Death of a Rising Star - Esmerelda Gonzalez

Episode #45 Esmeralda Gonzalez

[Shaun] 

Like many women we talk about on Sins & Survivors, Esmerelda Gonzalez was on the rise in 2019. She was successful and getting more popular all the time. She was a model, an Instagram influencer, a college graduate, and just a savvy woman whose friends and even her ex-boyfriend agreed - was destined for greatness.

[John] 

Tragically, of course, it was not to be. Her bright light was snuffed out by a violent man who saw her only for what she was wearing, not who she was. He and his accomplices committed a horrific act and then worked hard to try and cover up the evidence. If it wasn't for our great community here in Las Vegas and the tips police received, they might have gotten away with it.  

(Music - Pause for 8 seconds)

[Shaun] 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I’m your host, Shaun, and with me as always, is the one and only John.

[John] 

I am the only John in the room.

[Shaun] 

It’s hard to believe, but this is the last episode of season one. Over the past year we have done more than 45 regular episodes.  Next week will start domestic violence awareness month, and we have a bunch of extra episodes planned for October, some collaborations we’re excited about, and some special episodes from our friends in the ethical true crime community. So make sure you are following all of our social media accounts at sinsandsurvivors, and that you are subscribed on your podcast platform of choice so you don’t miss a single thing as we work to raise awareness of this critical issue that plagues not only Las Vegas, but as we say, happens everywhere. 

Let’s get back to the case we have for this week. 

The Gonzalez family came to the United States with their young family in the late 90s from Michoacan, Mexico, searching for opportunities for themselves and their three children and moved to, where else, Las Vegas. 

They moved to the historic west side and raised their children there. What we know about Esmerelda’s personality comes mainly from her older brother Juan who she was very close with. 

In remembrance of his sister, Juan describes her so beautifully so we’re going to read what he said about her in the family’s GoFundMe

He says  

I would like to tell you about the real Esmeralda Gonzalez, my kind, beautiful, and educated sister, who was deeply loved by her family and friends. 

Esmeralda was a 24-year-old student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she was working toward her Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies. Esmeralda loved to spoil her little white poodle, Bonita, who she rescued from the animal shelter 11 years ago. 

She was a very savvy chess player, who competed in her high school’s chess club. She was a member of UNLV’s Chapter of the National Society for Leadership and Success, where she learned to strengthen her leadership skills. She enjoyed going out to eat with her friends and family and she loved to make us laugh. 

She dreamed of one day having a family of her own and despite having mental health challenges, Esmeralda was always determined to strive for success.

He also said that “Christmas didn't start until she arrived” and that she was always working, always busy.

She also participated in beauty pageants which isn't very surprising given how beautiful, smart, and talented she was.

[John] 

Juan also said that she had dreams of becoming a lawyer after participating in the “Trial By Peers” program run by the Clark County Law Foundation as a peer counselor. This is a really innovative program that is used as an alternative for some first and second-time misdemeanor juvenile offenders.

In the program, Defendants are represented by peer counselors, who prosecute and defend the case, while a jury of peers hears the trial. The teen jury decides the verdict, and if the defendant is found guilty, they also determine the sentence. Successful completion of the sentence results in the defendant's record reflecting only a referral to the peer court. Sentencing options may include serving on a jury, performing community service, writing apology letters, or attending personal development courses. 

We mentioned she was also a professional model and Instagram Influencer with over 300,000 followers. You can see her whole Instagram feed @esmeralda_merlot and you quickly get the sense that she was blowing up on social media, really making a name for herself and living her best life here in Las Vegas sporting a $40,000 Rolex, wearing designer shoes, carrying designer bags, and she even bought her first house at age 23 so she was definitely finding success and making it work as a career. As Juan said, she was a hard worker, always striving for success.

Esmerelda was born May 26th, 1995, and just after her 24th birthday she mysteriously disappeared without a trace. On May 31st, 2019 her boyfriend Luis Merlo called Juan to tell him that Esmerelda was acting strangely. 

After that, Juan went over to her house to check on her and was immediately very concerned at what he found. 

Her front door was open, which was extremely unlike Esmerelda, who valued her privacy and security. The lights were on, and he said that it looked as if it had been ransacked.

[Shaun] 

We mentioned this before, but according To Juan Esmerelda suffered from mental health issues including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and she was on medication to treat it. Juan has said that she was fine while she was on the medication, but when he saw the state of her house, he was concerned that she might be off of her meds which he knew could lead to erratic behavior.

Juan leapt into action, reporting her missing to Metro, printing flyers and canvassing the neighborhood to find out if anyone had seen his sister. It was a frustrating and terrifying time for her family, not knowing where Esmerelda was. When the police began their investigation, of course they canvassed the neighborhood looking for information, and several people in the neighborhood came forward with footage from their doorbell and security cameras that offered clues about the last time Esmerelda was seen.

On May 30th, 2019, there was surveillance footage of Esmerelda walking around the neighborhood in lingerie and high heels. She was walking around the neighborhood, seemingly pretty unsteady on her feet talking to people.

Further investigation revealed that she was asking people for a ride to BMW of Las Vegas so that she could get a replacement key fob for her car. In her last interaction with Luis Merlo, her boyfriend, he claimed that he had taken her car keys and phone out of “concern” for her well being.. To make sure that she didn't drive in the state she was in.

[John] 

Police paid a visit to the BMW dealership and got their security camera footage, and sure enough, she was there in that same outfit accompanied by a man who was unknown to Juan.. he’d never seen this person who was with his sister before. Metro attempted to locate him as a person of interest. They described him as suspicious and focused on bringing him in for questioning.

This lead was a dead end though. It turned out that he wasn't at all suspicious, his name was Brent Smith, and he was just a person who lived in her neighborhood and offered to drive her to the BMW dealership to get her key fob replaced (we’ll have more to say about this in the swing shift episode)

Police also did some digging into her boyfriend Luis Merlo who had taken her car keys and phone, and they discovered that there had been a domestic disturbance at their house recently, which obviously made them want to investigate that angle further given the statistics we talk about so often. 

Police were able to view the surveillance video from inside Esmerelda’s house where she could be seen alone that evening walking around the house and then leaving, so Metro cleared Luis as a suspect at that point. He was nowhere to be seen.

She was last seen on a doorbell camera around 230am on the 31st of May when she rang a neighbor’s doorbell and they told her she was at the wrong house, and she just walked away. On the surveillance camera, you can clearly see she’s quite unsteady on her feet and seems like she might be in some sort of distress.

[Shaun] 

At this point in the investigation, the police needed to catch a break. They had pursued both Brent from the car dealership and Esmeralda’s boyfriend as possible leads, but neither was responsible for her disappearance, and neither of them had any details that would get Juan and the police closer to finding Esmeralda.

On July 18, 2019, Metro detectives got an anonymous tip that was very specific, but also very horrifying and almost difficult to accept as true. The tipster told police that 2 of the tipster’s acquaintances, a man named Christopher Prestopino and a woman named Cassandra Grant, had killed a woman. They didn’t know the name of the woman, but they had heard that the woman had been tied up in Christopher’s house and later killed by being injected with a pool cleaner chemical. Christopher and Cassandra then rented a Uhaul truck and left the woman’s body in the desert. 

Metro detectives looked into the tip, trying to corroborate what the tipster had told them. They looked into whether or not Christopher or Cassandra had rented a Uhaul recently, and they found a Uhaul record from June 8, 2019. Christopher had rented a 15-foot truck and returned it 2 days later.

The detectives then looked into missing person reports to see if anyone had been reported missing during that time. As we mentioned Esmeralda was reported missing on May 31, 2019. Metro became more confident that the tipster could be telling the truth when they realized that Christopher lived just down the street from Esmeralda – not more than a tenth of a mile from her home. 

Christopher was in his mid-40s and worked as a stagehand at the Paris hotel, and did not have any violent criminal history. Cassandra, his roommate, was in her late 30s. The police also had the name of Christopher’s girlfriend, Lisa Mort. Lisa was 32 years old and had recently been arrested on unrelated drug charges, and was housed in the Clark County Detention Center. 

[John] 

As we stated earlier, Esmeralda had been caught on her neighbor's doorbell camera, walking in the neighborhood around 2:30AM on May 31, 2019. The police had a theory that maybe she had walked to Christopher’s house or that she had encountered him or Cassandra in the neighborhood. The police felt they had enough info to take a harder look at Christopher and Casandra.

Police spoke to a friend of Christopher’s, named Tricia. Tricia was upfront with the officers and gave them the details of what she knew. She told them that in early June, Christopher had called her and asked her for help. She went to his house, and she was able to see that he had rented a Uhaul, and in his garage was a cement mixer and a large apparently homemade  wooden box. 

He wanted her to help him move the large wooden crate into the Uhaul. It was too heavy, and she wasn’t able to help him move it. 

His roommate, Cassandra, was also in the garage according to Tricia, Cassandra was “whacked out of her mind” – I assume this means she thought she was high – and she was cleaning the garage furiously. She also said Christopher was acting extremely paranoid, and told her that there had been a woman at his house that she started freaking out so he had tied her up, and he said he thought maybe he had killed her.. but Tricia didn't see a woman or a body at the house. 

[Shaun] 

The police continued to gather evidence about Christopher and Cassandra. They looked into local Home Depot stores and got surveillance footage of Christopher buying incriminating items such as wood, lime, building materials, concrete, and screws on June 6. 

They were also able to get a search warrant for his phone records, which showed that he had been out in the desert for several hours on June 8.

The police questioned Christopher but he claimed that he didn’t recognize Esmeralda from the photos police showed him. He denied having any knowledge of anything about her disappearance. 

Cassandra, who was staying in Milwaukee, also denied knowing anything about Esmeralda or what had happened to her. According to police, she was defensive and argumentative during the interview. 

The police then went to the jail where Christopher’s girlfriend Lisa was being held. Like Christopher and Cassandra, she claimed she didn’t know anything about what happened. 

Shortly after the police left, she called Christopher and warned him that the police had come to question her, and she told him to run.

I guess she forgot all calls from jail are recorded.  

[John] 

Cassandra apparently was also talking to her friends about the police coming to question her. According to the police report, at least 3 different friends of hers came forward to the police with information she’d told them.

One mutual friend of the group told the police that she had spoken to Cassandra shortly after the police came to Milwaukee. Cassandra told the friend that she hadn’t recognized the woman in the photos police showed her but that there had been a woman in the house she shared with Christopher. She said that there was a period of time when he wouldn’t let her come into the house. 

She also told her friend that she had seen construction materials at the house but Chris told her he was building an island in the kitchen. She found that odd because the kitchen already had an island. She then left Vegas to go to New Orleans with her daughter. 

Another friend of the group had heard similar details from Casandra, including that Cassandra and Christopher were worried because they had left a Uhaul dolly in the desert near the body. This friend also didn’t know the identity of the victim, but she believed Christopher was in the process of selling his possessions and moving.

The details of what Cassandra shared had happened to Esmeralda were graphic and horrifying. It’s unclear how she came to be inside Christopher’s house on the 31st, but Cassandra had told multiple friends that the woman began freaking out at some point. Christopher tied her up to try to get her to calm down. Cassandra stated she was speaking in the devil’s tongue, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

He was afraid that she was going to go to the police and report him for something, presumably kidnapping or for the drugs he had given her. At one point, she did calm down, but she fought back and punched him when he untied her. 

Without going into too many graphic details, Esmeralda was beaten and strangled, and eventually, she was killed by an injection of muriatic acid. Some sources state Cassandra admitted she had injected Esmeralda, but others state it was Chris. 

On September 20, 2019, Metro police executed a search warrant on Christopher’s home, but no additional evidence was uncovered. 

[Shaun]

After hearing from several friends the details that Cassandra had shared with them about what had happened with Esmeralda, the detectives offered her a deal. If she would come back to Vegas and help them locate Esmeralda’s body, they would not place her under arrest immediately. They would allow her to return to Milwaukee to “get her affairs in order.” before placing her under arrest. 

Cassandra led police to a spot in the desert, near the rural community of Glendale, in the Moapa Valley – 50 miles northeast of Vegas. There, the police found a large structure, a 250-gallon water tank that had been filled with concrete. They excavated the concrete and found human remains inside

Sadly, Esmeralda’s body had significantly decomposed and her official cause of death could not be determined. They were able to positively identify her through DNA, as well as through the belongings she still had with her, including her $40,000 Rolex.

Apparently, Christopher had listened to his girlfriend and fled because he was discovered to have been in Belize, but he was planning to travel back home to Las Vegas because Lisa, his girlfriend, was getting out of jail and he was planning to pick her up and take her back with him.

Officers were there to arrest him when his flight from Belize landed in Vegas. 

[John] 

Cassandra and Lisa were arrested shortly afterward. Both Christopher and Cassandra were charged with murder, kidnapping resulting in substantial bodily harm, and conspiracy to commit murder. Lisa was charged with accessory to murder after warning Christopher that the detectives were investigating Esmeralda’s death.

Christopher originally pleaded not guilty and was released on $500,000 bail. However, District Judge Michelle Leavitt ordered his arrest after he failed to appear in court. He was taken into custody within hours of the order. Pamela Weckerly as prosecutor said he was flagrantly violating his bail by contacting his girlfriend Lisa in jail and asked he be held without bail. 

In October of 2020, he was remanded into the care of a mental health facility, as he was found to be temporarily incompetent to stand trial. He was in the facility’s care for about 4 months before he was sent back to the District Court for trial.

There were, of course, additional delays in reaching a trial date, but in March 2023 Christopher accepted a plea deal. He entered an Alford plea to second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. As a reminder, an Alford plea means that he is admitting the prosecution has enough evidence to find him guilty, but he is not technically admitting guilt. 

He was sentenced to 10-25 years, with credit for nearly 3 years of time served. At the time of his sentence, Christopher blamed Esmeralda’s death on Cassandra and claimed all of his involvement was after the fact. He did seem somewhat remorseful but he really didn't take responsibility for his actions.

His first parole hearing will be held in 2029. 

[Shaun]

Lisa Mort, Christopher’s girlfriend, pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and was sentenced in 2020 to 2-5 years in prison. She was released on parole in December 2020.

Cassandra pleaded guilty as well to voluntary manslaughter with a deadly weapon in 2021, and she was sentenced to 8-20 years. According to reporting, she wrote a 5-page letter to the judge before sentencing, where she accepted responsibility for the charges.  She stated she was dealing with substance use during that time and that she struggled with what she could have or should have done, but didn’t admit to killing Esmeralda. 

Her next parole hearing will be in 2027. If she is not paroled, her sentence will end in November 2030. 

Also, as always, John and I will be talking more about our thoughts on this case in our Swing Shift episode, so be sure to visit sinspod.co/subscribe to sign up to hear our bonus episodes.

[John]

Esmeralda’s family and friends gathered for a celebration of life for her on November 12, 2019. 

This is another tragic story of a young woman in the Vegas community being taken by violence. We agree with what the trial judge said at Christopher’s sentencing – Esmeralda sounds like she was a wonderful person. We are grateful to her brother Juan for giving her a voice. 

We would also like to remind everyone of the resources that are available. You can find links in the show notes and on our website to the National Hotlines for Domestic Violence and stalking. The number to text or call for mental health crisis is 988. 

We want to thank everyone again for all of your support of our podcast this year! We are really grateful for the opportunities we had to share more about victims who were more than what happened to them, to shed light on cases of injustice in our community, and to help support families who are still searching for missing loved ones. 

Until next week, remember what happens here happens everywhere.