She’d waited years for the information.
However when the message arrived Aug. 26, 2022, Josephine Wentzel abruptly needed to confront an agonizing risk. She’d spent six years monitoring the person authorities believed was liable for killing her daughter, a search that spanned 1000’s of miles, worldwide borders and dozens of doable sightings that, ultimately, had produced little.
Wentzel declined to determine the message’s sender, however she mentioned it supposedly contained a latest image of Raymond McLeod, who on the time was one of many U.S. Marshals Service’s most needed fugitives. Had he truly been discovered — or would this be one other jolt of false hope?
She centered in on the picture, she mentioned, and “simply freaked out like, oh, my gosh, it’s him. I didn’t even need to suppose it as a result of somebody may 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 court docket filings, they mentioned McLeod by accident killed Mitchell throughout “tough, consensual intercourse gone flawed.”
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 write 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 instances lately, together with the disappearance and alleged homicide of Maya Millete, in keeping with the Chilly Case Basis’s co-executive director. By means of 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 function 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 this present day of justice arrive.”
The San Diego County District Legal professional’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 practically two-decade-old unsolved homicide of her son. “She goes for it in such a manner 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 together 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 suppose, what the hell is that this, I’d name her and say, you gained’t imagine what’s occurred now,” Glass recalled. “And she or he may inform me x, y and z about why it has to play out like that.”
Wentzel’s husband of practically three a long time, a retired publish workplace upkeep engineer, attributes her newest chapter to the tenacity she’s at all times 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. In line with a press release of info filed by the San Diego County District Legal professional’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 residence the place they had been staying. In line with 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 social gathering — and somebody who turned heads every time she walked right into a room.
Mitchell met McLeod by way of work just a few weeks earlier than — he’d gone to her workplace to hire an residence, her mom mentioned — and so they’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 kind of alleged incidents occurred not lengthy earlier than their journey, court docket data 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, in keeping with the assertion of info.
McLeod pleaded not responsible, the Riverside County data present, and in a submitting his legal professionals in Mitchell’s case have mentioned that he has a “historical past of consensual sexual practices that included parts of the BDSM group resembling bondage, whipping, slapping, choking and erotic asphyxiation, generally to unconsciousness.”
That earlier case was not adjudicated, nevertheless, and McLeod disappeared after Mitchell’s loss of life. In line with 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 global search
The San Diego Police Division recognized McLeod as an individual of curiosity in Mitchell’s loss of life nearly instantly. A warrant searching for his arrest in her homicide was filed June 13.
However McLeod was nowhere to be discovered. Ultimately, Wentzel recalled, the Marshals Service bought concerned and provided a reward. However she grew to become pissed off with the federal government’s incapacity to rapidly examine leads in overseas nations, she mentioned. U.S. embassies appeared lower than captivated with 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 bought 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 a long time 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 every of her first steps was to drag collectively a “needed” poster with footage of McLeod, together with a quick description of the slaying and the reward quantity — on the time $5,000, she mentioned. She centered on Belize, a spot she’d heard he may 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 telephone. Others got here through WhatsApp or Fb.
“Madam I noticed this man I’m positive of it from his tattoos and his face,” one message learn, in keeping with 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 bought footage. I’ve bought 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 grew to become 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 little one,” he mentioned. “How can I inform her to cease?”
However there have been instances when the thought crossed her thoughts. Maintaining hope alive in the course of the pandemic, when that regular circulation of ideas dried up, was particularly troublesome, she mentioned.
The ultimate tip
As this stoop in info dragged on, Wentzel mentioned, native and federal officers introduced that McLeod had been added to the Marshals’ listing of its 15 most needed 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 “needed” advert on Fb that focused accounts within the space. Wentzel mentioned she set a 100-mile radius for the advert, which means that everybody in that zone would see McLeod’s face.
Ultimately, Wentzel mentioned, she realized from the Marshals Service that somebody noticed one among 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 instructing 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 ultimate moments and ticked by way of a litany of revenge fantasies, she recalled. However she didn’t need to stew in hatred and bitterness. So she tried to deal with 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 anyone you’re not, if you happen to enable it,” she mentioned. “I didn’t image dwelling my life out like this. I needed to be a grandma and I simply needed to journey and have enjoyable and dwell the remainder of my life out with my household. However it made me one thing else.”
