She’d waited years for the information.
However when the message arrived Aug. 26, 2022, Josephine Wentzel all of the sudden needed to confront an agonizing chance. She’d spent six years monitoring the person authorities believed was accountable for killing her daughter, a search that spanned hundreds of miles, worldwide borders and dozens of attainable sightings that, in the long run, had produced little.
Wentzel declined to establish the message’s sender, however she stated it supposedly contained a current image of Raymond McLeod, who on the time was one of many U.S. Marshals Service’s most needed fugitives. Had he really been discovered — or would this be one other jolt of false hope?
She targeted in on the picture, she stated, and “simply freaked out like, oh, my gosh, it’s him. I didn’t even wish to assume 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 stated McLeod unintentionally killed Mitchell throughout “tough, consensual intercourse gone incorrect.”
Wentzel, a 67-year-old grandmother and former police detective had been getting 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 put in writing two books — “The Chase” and “The Seize” — and to assist different grieving dad and mom navigate the combo of frustration, despair and confusion left by an unsolved murder.
Wentzel has assisted a nonprofit that helps legislation enforcement businesses with a collection of instances in recent times, together with the disappearance and alleged homicide of Maya Millete, in keeping with the Chilly Case Basis’s co-executive director. By a nonprofit Wentzel established, Angels of Justice, she launched a marketing campaign urging the White Home to deal with the nation’s huge backlog of unsolved murders as a nationwide emergency.
In an announcement, a White Home spokeswoman blamed former President Joe Biden for failing to allow legislation enforcement businesses to “really combat crime” and stated 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 to find him, however in an announcement after McLeod’s seize the company’s director stated 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 stated she was “instrumental” within the seek for McLeod.
“She goes for it,” stated Pat Kuiper, who credit Wentzel with serving to push investigators in Washington state to take one other take a look at the practically two-decade-old unsolved homicide of her son. “She goes for it in such a manner that individuals 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 assume, what the hell is that this, I’d name her and say, you gained’t consider what’s occurred now,” Glass recalled. “And he or she may inform me x, y and z about why it has to play out like that.”
Wentzel’s husband of practically three many years, a retired submit workplace upkeep engineer, attributes her newest chapter to the tenacity she’s all the time proven.
“That’s one thing I lack,” he stated. “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 dying of her daughter. In line with an announcement of information filed by the San Diego County District Legal professional’s Workplace, McLeod had gotten right into a combat 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 lifeless the subsequent day on the condo 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 stated. To her mom, Mitchell was the lifetime of the social gathering — and somebody who turned heads each time she walked right into a room.
Mitchell met McLeod by way of work a number of weeks earlier than — he’d gone to her workplace to hire an condo, her mom stated — 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 stated, 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, court docket 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, in keeping with the assertion of information.
McLeod pleaded not responsible, the Riverside County information present, and in a submitting his legal professionals in Mitchell’s case have stated that he has a “historical past of consensual sexual practices that included parts of the BDSM group reminiscent of bondage, whipping, slapping, choking and erotic asphyxiation, generally to unconsciousness.”
That earlier case was not adjudicated, nevertheless, and McLeod disappeared after Mitchell’s dying. In line with prosecutors, on June 10, he allegedly drove Mitchell’s automotive to San Diego Worldwide Airport, the place he rented one other automotive and headed to Mexico.
A global search
The San Diego Police Division recognized McLeod as an individual of curiosity in Mitchell’s dying virtually instantly. A warrant in search of 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 provided a reward. However she grew to become pissed off with the federal government’s incapability to shortly examine leads in overseas international locations, she stated. U.S. embassies appeared lower than obsessed with serving to, she stated, 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 stated that have didn’t start to arrange 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 “needed” poster with photos of McLeod, together with a short description of the slaying and the reward quantity — on the time $5,000, she stated. She targeted on Belize, a spot she’d heard he is likely to be, and circulated data amongst dozens of Fb accounts — gyms and resorts, eating places and a college, screenshots of the messages present.
After posting the data 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 certain 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 wish to assist, she stated. Others appeared like scammers.
“One man contacted me and stated, 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, , I would like you to ship me $1,000.”
There have been so many ideas, stated Mike Wentzel, that fielding them grew to become a 24/7 job for his spouse. At occasions, he thought-about asking her to dial issues again, however by no means may.
“That is her baby,” he stated. “How can I inform her to cease?”
However there have been occasions when the thought crossed her thoughts. Retaining hope alive through the pandemic, when that regular movement of ideas dried up, was particularly troublesome, she stated.
The ultimate tip
As this hunch in data dragged on, Wentzel stated, native and federal officers introduced that McLeod had been added to the Marshals’ record of its 15 most needed fugitives. Within the spring 2021 announcement, additionally they introduced that the reward for data resulting in McLeod’s arrest had grown to $50,000.
His final recognized location was in Guatemala in 2017, the officers stated.
Wentzel stated 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 stated, a few tipsters advised her they’d seen McLeod at a resort simply north of the nation’s border with El Salvador.
Wentzel surveyed YouTube movies from the resort 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 stated she set a 100-mile radius for the advert, which means that everybody in that zone would see McLeod’s face.
Finally, Wentzel stated, she discovered from the Marshals Service that somebody noticed one in all her adverts and shared a brochure with authorities that appeared to point out McLeod. The brochure was from a Salvadoran English faculty not removed from the Guatemalan resort, she stated.
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 wish 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 someone you’re not, for those who permit it,” she stated. “I didn’t image residing 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.”
