Speaker 1: It would be important to know that it was run,
Speaker 1: and that it's very important that the DNA is tested.
Speaker 1: She wonders if any of the samples of DNA from
Speaker 1: the crime scene were tested, whether the nail clippings actually
Speaker 1: were tested in looking for DNA under her fingernails, and
Speaker 1: whether the DNA that was under her fingernails was put
Speaker 1: into Codis Codas is a database of DNA that the
Speaker 1: FBI maintains if Emery's killer was in the system, it's
Speaker 1: possible that running the samples would help the police identify them.
Speaker 1: There are other marks, Like I mentioned, it looked like
Speaker 1: there was a hickey on her chest that would have
Speaker 1: saliva that would have DNA. Was that actually ran and tested.
Speaker 1: We asked Joe, one of the former detectives, about the
Speaker 1: DNA samples that were taken and what had happened with them.
Speaker 1: I know she had possible evidence underneath their fingernails. So
Speaker 1: that was one of the requests that I had made
Speaker 1: that DNA to be tested, but unfortunately I didn't come
Speaker 1: up with a suspect at the time the amount of
Speaker 1: DNA that they had, they were unable to identify anyone
Speaker 1: with that amount. We reached out to LPD about any
Speaker 1: DNA evidence in her case and they wouldn't share anything
Speaker 1: about the investigation. But later on a detective supervisor for
Speaker 1: the cold case unit told us that any DNA evidence
Speaker 1: that was taken had been put into CODIS, the national
Speaker 1: database for DNA, but there hadn't yet been a match.
Speaker 1: I asked Denise, the corner investigator, what does she think happened?
Speaker 1: This is something that we've been just asking everyone who
Speaker 1: has touched the case in some way if they personally
Speaker 1: have a theory based on the outopsy or the evidence
Speaker 1: to how she might have died. A young teenager is
Speaker 1: a vulnerable victim. It just seems that she was incapacitated
Speaker 1: in some way when this attack occurs, because she doesn't
Speaker 1: have the typical injuries that you would see. All I
Speaker 1: need for sure at this point was that Emory, a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old girl, was strangled to death, who killed
Speaker 1: her and where and why we don't know, but Emory's
Speaker 1: friends and family have theories. That's after the break To
Speaker 1: this day, Emory's family is looking for answers. Little is
Speaker 1: known about the evening she disappeared, so there are a
Speaker 1: lot of theories coming from family, friends, anyone close to
Speaker 1: the case, and given how few answers the family has
Speaker 1: gotten from the police, I think it's important to look
Speaker 1: at these theories to try and understand what was happening
Speaker 1: in Emory's world around the time she was killed. The
Speaker 1: family members we spoke to didn't really know much about
Speaker 1: the party cruisine, but they did know about her circle
Speaker 1: of friends, which at times overlapped because many were miners
Speaker 1: at the time. We're not using the names of the
Speaker 1: people that family and friends have talked about. One of
Speaker 1: the theories, and for information that we had at the time,
Speaker 1: somebody said that they thought her boyfriend. This is Becky again,
Speaker 1: Emory's aunt. She's talking about one of Emery's old boyfriends,
Speaker 1: who we're going to call R. A friend said that
Speaker 1: he was in a party care at the time. R
Speaker 1: is currently serving an almost thirty five years sentence at
Speaker 1: Cincinnella State Prison for attempted second degree murderer with an
Speaker 1: enhancement for discharge of a firearm because they saw her
Speaker 1: fighting one time with him on the steps of his house,
Speaker 1: all outside steps, and that he pushed her. And then
Speaker 1: I verified with my sister and she said, yeah, she
Speaker 1: did come home one day with a scrape on her
Speaker 1: leg and a bruise on her arm. So then when
Speaker 1: she passed, we were thinking, well, maybe that wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time that he did it, and who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: by accident it happened that was one of them. The
Speaker 1: other one that I think is more believable to me
Speaker 1: is those four girls. Another thing that came up was
Speaker 1: the possibility that her dad had to do with a
Speaker 1: fight with her friends from a previous middle school. Some
Speaker 1: of those friends later joined the party. Creusne that at
Speaker 1: one time there were her friends and then I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but the DA didn't like her. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, you know, and I don't know the
Speaker 1: whole story, but they came over and they call her name,
Speaker 1: and so my mom came out there and Mary asked
Speaker 1: her to go out there. My mom saw a movement
Speaker 1: behind a park car, so my mom went out of
Speaker 1: the gate to look and she saw two more girls
Speaker 1: behind this car. Total was four, two of them long
Speaker 1: with a back. Her mom ended up transferring Emory to
Speaker 1: a different school, But what we heard Becky and others
Speaker 1: talk most about was that her dad had something to
Speaker 1: do with her friend's ex boyfriend who were going to
Speaker 1: call us that between them there had been some tense moments.
Speaker 1: Becky heard a story that Emory had introduced her friend
Speaker 1: to a new guy at a party and the x
Speaker 1: S had found out, and he called Emory and told
Speaker 1: her that she had no business battling between them two.
Speaker 1: Emory was going to be sorry that she did this.
Speaker 1: We've tried to get in contact with Emory's friend who
Speaker 1: used to date us. We called, texted, written emails, commented
Speaker 1: on social media posts, reached out to her in various
Speaker 1: ways over the course of months. While we believed she
Speaker 1: saw our messages, she never responded to us. This friend
Speaker 1: was also the person that Emory said she was going
Speaker 1: to visit on the evening she disappeared, and according to
Speaker 1: another friend, she may have been a member of the
Speaker 1: Vicious Ladies, Emory's party crew. We've also tried to find
Speaker 1: and reach out to s the friend's ex boyfriend, but
Speaker 1: we haven't gotten any responses to our calls and emails,
Speaker 1: and we haven't been able to confirm if he was
Speaker 1: in a party crew. We also emailed Emory's old boyfriend
Speaker 1: are in prison. He did not respond. It's hard to
Speaker 1: hear about all these difficult relationships and Emory's life, and
Speaker 1: while some of the details are scary, none of the
Speaker 1: stories or rumors are by any means evidence of murder.
Speaker 1: One thing that Emory's family and the LAPD agree on
Speaker 1: is that whoever killed Emory was likely someone who knew her.
Speaker 1: This is Carrie Ricard, the former detective again. To meticulously
Speaker 1: take someone somewhere, and it's kind of almost not posing them,
Speaker 1: but to gingerly handle them, meticulously place them, and that's
Speaker 1: kind of like handling them with a degree of respect,
Speaker 1: and a stranger wouldn't do that, but someone with maybe
Speaker 1: some remorse might. According to Kerry, there won't be any
Speaker 1: answers on our case without someone new coming forward with information.
Speaker 1: Witnesses is going to be the primary solution factor in
Speaker 1: this case. This is not a case that's scientifically going
Speaker 1: to be solved without In the absence of witnesses, it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. I'm curious, what do you want
Speaker 1: people to know about this case. I would like them
Speaker 1: to know that if people think the police don't care,
Speaker 1: they won't care. That's why I mentioned a lot of
Speaker 1: the resources that went into the investigation from the start.
Speaker 1: Kerry says, the entire homicide squad was actually on duty
Speaker 1: that day and so a lot of its colleagues were
Speaker 1: able to go to the crime scene. It's almost unheard of.
Speaker 1: They have five homicide detectives that one homicide scene when
Speaker 1: you're not even sure it's a homicide. You know, it's
Speaker 1: always at the ready for just the right tip to
Speaker 1: come in and your listeners, you know, I would want
Speaker 1: them to know that that just remember the three words
Speaker 1: Central Bureau Homicide. They're the ones that have the case.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Hollenbeck Community Police Station closed down their
Speaker 1: homicide unit and all of their cases were sent to
Speaker 1: Central Bureau. Central Bureau now handles homicides across a large
Speaker 1: part of eastern Los Angeles like downtown La MacArthur Park,
Speaker 1: Foil Heights, and Eagle Rock. They are the ones that
Speaker 1: now have Emory's case. And because there are a few
Speaker 1: leads on it right now. It's been pulled off the shelf.
Speaker 1: About five months after we started calling LAPD and looking
Speaker 1: into her unsolved case, we found out that Emory's case
Speaker 1: was being worked on again with new detectives, and it
Speaker 1: has a two detectives that actually are a signed it
Speaker 1: and are working on it. But it can easily get
Speaker 1: cold again. The LAPD told us in an email that
Speaker 1: while it is a cold case because of its age,
Speaker 1: it's currently being worked on as fresh. They told us
Speaker 1: this was because there was new information provided, but they
Speaker 1: didn't tell us what the information is, and they told
Speaker 1: us they don't talk to the media during a fresh investigation.
Speaker 1: Carrie was only on the case for about three months
Speaker 1: before his assignment changed, but he says they had already
Speaker 1: done a ton of talking to people. I think before
Speaker 1: I left we were up too close to thirty interviews
Speaker 1: and then and things were just getting started on it.
Speaker 1: So I would assume, my gotcha, it's got to be
Speaker 1: sixty or more people that have been spoken. According to Becky,
Speaker 1: there have been at least seven different detectives that have
Speaker 1: been put on Emory's case since two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: as it's been shuffled around whether or not this fresh
Speaker 1: investigation will mean any new information for the family, We
Speaker 1: don't know. There remains a lot unknown about what happened
Speaker 1: to Emory, including whether her death was directly tied to
Speaker 1: the party crew scene. Even the detectives we spoke to
Speaker 1: couldn't pin down any concrete connection. We don't even know
Speaker 1: really where the crime scene is. We're calling the crime
Speaker 1: scene where the body was found. And when we talk
Speaker 1: about time of death, if one was to look at
Speaker 1: the death report, it would be you know, January twenty
Speaker 1: fifty nine o'clock. Well, no, she didn't die then. We
Speaker 1: don't know what time she died. I think we couldn't
Speaker 1: even verify that she even went to a rape party
Speaker 1: that night. We had conflicting information on that. So did
Speaker 1: she go or didn't she go? You know, she was
Speaker 1: telling people that she was going to go, but and
Speaker 1: when we never came up with a location, we just
Speaker 1: know it wasn't It wasn't that location where she was found.
Speaker 1: We're not sure who Emory was telling that she was
Speaker 1: going to a party. Nobody we interviewed, friends or family
Speaker 1: told us that she was going to one that night.
Speaker 1: When Emory was found she was wearing a Tingerbell hoodie
Speaker 1: and tennis shoes. Close she was found with with the
Speaker 1: close she went missing with, and it was nothing party
Speaker 1: is that she would actually wear to be at a party,
Speaker 1: especially if there was a party that her party crew
Speaker 1: was throwing. Brian Garcia, also known as Spooky, dated Emory.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in the party crew scene, but he attended
Speaker 1: flyer parties and he knew the Vicious Ladies. Their party
Speaker 1: crew was a whole female party crew at the time,
Speaker 1: so they, you know, it was always like trying to
Speaker 1: compete and see who looked better, So they always wanted
Speaker 1: to be out there and just looked good, you know.
Speaker 1: Brian met Emory on an old school party line, the
Speaker 1: kind were you dial a number and get connected with
Speaker 1: teams from all over, just random people. Before all this
Speaker 1: Instagram MySpace thing, there used to be a party line
Speaker 1: and Emory happened to be at one of her friend's house.
Speaker 1: The phone was handed over to her. We had a conversation,
Speaker 1: the vibe was great. We kicked it off and you know,
Speaker 1: we exchanged numbers. He has a picture of the m
Speaker 1: chuck e cheese when they went for her birthday. Their
Speaker 1: faces are smoshed against each other. Pookie has his tongue out,
Speaker 1: Emory's eyes big and dark even in a black and
Speaker 1: white photo. Pooky couldn't believe the response when she disappeared
Speaker 1: and was found murdered. I was very upset at the
Speaker 1: media and LAPD because the coverage was based of her
Speaker 1: being part of a party crew and a party goer.
Speaker 1: And I guess they based it off because of where
Speaker 1: she was found, being in an abandoned warehouse on Boil
Speaker 1: Heights in fact, to be based it off, oh you know,
Speaker 1: she was at a flier party being a minor, you know,
Speaker 1: and probably at a point overdosed in some type of
Speaker 1: drugs at whatnot. It was just not right. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: She wasn't at this party. But the party crewsine became
Speaker 1: cemented as part of her public image. They're advertised not
Speaker 1: only through the flyers being passed out at schools, but
Speaker 1: they are all also advertised on the MySpace dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the former detective speaking at a two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven press conference for Emory's case. Police say the rave
Speaker 1: was posted on the popular MySpace website. In a two
Speaker 1: thousand and six press release by LAPD about Emory's case,
Speaker 1: they meet it a point to include the line quote
Speaker 1: her death may be related to underground rave parties, which
Speaker 1: are held in local abandoned warehouses common to the area
Speaker 1: and advertised on MySpace dot com. The party scene well
Speaker 1: was thrown out there, and I know that created a
Speaker 1: lot of Internet chatter, but LA then didn't really helped
Speaker 1: haste too much. This is Joe Braciato today. When I
Speaker 1: asked him about his views of party crews sixteen years later,
Speaker 1: he said, I mean they were in my opinion, they
Speaker 1: were basically harmless. They were victims. In our interview, he
Speaker 1: told me they even checked Emory's MySpace to look for
Speaker 1: any online messages related to partying, but it didn't help
Speaker 1: them get any closer to who killed her. And in
Speaker 1: our interview with Kerrie Ricard, the other detective we spoke to,
Speaker 1: he says he didn't see any evidence of a recent
Speaker 1: party at the abandoned warehouse. That particular building wasn't too
Speaker 1: conducive to a rape party. There's just too much debris
Speaker 1: around where you could hurt yourself or step on something.
Speaker 1: You know, you need a little bit more of a space.
Speaker 1: But still that was the one line of information that
Speaker 1: would get added to any news reports about her by
Speaker 1: LPD and by reporters that our death might have been
Speaker 1: related to rape or underground parties, illegal rave party, illegal
Speaker 1: rave party, underground parties, I flyer parties, party crews, flyer parties,
Speaker 1: underground flyer party, flyer parties, party cruiser, underground party. Like
Speaker 1: the scene was the Boogeyman or some kind of monster
Speaker 1: looming in the dark. This is spooky again. These party
Speaker 1: crews would go really hard at these parties to compete
Speaker 1: to those the best parties, become a popular party crew,
Speaker 1: and I guess game across to being put out of
Speaker 1: the gang because people started franking people and some party
Speaker 1: boards wouldn't go to certain events because they were scared
Speaker 1: that this party crew was going to show up, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But it was definitely not a game. Gangs,
Speaker 1: gang adjacent illegal parties, kids drinking. That's how the party
Speaker 1: crewsine came across in the media. I know it sounds bad.
Speaker 1: Sometimes gang members did go to parties and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people under twenty one drinking. People did
Speaker 1: stupid things, and sometimes people got hurt. But there was
Speaker 1: another side of the party creusine, but I feel was ignored,
Speaker 1: misunderstood and rarely talked about. That it wasn't just any
Speaker 1: teens gone wild party. It was a whole world built
Speaker 1: intentionally for us by us. From how we designed our logos.
Speaker 1: Our logo was a play with money, but it was
Speaker 1: smoking a blunt. It was like a south Park beam
Speaker 1: like the link characters from South Park, like dressing blue
Speaker 1: wood glasses, to how we secured the spot. The parties
Speaker 1: were always like somebody's grandma's backyard. Hey, shout out to
Speaker 1: the grandma's at pas for allowing us to party on
Speaker 1: our spots for like one hundred and fifty bucks. And
Speaker 1: the economics of party that was the majority of the
Speaker 1: money that was being made in any Flyer party was
Speaker 1: through the nas. Did our goals so like just do
Speaker 1: like three to four, three to five racks? That's next time.
Speaker 1: This episode was written, reported, and hosted by me Ja.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced and reported by Sofia Pelissa car
Speaker 1: Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang, and edited by Antonia Shido.
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Annie Abelis, fact checking by Nadia Alista,
Speaker 1: Sound design and original music composition by Kyle Murdock. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Janet Lee. Art by Julie Ruiz and
Speaker 1: Victua Collon. Our executive producer from Vice Audio is Kate Osbourne.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers from Elias Studios are Antonia Seedhivo and leog.
Speaker 1: Our Vice President of Podcasts from Elias Studios is China
Speaker 1: Naomi Krocomo. Special thanks to the UCLA Department of Communication
Speaker 1: Archives for access to their news collections. Party Cruise. The
Speaker 1: Untold Story is a production of Elias Studios and Vice
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with Ihearts Michael Buddha podcast Network. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and Hey, were
Speaker 1: you and a party crew? Send its your party flyers
Speaker 1: or photos. I'd love to see them, even a voice
Speaker 1: message about your memories. Anything. You can send us a
Speaker 1: message or a picture at Party Crews at Elliot Studios
Speaker 1: dot com. Support for this podcast is made possible by
Speaker 1: Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes
Speaker 1: Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is
Speaker 1: made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
Speaker 1: a private corporation funded by the American people,