She’d waited years for the information.
However when the message arrived Aug. 26, 2022, Josephine Wentzel immediately needed to confront an agonizing chance. She’d spent six years monitoring the person authorities believed was liable for killing her daughter, a search that spanned hundreds of miles, worldwide borders and dozens of doable sightings that, ultimately, had produced little.
Wentzel declined to establish the message’s sender, however she mentioned it supposedly contained a current image of Raymond McLeod, who on the time was one of many U.S. Marshals Service’s most wished fugitives. Had he really been discovered — or would this be one other jolt of false hope?
She targeted in on the picture, she mentioned, and “simply freaked out like, oh, my gosh, it’s him. I didn’t even need to assume it as a result of somebody would possibly hear my ideas and warn him to flee.”
McLeod, a 42-year-old former U.S. Marine, was apprehended in El Salvador days later and is awaiting trial in San Diego on a cost of first-degree homicide within the June 2016 strangulation of Krystal Mitchell. He pleaded not responsible and is scheduled for a preliminary listening to in March. His attorneys both declined to remark or didn’t reply to a request for remark. In courtroom filings, they mentioned McLeod unintentionally killed Mitchell throughout “tough, consensual intercourse gone mistaken.”
Wentzel, a 67-year-old grandmother and former police detective had been making ready for all times as an RV’ing snowbird when her daughter was killed. She has used the unbelievable platform she developed pursuing McLeod to jot down two books — “The Chase” and “The Seize” — and to assist different grieving mother and father navigate the combination of frustration, despair and confusion left by an unsolved murder.
Wentzel has assisted a nonprofit that helps legislation enforcement companies with a collection of circumstances lately, together with the disappearance and alleged homicide of Maya Millete, based on the Chilly Case Basis’s co-executive director. Via a nonprofit Wentzel established, Angels of Justice, she launched a marketing campaign urging the White Home to deal with the nation’s large backlog of unsolved murders as a nationwide emergency.
In a press release, a White Home spokeswoman blamed former President Joe Biden for failing to allow legislation enforcement companies to “really struggle crime” and mentioned that President Donald Trump is “restoring integrity to our justice system.”
A spokesperson for the Marshals Service, which apprehended McLeod, declined to remark on questions on Wentzel’s position find him, however in a press release after McLeod’s seize the company’s director mentioned Wentzel had labored “diligently with legislation enforcement these previous years to see today of justice arrive.”
The San Diego County District Lawyer’s Workplace has mentioned she was “instrumental” within the seek for McLeod.
“She goes for it,” mentioned Pat Kuiper, who credit Wentzel with serving to push investigators in Washington state to take one other have a look at the almost two-decade-old unsolved homicide of her son. “She goes for it in such a method that folks can’t actually refuse her, as a result of she’s so real and type, however persistent, assertive.”
For Rachel Glass, whose daughter was discovered strangled alongside along with her pregnant roommate in Arizona 15 years in the past, Wentzel offered an empathetic ear and perception into an investigative course of that Glass — a longtime nurse — knew nothing about.
“If there are issues that go on and also you assume, what the hell is that this, I’d name her and say, you received’t consider what’s occurred now,” Glass recalled. “And he or she would possibly inform me x, y and z about why it has to play out like that.”
Wentzel’s husband of almost three many years, a retired put up workplace upkeep engineer, attributes her newest chapter to the tenacity she’s all the time proven.
“That’s one thing I lack,” he mentioned. “I can get simply discouraged and say, overlook it. However my spouse, she’s not gonna overlook it.”
A lethal date in San Diego
For Wentzel, that chapter started quickly after the loss of life of her daughter. Based on a press release of info filed by the San Diego County District Lawyer’s Workplace, McLeod had gotten right into a struggle at a San Diego bar June 9, 2016, after he grabbed Mitchell by the throat and a person intervened, telling him to cease.
Mitchell was discovered useless the subsequent day on the condominium the place they had been staying. Based on the assertion, a deputy health worker decided she had been strangled and later in contrast the severity of the damage to somebody who’d been struck with a baseball bat or had their neck stomped on.
Mitchell, 30, had been visiting the town with McLeod from Phoenix, the place the divorced mom of two labored as a property supervisor, Wentzel mentioned. To her mom, Mitchell was the lifetime of the celebration — and somebody who turned heads each time she walked right into a room.
Mitchell met McLeod by means of work just a few weeks earlier than — he’d gone to her workplace to lease an condominium, her mom mentioned — they usually’d traveled to San Diego. Mitchell was impressed by how a lot McLeod appeared to take care of his younger son, Wentzel mentioned, and he or she didn’t seem to find out about his earlier allegations of home violence.
A type of alleged incidents occurred not lengthy earlier than their journey, courtroom information in California present. In Riverside County, he was charged that April with inflicting corporal damage on a partner — an alleged crime that concerned accusations that he strangled his spouse, based on the assertion of info.
McLeod pleaded not responsible, the Riverside County information present, and in a submitting his attorneys in Mitchell’s case have mentioned that he has a “historical past of consensual sexual practices that included components of the BDSM group resembling bondage, whipping, slapping, choking and erotic asphyxiation, typically to unconsciousness.”
That earlier case was not adjudicated, nevertheless, and McLeod disappeared after Mitchell’s loss of life. Based on prosecutors, on June 10, he allegedly drove Mitchell’s automobile to San Diego Worldwide Airport, the place he rented one other automobile and headed to Mexico.
A world search
The San Diego Police Division recognized McLeod as an individual of curiosity in Mitchell’s loss of life virtually instantly. A warrant searching for his arrest in her homicide was filed June 13.
However McLeod was nowhere to be discovered. Finally, Wentzel recalled, the Marshals Service acquired concerned and supplied a reward. However she turned pissed off with the federal government’s incapability to shortly examine leads in overseas nations, she mentioned. U.S. embassies appeared lower than smitten by serving to, she mentioned, and he or she recalled a deputy marshal telling her that they couldn’t simply “run in and get the man.”
“It’s one other nation,” she recalled him saying. “We acquired to get approval.”
The Marshals Service declined to remark. The State Division didn’t reply to a request for remark.
So Wentzel started looking out herself. Though she’d labored for a number of years as a police officer and detective in her native Guam many years in the past, she mentioned that have didn’t start to organize her for the years of social media sleuthing that she was about to embark on.
One in all her first steps was to drag collectively a “wished” poster with photos of McLeod, together with a quick description of the slaying and the reward quantity — on the time $5,000, she mentioned. She targeted on Belize, a spot she’d heard he is likely to be, and circulated info amongst dozens of Fb accounts — gyms and resorts, eating places and a college, screenshots of the messages present.
After posting the knowledge to a purchase/promote group, Wentzel recalled, the responses began rolling in. Some had been by cellphone. Others got here through WhatsApp or Fb.
“Madam I noticed this man I’m certain of it from his tattoos and his face,” one message learn, based on a screenshot.
“If he’s right here he’ll b caught,” learn one other.
However then, he wasn’t. And the messages continued. There have been ideas that he was in Honduras, that he was in Guatemala. Some tipsters appeared to legitimately need to assist, she mentioned. Others appeared like scammers.
“One man contacted me and mentioned, OK, he’s right here,” she recalled. “I do know the place he’s working at. I’ve acquired photos. I’ve acquired all this. So, you recognize, I want you to ship me $1,000.”
There have been so many ideas, mentioned Mike Wentzel, that fielding them turned a 24/7 job for his spouse. At instances, he thought of asking her to dial issues again, however by no means may.
“That is her youngster,” he mentioned. “How can I inform her to cease?”
However there have been instances when the thought crossed her thoughts. Conserving hope alive through the pandemic, when that regular movement of ideas dried up, was particularly tough, she mentioned.
The ultimate tip
As this droop in info dragged on, Wentzel mentioned, native and federal officers introduced that McLeod had been added to the Marshals’ record of its 15 most wished fugitives. Within the spring 2021 announcement, in addition they introduced that the reward for info resulting in McLeod’s arrest had grown to $50,000.
His final recognized location was in Guatemala in 2017, the officers mentioned.
Wentzel mentioned she believes it was a tip linked to that Central American nation that in the end led to McLeod’s seize. 5 years after he was noticed in Guatemala, she mentioned, a few tipsters informed her they’d seen McLeod at a lodge simply north of the nation’s border with El Salvador.
Wentzel surveyed YouTube movies from the lodge to see if she may spot his face, she recalled, and he or she posted a “wished” advert on Fb that focused accounts within the space. Wentzel mentioned she set a 100-mile radius for the advert, that means that everybody in that zone would see McLeod’s face.
Finally, Wentzel mentioned, she realized from the Marshals Service that somebody noticed considered one of her advertisements and shared a brochure with authorities that appeared to point out McLeod. The brochure was from a Salvadoran English college not removed from the Guatemalan lodge, she mentioned.
It was this picture that prompted Wentzel to conclude: “It’s him.”
4 days later, on Aug. 30, 2022, authorities introduced that McLeod had been taken into custody in Sonsonate, El Salvador, the place he’d been educating English. He landed in San Diego the subsequent day.
Wentzel wrestled with a tangle of emotion as McLeod’s arraignment approached. She thought of her daughter’s last moments and ticked by means of a litany of revenge fantasies, she recalled. However she didn’t need to stew in hatred and bitterness. So she tried to concentrate on her daughter’s youngsters, whom she and her husband have raised, and on the opposite victims she’s sought to assist.
“Homicide does this to you — it makes you any individual you’re not, when you enable it,” she mentioned. “I didn’t image residing my life out like this. I wished to be a grandma and I simply wished to journey and have enjoyable and dwell the remainder of my life out with my household. But it surely made me one thing else.”
