cover of episode MISSING: Alex Hernandez

MISSING: Alex Hernandez

2024/1/8
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Ashley Flowers
真实犯罪播客主持人和Audiochuck媒体公司创始人
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Britt Prawat
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Ashley Flowers: 本集讲述了埃弗琳·埃尔南德斯和她的儿子亚历克斯失踪的案件。该案件与臭名昭著的拉西·彼得森案有很多相似之处,但由于媒体关注度不足,埃尔南德斯案几乎被遗忘。埃弗琳在预产期前失踪,警方调查了她的公寓和男友,但没有发现明确的证据。后来,警方在海边发现了埃弗琳的部分遗体,但死因不明。亚历克斯至今下落不明,警方推测他也遇害了。本案中,媒体对两起案件关注度的差异以及案件的相似性是本集讨论的重点。 Britt Prawat: 对埃弗琳男友在埃弗琳和孩子失踪六天才报警的行为表示质疑,并指出报警人与警方的互动可能受到多种因素的影响,例如语言障碍或移民身份。同时,对埃弗琳男友的证词和不在场证明提出质疑。 Britt Prawat: 对埃弗琳男友的证词和不在场证明提出质疑,并指出警方缺乏证据证明其犯罪行为,也缺乏关于埃弗琳失踪案的线索。同时,讨论了媒体对埃弗琳案的关注度远低于拉西·彼得森案的原因,并认为这与受害者的种族和社会地位有关。

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Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And if you take a close look at your feed today, we're actually bringing you two Crime Junkie episodes. We want to continue trying to highlight cases that don't get as much coverage, but less coverage means less info. Which means shorter episodes. Right. But

I know that we're part of your weekly routine by now. And listen, I know I expect a lot of you. I expect you to pay attention. I expect you to act on these cases. So I know you expect a certain amount of Crime Junkie time with us. So because it's a little shorter, we're giving you two episodes. And this first one I have for you today is one that might actually sound a little familiar. Not because we've told it before, but because it shares a lot of similarities with one of the most infamous cases out there.

And it's hard not to feel like the media frenzies surrounding that case led to this one being practically forgotten. This is the story of a missing little boy named Alex Hernandez. And to understand the circumstances around him going missing, I need to tell you about the murder of his mother, Evelyn.

It's May 7, 2002, when police in San Francisco get a report of a missing pregnant woman, Evelyn Hernandez, and her five-year-old child, Alex. The report is being made by Evelyn's soon-to-be father of her second child, Herman Aguilara.

Now, the day that he's reporting them missing, this is Evelyn's due date. So there is extra cause for concern. And Herman says that he has already tried calling her multiple times and he's been calling around to hospitals to see if she's checked in.

In fact, he has been calling for days because according to Herman, Evelyn and Alex haven't been seen since May 1st. And again, this is now the 7th. Yeah, I was going to say, this is the 7th? That's... I'm sorry, I'm really stuck on this. So your about-to-go-into-labor girlfriend is missing for six days. With her kid, by the way. Oh, with her kid? And this dude waits like a full week before reporting the missing? Yeah.

Yes. And just a quick side note, I'm not sure girlfriend is the right term. I don't know what he told police about their relationship when he made the report, but they weren't technically together, I don't think. And I'm not sure

I also don't have a lot of information that could be relevant to how he maybe viewed or would have interacted with police. So, I mean, I think it's easy to be like, what, six days? But like, there are implications, like cultural implications. Like, was he fluent in English? Was he a documented citizen? Like, and

I'm not implying that anyone wasn't. I'm just trying to point out that there, I think, could be aspects to this story that we can't fully appreciate because of just who we are. Well, and even taking into account like past experiences with police officers, like all of that plays a part. Exactly. So there's like plenty of room here to be skeptical. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he's an angel. You'll see. But just keep it in mind.

So he says he had seen her on April 30th when he had accompanied her to the hospital for a prenatal checkup. From there, he tells police that he drove her home. So they don't live together? No, they don't live together.

So he drops her off at home. He says, though, that he goes in, he puts together an Ikea bed for Alex that he had purchased earlier. And then he went and picked up Alex from school for Evelyn. Is Herman Alex's dad, too? No. So Alex's biological father is in the Navy, but it doesn't seem like he's even really in the picture at all. OK, gotcha. So anyway, so Herman's telling police that he hasn't seen Evelyn since then and he hasn't been able to get a hold of her.

And before you ask, I don't know any more info on whether or not he contacted her family or if he went by her place. Like, none of that is reported on. Again, that's part of the problem with what we've got here. But no matter what's done, it's now the 7th and police are already a week behind. So they start by checking Evelyn's apartment. And as expected, there's just no sign of her or Alex.

But otherwise, it doesn't seem like they find anything of note there. Like there's at least nothing mentioned that shows signs of a struggle or anything like that. However, they do find a small bag that Evelyn had packed that looks like it was basically a go bag she had ready for when she went into labor. And if she had been planning to go anywhere for an extended period of time, she probably would have taken that with her. I mean, she was super pleasurable.

close to her due date. I mean, for me, I'd probably just keep it with me 24-7. You'd think, to be fair, I had to go get my go bag and I was like, it was the day after my due date, so like not prepared. But again, if I was going somewhere for a long time, I'd probably take it with me. Right. So next, police try to construct a timeline or as much of one as they can to try and figure out exactly what Evelyn had been up to on the first or if anyone had heard from her maybe after Herman.

What they learn is that around 8 a.m. on the day after Herman says that he saw her, so this would have been now the first, Evelyn had a call with one of her sisters, Olivia, who lives clear across the country in Arlington, Virginia.

Evelyn told her she was having some pain in her abdomen, but they didn't really get into detail about it because Evelyn had to get off the phone and go take Alex to school. The police confirmed that she does drop off Alex at school that morning, and then afterwards, she took a bus to her bank where she made a deposit.

From there, she goes to a Ross Dress for Less store and bought herself a new wallet. And then there's kind of a gap. And then the next thing they have on the timeline is that she leaves her apartment at around 6 p.m. to get her mail, which...

included a disabilities benefits check that she was receiving because of complications with her pregnancy. And I assume she picked up Alex from school in that time. Well, so yes, Alex did get picked up from school. I actually have a lot of questions around his drop-off and pickup, and ultimately I don't know if it matters. Like, I can get lost in details. Like, I don't know if you've met me, but I know she doesn't have a car, so I don't know if she's taking the bus everywhere or maybe she took him to school. It means walking him to the bus stop.

It's really fuzzy for me. So I don't know how he gets picked up, but I do know he makes it home.

Now, I think it's worth noting that the pain in her abdomen wasn't anything too concerning because she doesn't like go to the hospital or anything that we can find. And there is another report of another family member speaking to Evelyn at 9 p.m. that evening. And according to this family member, everything seemed fine. They mostly chatted about Evelyn's upcoming baby shower. I guess it's a sister she's on the phone with. And this sister was kind of worried about how Evelyn was going to get there since she didn't have a car. But

But otherwise, she ends up telling police that Evelyn seemed like she was actually in a pretty good mood when they chatted, like she was good. But after that, any timeline police were trying to construct abruptly ends. No one they can find sees or hears from Evelyn or Alex after that phone call.

So when they're talking to the police, what's her family saying about Herman? Like, are they giving them, like, vibes or anything? There's some context, yeah. So her family and friends say that their relationship is complicated, to say the least. They tell police that Herman was Evelyn's boyfriend until quite recently when she broke things off.

because she had given up on her hope that he would leave his wife for her. Oh, Herman is married. Yeah. And this isn't a situation where he and his wife are even separated or anything like that. What investigators learn is that he and Evelyn had been having an affair, except Evelyn wasn't aware that it was an affair. Like, she didn't initially know about his wife. So she had no idea she was basically the other woman in this scenario. Right.

So when she learned that she was pregnant, Evelyn was actually pretty excited. Like, I'm guessing she probably saw this as an opportunity to start building a life with Herman. But when she told him, he was less than enthused. Yeah, I'll bet. Yeah, and she didn't really understand that reaction. She was kind of thrown for a loop. She's expecting him to be as happy as she was.

But she wasn't even sure what to make of his behavior, especially when he seemed to be all of a sudden like distancing himself from her, not acting like himself.

According to an article published by ABC News, eventually she decides he's acting so weird that she's going to contact his mom. So she calls her up and she's like, hey, so I don't get why Herman isn't super excited about this baby we're having. What gives? Wait, did Herman's mom know about the affair? I actually don't know if she knew in advance or if Evelyn just like,

Because I don't know if she had a relationship with Evelyn, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So I don't know if Evelyn, like, had some kind of relationship and mom knew what was going on or if Evelyn just found her number and called her up out of the blue and this is, like, their first time speaking. But either way, when Evelyn says this, the mom is basically like, well, I mean, it probably has something to do with him being married, which I can't even imagine, like, finding out that way. It had to have been a shocking blow to Evelyn.

Because she's already a single mom at that point. She was clearly so ready and excited to start this new journey with Herman. And then this. So it was after finding this out that Evelyn eventually broke things off with him. Though it's not super clear how much time passed in between when she found out about his wife and then when she broke things off. Just doing some like reading between the lines, it kind of sounds to me like Herman might have let her on a bit, made her think that they could be together, that kind of thing. But I'm not 100% sure.

Though, what I do know is that when Evelyn broke things off, she made a few things clear to Herman. One was that she expected him to be involved in their child's life, so he would be allowed to visit. And she expected financial support as well. But the thing she told him was that he wasn't going to be staying over at her place anymore. And I guess that caused some tension because Herman had been helping her pay rent and he felt that he was entitled to stay there. Which, like, that's...

that's not how it works, my dude. Yeah. And I assume police are talking to Herman about all this stuff, too. Does he admit that this is how things went down with him and Evelyn? Well, yeah. So they question him about the situation once they find everything out. And at first, he basically says that things were fine between him and Evelyn, even the whole affair thing. But eventually, he does say that they were having some issues, though he says that some of it was because of

pregnancy mood swings that Evelyn was having. I'm sorry. I just choked on some misogyny.

I know. At this point, does his wife know about the affair at this point? I mean, have police questioned her? They do. She says she was actually aware of Evelyn before Evelyn disappeared, but she was under the impression that Herman had broken things off with her and that Evelyn was going to be out of his life for good. Except for the fact that she was about to have his kid. Well, she probably thought Evelyn was gone for good because until police come by, she has no idea Evelyn was pregnant. Right.

Like, they're the ones that have to tell her. Because of course she didn't know. Did Herman just hope this would never come up? I mean, if it did, it would probably be her female mood swings that would make her not okay with it. I hope you guys can hear my eyes rolling. I know. But this is what makes people wonder, like, okay, maybe he's thinking if Evelyn disappeared, the pregnancy just would never come up. But that's not how things played out.

And that conversation with Herman's wife ends up being super important because even though she just learned that he was lying to her again, she insists that he was home with her on the evening Evelyn disappeared. She says that he finished up his shift as a limousine driver, came home and stayed there the whole night.

And which night is this? This is the first. They're basically accounting for his time after 9 p.m., the one when she was on the call with her sister. At least I think that's what they're honing in on. And police are 100 percent certain that Evelyn disappeared that night. That's what I was kind of thinking, too. I'm like, in my mind, just because no one talked to her 9 p.m., like you could go to bed after that, especially if you were that pregnant. I'd already been asleep.

But they do think something happened that night only because Alex, her son, didn't show up for school the next morning. So I think police have narrowed down a window sometime between when she gets off the phone at 9 p.m. on the 1st and then when Alex is supposed to be at school the morning of the 2nd. Right. So we kind of have this defined kind of short window. Like less than 12 hours, I would assume. Yeah. Yeah.

But we have this spouse alibi. We see spouses lie all the time. I know. Is this what we're going with? Again, I think that there's just a little more credibility to it because it doesn't seem like she would have a lot of reason to lie for him. But again, this is one of those things where you don't know what you don't know. I think police, all they can do is take it at face value and...

They're not like fully clearing him, but they've also got nothing still to prove that he did anything, right? Like they just, they have a alibi that seems legit. Who knows? And I think the bigger problem isn't just like they don't have anything to prove he did it. They don't have anything to prove what the it is. Like they have no idea what happened to Evelyn and Alex, right?

But as each day ticks by, they become less and less hopeful about the outcome because Evelyn's now one week past her due date. And then two and then three. Still no sign of her at any hospitals. And the only sign of her pops up on week four. And it's not anywhere that police expected a clue to be.

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Wi-Fi where available on select U.S. airlines. Additional terms and conditions apply. On May 31st, a local man comes into the police station to turn in a wallet that he had found. He tells police that he had found it weeks earlier and had tried multiple times to return it to its owner, but he couldn't get an answer at their house when he visited.

Which, of course, he didn't get an answer because when police look at the wallet, they learn that it belongs to Evelyn. Did the dude just not realize he had a missing woman's wallet in his possession? No, the problem is I don't think he knew she was missing. Because despite Evelyn being nine months pregnant, despite her five-year-old son disappearing with her, this isn't a case that was getting a ton of media attention. Which is just...

It's just wild to say or even to think about. Plus, it's the early 2000s. So even if he had gone home and like Googled Evelyn's name, he wouldn't get the kind of results that we would get today. Right. When we think about it, like, oh, find their Facebook. That's not how things were operating in the early 2000s. So they asked this guy where he found the wallet. And he points them to basically this fenced in parking lot in South San Francisco. That's about 15 minutes from where Evelyn's apartment is.

So they get a team together along with a canine unit and they head out to comb the area for any other clues. But they don't find anything. And most importantly, they don't find any trace of Evelyn and no trace of Alex. So do we know when this guy found the wallet? Like, did he say exactly what day it was? I'm sure he did to them. It's a little hard to determine from the research that I've done.

There's an article published in SFGate by Jackson Van Der Becken that says it was found a couple of weeks after the disappearances. But they later state in a different article that it was found just a day or two after. And the San Francisco Examiner actually says that it was found right on May 1st, like the day that they would have disappeared. So I'm not fully sure. My best guess is that it's found really close to. And then the contradictory information about a couple of weeks later is like when police learn about it. But I don't know.

All we know for sure is that it couldn't have been lost before May 1st because when police searched the wallet itself, they find the disability benefits check that she had received in the mail that very day along with some cash. And the wallet itself is the one that she had purchased earlier when she visited that Ross store. Okay, so I guess what's the deal with where it was found? Like, is this location important? Is it connected to Evelyn at all? Well, it's...

It's not connected to Evelyn, but it is connected to Herman.

The parking lot is only about a block away from this gas station that apparently he would visit quite often when working his shift as a driver for a limousine company, which is also, by the way, headquartered just a few blocks away from there. And I mean, those facts are interesting. Certainly put it in the long column of suspicious circumstantial evidence, but it's not really something police can fully hang their hat on because as far as I can tell, they don't

have his prints on it or any witnesses who saw him toss it. Nothing like that. Which, even if his prints were on the wallet, it wouldn't really prove anything. These two were together all the time. That's super easy to write off. Well, not if it's the new one that she bought because he says he didn't see her that day. But, I mean, either way, neither here nor there because none of that's in the reporting about physical evidence being found on the wallet. So it doesn't matter.

So even though they have this secondary location with her wallet, it doesn't actually progress the case and things start stalling. But as summer months heat up, so does their case. But with the worst possible outcome. In late July, police receive a disturbing report. Someone had been walking along the Embarcadero, which is basically like a waterfront area in San Francisco. And they spotted something in the water near the shore.

As they got closer, they realized that they were looking at a body or, more accurately, part of a body. According to John Coates' reporting in the Modesto Bee, when police arrive on the scene and recover the remains, what they're faced with is just the lower part of an adult torso with the legs still attached.

So obviously, they're not in any position to make any kind of identification, but something does stand out to them. The torso, or what's left, there's clothes that the person had still been wearing, and it appears to be maternity clothes. So investigators send divers out for hours to search the area and see if they can recover anything else, but ultimately, they don't find any additional remains.

But what they do have are sent immediately for examination and autopsy. Now, there's no definitive cause of death that can be determined, but they are able to find out that this wasn't a case of dismemberment. Instead, they say it's likely that just a portion was recovered because this person had been disposed of in a very active body of water. So it doesn't take long for people to put two and two together and speculate that this might be Evelyn.

So police decide to go back to her apartment where they search for any piece of evidence that they can use to compare to the remains. And eventually they're able to pull a sample off of her toothbrush, send it away for testing. And again, early 2000s, so the results take a minute. In fact, more than just a minute. According to more of Jackson Van Der Becken's reporting for SFGate, it takes over a month.

But in September of 2002, police announced that the remains found in the water do, in fact, belong to Evelyn Hernandez. So, was she... I don't even know how to ask this, but... The baby? Yeah. So...

That's actually been a bit of a challenge to find. Based on most of what I found in the research, I don't believe that the baby was found, but is presumed dead. So I can't find if there's any evidence that she gave birth, if the baby was cut out of her, if she was too decomposed to even tell. I don't have any of that.

What about Alex? Well, they can't find any trace of him in the water, so he very well could still be out there. Can they get anything from her remains that points them in any direction? No, which, I mean, in most cases we cover, this is just the starting point of the investigation, right? Especially for missing persons cases. Finding a body usually reinvigorates the case, gives them a whole new set of leads, but not here.

The discovery of Evelyn's remains doesn't seem to lead the investigation anywhere. In fact, the next major development in the case doesn't even really have to do with Evelyn or Alex at all. It has to do with another murder entirely. And this one will sound pretty familiar to most crime junkies out there. Lacey Peterson.

Now, Lacey's story is probably one of the most infamous cases out there. It was one of the earliest Crime Junkie episodes, literally episodes two and three. But the similarities in the cases are pretty shocking. I mean, for one, the two women weren't far apart location wise. Evelyn went missing from San Francisco and Modesto, where Lacey lived, is just an hour and a half away.

Second, they're both very pregnant. Lacey was about eight months pregnant. Evelyn was just a week away from her due date. And then third, their bodies are found, both of them, in the San Francisco Bay. Not to mention that Evelyn went missing less than a year before Lacey. So again, like super close in timeline too, not just location. But there's one huge difference in the cases. And that is that Lacey Peterson story was absolutely everywhere.

But Evelyn's just wasn't.

Again, even researching for this episode, it was so hard to find the details around her disappearance and the investigation that followed. Whereas with Lacey, you could spend hours just going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, watching documentary after documentary and books and this and articles. I mean, it's been everywhere for now over two decades. Well, we did a two-parter on it, and this is a short episode. Exactly. No, and it's not hard.

hard to see why if you're looking. Because on the one hand, you have this young, married, white woman about to give birth to her first child. And on the other, you have an immigrant, a single mom working two jobs. Like,

you know which one of those the media is going to focus on. And it is f***ing infuriating. In fact, one of Evelyn's friends gives an interview to SFGate and pretty much echoes all of that. They even mention that they had tried to get America's Most Wanted to cover the case, but they were told that because there was no warrant issued for a suspect, that it didn't fit their criteria.

And at first I saw that, I'm like, okay, fine. Like, you have to have some criteria, especially for like a big platform like that. But, oh no, wait. Lacey's murder was featured on America's Most Wanted at a time when there was no warrant or suspect named in her case either. Wait, are you saying there's a double standard? Are you shocked? Are you taken aback? Collect your pearls, my friend. And listen, I'm not saying that Lacey's murder shouldn't have received all that attention or any attention. All I'm saying is that...

To me, there's no reason Evelyn's murder and Alex's disappearance shouldn't have gotten just as much coverage, just as much outrage, and just as much support from the public.

Even some of the articles that bring up this gap in media coverage still, like, are missing a chip because they don't get it right. Like, in one of them, they refer to Evelyn as the other Lacey Peterson. Like, Evelyn is not the other anybody. She deserves to have her story told without getting it wrapped up in someone else's.

And truthfully, like, again, I feel like people are listening. They're like, well, what are you doing right now? And I was hesitant to even bring Lacey up in this episode because of that.

But I also know crime junkies and they're going to like hear me say this and be like, oh, my God, you forgot about this. And you have to bring up the similarities because I need to talk about how they got kind of like compared. And it is Lacey's is a development in Evelyn's. So they are again while they're tied together. Evelyn is no the other anyone. Evelyn is Evelyn. Evelyn is Evelyn.

So in May of 2003, Evelyn's case has been pretty much cold. But Scott Peterson is now like being looked at for his wife's or he's on trial or whatever, like all that's going on. His attorneys are preparing his defense and they get wind of Evelyn's murder.

And because of the similarities with Lacey's, they start poking around trying to get access to some of the investigative files. But ultimately, a judge denies them access to the full file. They're just able to see her autopsy report and photographs.

So are they hoping to argue that whoever murdered Evelyn also murdered Lacey and it wasn't Scott? I think so, but it doesn't even really get that far. So the evidence from everything I guess they have saw, whatever, it doesn't really support that. And police are adamant that the two cases just aren't connected at all. I'm like dying to know what is in there or what made them rule it out. I couldn't get specifics because...

I want to know, is it something that the police in San Francisco really determined or is it something that the police in Modesto? They're working with a little bit of an angle. Yeah. Like when you look back at that case, like they had their sights set on one person and he was already going to trial. If they even suggested that there could be anything else and that coming from the police, it would blow up his case. So I would especially love to know which police definitively ruled this out.

But I just don't know. And unfortunately, that is basically where Evelyn's case stands today. That was the last big development, even though it turned out to not be a development at all. Her case is still open. Alex's missing persons case is still open. And there's just been no more movement that I can find.

At this point, police presume Alex was murdered as well. But there's just no definitive proof of that or anything else. And I have to assume Herman is still their prime suspect. Well, honestly, he's not even really considered a suspect at all.

Police have never found any physical evidence connecting him to Evelyn's murder. And his wife, as far as I know, I don't know when they went back and checked, but is his alibi. He did initially cooperate with police, but eventually I know he hired a lawyer. He refused to participate in any more questioning. And although he certainly seems like a promising lead without more evidence, it's a dead end there.

Okay, but Scott Peterson is in jail. I mean, it's the other way around. His wife ended up dead, not his mistress, but there wasn't any physical evidence that he killed Lacey. I am not here to fight the Scott's innocent thing at all. No. I'm just saying, like, there are ways to at least put pressure, you know, more than just throwing our hands up and saying, I guess we have to wait for more to come to us. Right, and I'm not saying that, like,

should be in jail just because Scott's in jail. I don't know what happened. But to your point, there's a way to care. There's a way to make this a priority and to not let it just go away. And that's why we do this show, why we cover these specific stories. And listen, I know there's listeners out there who get frustrated when we cover unsolved cases or cases where we don't know all the details. And like, same. I wish we did. But

Certainly not going to stop because we can't just treat these stories as entertainment. These are opportunities for us to hopefully make a difference. Maybe there is even just one listener out there who knows something, who has seen something, who might be able to finally move this case along.

So, crime junkies, if you have any information about this case, please contact the San Francisco Police Department at 415-553-1145. Even the smallest detail could be the missing piece that finally helps investigators determine what happened to Evelyn and Alex and bring some peace to their friends and family.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the second episode we dropped today on the disappearance of Luceli Aramburro. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an Audiochuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?