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In 2012, in the town of Morgan Hill, California, 15-year-old cheerleader Sierra Lamar began what seemed like an ordinary day.
She snapped a morning selfie, left for her 7:15 a.m. bus stop, but then, in a chilling twist, vanished into thin air. Sierra's tragic disappearance became a haunting mystery that left her loved ones and the nation searching for answers. Where was Sierra? From the moment she left her mother's house, Sierra Lamar was never seen alive again. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 195.
The Kidnapping of Sierra Lamar.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Before we get to the episode, we've got one new supporter this week. Thank you so much to Megan G for becoming the show's newest supporter on Patreon. Now, let's get to the episode. On what seems like an ordinary day in 2012, 15-year-old cheerleader Sierra Lamar woke up around 6 for school inside her mom's Morgan Hill, California home, a Northern California city in Santa Clara County at the southern tip of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay.
As soon as Sierra woke up on March 16, 2012, she did something many other teens her age did. She snapped a selfie to post to social media. Then, once she was ready for the school day, she headed out the front door around 7.15. Sierra's morning routine was typical of any other girl her age. After getting ready for the day, she walked a couple blocks to the bus stop.
Because Sierra lived in a remote part of Morgan Hill, her bus stop was in a vacant lot near her mom's house. Her school wasn't big, so many students taking the bus to class each morning had their own personal stops before heading to school. And that particular morning in March of 2012 was no different.
She would have gotten to the unmarked bus stop around 7.24 a.m. She wanted to get to school early that morning to exchange homework and makeup with a girlfriend. But that's not what happened. Sierra was never seen alive again after she left her mom's house.
Throughout the school day, Sierra's mom, Marlene, sent her daughter a couple of text messages. Now, it wasn't uncommon for Marlene to talk to Sierra throughout the school day, especially if Sierra planned on going anywhere after school, or if Marlene needed to get her to do something at the house. But as Marlene texted her daughter, she was a little bit surprised that she never received a message back.
In one particular text message, Marlene reminded Sierra about a specific chore she needed to do at the house as soon as the school bus dropped her off that afternoon. Like any other 15-year-old teenage girl, Sierra would sometimes forget about her daily chores. So her mother was there to remind her. But Sierra never texted her mom back. She didn't say anything about doing her chores. She didn't respond at all.
At first, Marlene just assumed that Sierra was busy at school. She thought Sierra probably read the text but was just too busy to respond. So she didn't think much about it until hours later when Sierra was late coming home. After Marlene got off work, she called Sierra around 3.45 p.m. to make sure she was okay and got her messages. But no one picked up. Sierra's cell phone just went straight to voicemail.
At that point, red flags started going off in Marlene's mind like crazy. Her daughter never responded to her text messages, and now she wasn't answering her phone when she knew she was done with class for the day. So that's when Marlene decided to head home and see if Sierra was just at the house. She would always be home by the time Marlene got off work in the afternoon. Her, Marlene, and Marlene's boyfriend all lived together in that Morgan Hill home. But she wasn't there either.
Marlene then hopped back into the car and drove to the high school to see if she was still there. And that's when she found out from Sierra's teachers that she wasn't even in class that day. She was a no-show. Now, unfortunately for Marlene, even though Sierra never made it to school that morning and her teachers reported her absent, it wasn't until hours later that the school's automated system notified her.
So she didn't receive the automated email from the school about her daughter's absence until after 6 o'clock p.m. And that would have been hours after Sierra had already been missing. Marlene knew there had to be something seriously wrong with her daughter to miss school. Not only was Sierra not the type of kid to ditch class, but because of everything else that happened that morning, everything seemed normal. Sierra woke up for school at her usual time of 6 a.m.,
Minutes later, Marlene and her boyfriend left the house to go to work while Sierra stayed in the house to get ready. She never mentioned anything about not feeling well or wanting to stay home. She even sent a text message to a friend around 7-11 a.m. making plans to meet at school that day to exchange makeup and homework. So by all accounts, by all the evidence, Sierra planned to be at school that day.
Sierra's mom Marlene reported her missing to the Santa Clara Sheriff's Office a few hours after she still hadn't returned home. But the initial reports about her missing didn't seem to turn any heads within the police department. Remember, Sierra was a 15-year-old girl. Sometimes 15-year-old teenage girls run off for a few hours or, in worst case, even for a few days.
Plus, the police didn't have any real solid evidence suggesting that foul play was involved. All they really knew at this point was that 15-year-old Sierra didn't go to school that day. What teenager doesn't skip a day or two of school? But Marlene was persistent. She knew her daughter and knew that she wasn't the type to simply run away or ditch class. So at that point, she really urged the Santa Clara Sheriff's Office to start looking for her.
And they did. One of the first things the police did was look at the school bus's security cameras. But when they did, they uncovered their first big clue. Sierra never got on that school bus. This meant whatever happened to Sierra happened between the short walk from her mom and boyfriend's house to that unmarked bus stop. The bus stop where Sierra was the only student getting picked up at.
Santa Clara Sheriff's Office deputies began their investigation by searching the area between the bus stop and Sierra's house. But nothing turned up during the first couple of hours. It wasn't until the following day, March 17th, that they did find something. About 24 hours after Sierra went missing, a police canine was able to track her scent from her house to a spot about two miles away.
At the Morgan Hill intersection, they found Sierra's cell phone. The phone was still intact, but it looked like it had been thrown from a car and just thrown to the side of the road. Then two days later, two more intersections away, the police found more clues.
They found some of Sierra's personal items between a shed and a cactus, including her pink Juicy Brand backpack, the backpack that her mom Marlene says she used to take to school every single day. Inside the backpack were Sierra's jeans, shoes, and a San Jose Shark sweatshirt she wore to school that day. Like the cell phone, the bag looked like it had been thrown from a car to the side of the road.
Most of her clothes were dirty. They were covered in mud and dirt stains, like maybe they had been dragged through the dirt while she was wearing them. And her denim jeans smelled like urine. They certainly weren't in the same condition that Sierra would have left the house the day before. But even after finding both her backpack and her clothing, well, and her cell phone, there still wasn't sign of Sierra anywhere.
The discovery of the backpack and cell phone only heightened the urgency to find her. So within hours, dozens of volunteers with the organization Class Kids Foundation began helping in the search to find her. The Class Kids Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded after the abduction and murder of Polly Klass. Its main goal is to help find missing children just like Sierra Lamar.
During the first few days of the search, volunteers focused their efforts on the area surrounding Sierra's home and the bus stop. They also searched the areas where the cell phone and backpack were found. But by no means was this search easy. Where Sierra lived was secluded and had challenging terrain to try and search through.
This included open fields, big hills, reservoirs, woods, ravines, even thick brush. So it wasn't the ideal spot to be looking for a missing person or looking for possible evidence. Used condoms near a small box labeled stainless steel handcuffs were found near a dead end road. At first, volunteers thought the condoms might have something to do with Sierra's disappearance.
Although there wasn't any evidence suggesting she had been sexually assaulted, it seemed just odd that while they're in the search area, they find condoms next to a box labeled stainless steel handcuffs. It just seemed eerie.
But the sheriff's office really dismissed the idea that the used condoms had anything to do with the case. And they simply attributed them to teenagers messing around in the area because this particular location was a known spot for young teens to hang out in. So the condoms probably came from them and had nothing to do with Sierra.
Sierra relatively quickly changed from simply being a missing teenager case to becoming an involuntary missing person investigation. It was evident to her family, as well as the police, that she didn't simply choose to run away.
Speaking of running away, investigators didn't find any evidence that she ran away. A complete forensic examination was done on her cell phone, which didn't reveal any plans to just simply walk away. And a forensic search of her computer didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary either. By that point, it was crystal clear. Someone had kidnapped her. And now investigators were trying to piece together what happened to her and who took her.
The first suspect the police considered was someone extremely close to Sierra, her own biological father. The reason he was considered a possible suspect was because he was a registered sex offender. But that was a dead end, and he was officially cleared and ruled out as a likely person of interest.
The police then also looked into every other registered sex offender who lived in Morgan Hill, California. But that search turned up empty as well. By March 28th, Sierra had been missing for 12 days. But before any hope could start to fade, the entire investigation was flipped upside down. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. When Sierra's backpack was found on the side of the road just a couple miles away from the bus stop, it was submitted to the crime lab for testing.
If her abductor had tossed the backpack from the car like they thought that they did, there was a good chance that they could recover some DNA from it. And that's exactly what they did. By March 28th, the police had their first promising suspect in the case, a man who drove a bright red Volkswagen Jetta, 21-year-old Antolin Garcia-Torres.
At the crime lab, forensic scientists extracted DNA traces from Sierra's denim jeans that were folded up inside her backpack. And when they submitted the DNA profile to CODIS, our national DNA database, they immediately got a hit. Garcia-Torres. But there's more. Garcia-Torres also had a lengthy criminal history that included a charge for felony battery resulting in serious bodily injury.
So if there was anyone out there in the world capable of kidnapping a 15-year-old girl, the police at this point felt confident that it was someone like Garcia Torres. Plus, the police quickly learned that he worked at a Safeway grocery store and lived in an RV park with his mom and pregnant girlfriend less than seven miles away from Sierra's home.
Once the DNA came back as a match, the Santa Clara Sheriff's Office started conducting 24-7 surveillance on him. They wanted to know every single move that he made, especially since Sierra was still missing. And her family hoped that maybe he was just holding her captive and she'd still be alive.
At the same time the police were conducting 24-7 surveillance on their prime suspect, they learned about other abductions around Safeway grocery stores in Morgan Hill, including the one where Garcia Torres worked. According to police reports, three different women were assaulted and almost kidnapped inside a Safeway grocery store parking lot in 2009, just three years before Sierra disappeared.
A man had approached the woman at night as they were getting inside their cars in the parking lot. The suspect then used a gun to confront and subdue the women as he got inside the car through the passenger side door. In one of these incidents, one of the 18-year-old female victims grabbed a pocket knife to try to defend herself as he tried to get inside the car.
But the guy was able to snatch the knife away from her and actually use it against her by putting it against her throat. Now, fortunately, the man was scared away in all three incidents by either the victim screaming or there was a passerby seeing what was going on. So as soon as the investigators heard about these three previous incidents at Safeway Grocery Store parking lots in the area,
They wondered if their prime suspect in the Sierra Lamar disappearance might be involved. But despite all the similarities, they were also very different. For starters, Sierra wasn't abducted from a Safeway grocery store. She was kidnapped somewhere between her home and the bus stop. Plus, she was still missing. In all the other incidents, the female victims got away.
So although the police were suspicious about Garcia-Torres' involvement in the other three assaults inside Safeway grocery store parking lots, they had to keep their focus on Sierra's case.
Investigators pulled surveillance camera tapes from the trailer park where Garcia Torres lived with his pregnant girlfriend and mom. And when they watched the tapes, they learned that he left the trailer park approximately 15 minutes before Sierra would have left her house to head to the bus stop. Plus, they already knew the trailer park was only seven miles away, so it would have only taken him a couple minutes, well, less than 15 minutes to get there.
The police also got their hands on more surveillance footage from around the bus stop itself, and several different cameras showed his bright red VW driving through the area around the same exact time. So that's at least two different sets of video proving that Garcia-Torres could have abducted Sierra.
The first is the video showing him leaving the trailer park where he lived less than 15 minutes away. And then the video showing his car driving around the area where she would have gotten on the school bus. So with all of this evidence in hand, the police went to the judge to secure a warrant for Garcia Torres's car. They hoped they would find some evidence linking him to Sierra's disappearance.
And when they got the car, they had the entire thing tested for forensic evidence, including fingerprints and DNA. When they looked inside the vehicle, they found two critical pieces of forensic evidence linking Sierra to his car. Number one, they found a small amount of her DNA on one of the car's handles. And number two, they found a strand of her hair stuck to a piece of rope found inside the trunk.
This evidence all proved that Sierra had been inside that red Volkswagen.
At this point, Santa Clara Sheriff's officers are almost certain they have their guy. He has a criminal record, including felony assault. They have his DNA on Sierra's jeans. He lives and works less than seven miles from her house. His car was seen in the area the morning she disappeared. And Sierra's hair and DNA were found inside his car when it was seized. It almost seemed like a slam dunk for the police as well as Sierra's family.
But there were still three major problems here. One, they had no body. Despite identifying a really, really, really good suspect, Sierra was still nowhere to be found. So they couldn't say for sure what type of crime took place except for maybe a kidnapping. Two, no murder weapon. If Garcia Torres kidnapped and murdered Sierra, how did he do it?
Even after they searched every nook and cranny of his car, they never found a murder weapon. So if they were going to arrest him for murder, not only would they have to overcome not having a body, but they would also have to overcome not having a murder weapon. And finally, number three, there was no crime scene. If Garcia Torres did really kidnap and possibly murder Sierra, where did all of this happen? Did it happen at the bus stop? Did it happen somewhere between the bus stop and her house?
Did he abduct her and do something with her body somewhere else? Where was the crime scene? Despite not having answers to any of these important questions, sheriff's deputies arrested Antolin Garcia-Torres two months after she went missing on May 21, 2012. He was charged with kidnapping and murder despite never finding Sierra's body.
But Garcia-Torres maintained his innocence and said he did nothing wrong. In fact, he argued that he didn't even know who Sierra was and he had never met her before, let alone kidnapped and murdered her, as the police and prosecutors said. He even had his mother come to one of his court appearances to provide an alibi for him. And she said he couldn't have committed the murder because she knew where he was.
When it came to some of the forensic evidence, Garcia-Torres had an answer for some of that too. He said he knew why his DNA could have gotten on Sierra's jeans. Now, prepare yourself, this is what he said. According to him, he liked to, quote, pleasure himself sometimes in his car, and he would use tissues to clean himself up afterward.
Once he was done, he would throw the tissue out the window of his car. So he believed one of these tissues might have landed on Sierra's backpack, and that's why his DNA was there. He said there couldn't be any other explanation because he had never met her before.
Six months after he was arrested in connection to Sierra's case, he was also accused of attacking the three women inside the Safeway grocery store parking lots a few years before. But before prosecutors could formally bring charges against him for the attacks, they dropped it. All three female victims couldn't identify him in a photo lineup.
So although they were just moments away from filing additional criminal charges against him, they had to drop everything in connection to those cases. The only case they could still pursue was Sierra's. And prosecutors assigned to her case were determined to not only secure a conviction against him, but secure the highest sentence possible.
It took almost two years, but Antolin Garcia-Torres eventually entered a not guilty plea in court on February 13, 2014. That was after a secret grand jury indicted him on felony kidnap and murder charges to finally get the case moving. On top of his not guilty plea, his attorneys also attempted to get the grand jury's transcript sealed.
According to his defense team, the prosecution would have a really hard time proving their case because even after two long years, Sierra's body still hadn't been found. So it wouldn't be easy for them to prove a crime even happened, let alone murder. Plus, all the other problems we already talked about, like the missing murder weapon and crime scene.
The prosecution might have had DNA evidence on their side, but they didn't necessarily prove anything. The DNA evidence alone didn't prove that she was in fact murdered. She was still just missing at this point. But Santa Clara County prosecutors weren't concerned about not having a body. They felt confident they could still secure a conviction without it.
They were so confident that on May 19, 2014, they announced that they were going to seek the death penalty. While Garcia-Torres' case went through the legal system before trial, Sierra's family and supporters continued searching for her. Although hope was fading as each month and year passed, they still wanted to at least find her remains and be able to move forward with their lives the best they could.
By March 2015, Sierra's family had made a tough decision. It had been three years since anyone saw the missing 15-year-old. And during that time, volunteers conducted weekly searches in hopes of finding her, making it the longest open search center in the U.S. But on March 14, 2015, they announced that they believed the search for her body had run its course.
They completed their last regularly scheduled search for her, and they said they would no longer keep up with the efforts. Although they remained hopeful for so long, they finally decided that it was time to move on without Sierra, or ever being able to find her. Instead, they wanted to focus their attention on making sure that the person they believed was responsible for her murder was convicted. But that would take many more months.
By September 2, 2015, a trial date for Antolin Garcia-Torres was finally scheduled for April 25, 2016. For once, everyone thought they were getting one big step closer to this finally being over. However, after several court hearings and motions, the trial was delayed several times until January 2017.
On January 20th, 2017, five years after Sierra vanished, Garcia-Torres was finally put to trial. The trial took place in Santa Clara County Courthouse in San Jose, California, and was expected to last up to five months.
Because this was a complicated case without having the victim's body, murder weapon, or crime scene, there was going to be a lot of evidence to cover. And prosecutors had a lot of work ahead of them if they were going to convince a jury that Garcia-Torres did this. As expected, the entire trial was extremely emotionally charged. Garcia-Torres and his supporters were steadfast that he was innocent. And prosecutors and Sierra's family were convinced of his guilt.
After four months of testimony, closing arguments began on May 2nd, 2017. This was the last chance for prosecutors as well as his defense attorneys to argue their points. Then two days later, on May 4th, the jury began their deliberations. It took them almost four days, but by May 8th, they finally reached a decision. They found Garcia-Torres guilty of all four counts.
Count one for the murder and kidnap and three additional counts for the attempted kidnapping of three adult women in the parking lots of two Safeway stores in Morgan Hill, where he once worked. This meant there was justice not only for Sierra Lamar, but also for the three other victims. Even without a body, murder weapon, or crime scene, the jury believed that the forensic evidence in the case was strong enough to convict him.
Immediately following the jury's decision, Sierra's mom, Marlene, told reporters, quote, We're grateful to the jurors coming up with the right decision, and it gives us peace as a family knowing that this is not going to happen to another child and that they can't get away with something like this, end quote. Santa Clara prosecutor David Boyd also spoke to reporters immediately after the verdict, and here's what he had to say, quote,
We now move immediately into the next phase, the penalty phase, where the jury will decide whether the defendant gets the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole. I'm not going to speculate just what the jury will do. It's their decision, and it's a very significant one to be made. End quote. The same jury who found Garcia-Torres guilty was also in charge of deciding his punishment. Should he be sentenced to death?
Or should his life be spared and should he receive life in prison without the possibility of parole? If Garcia-Torres took the innocent life of a 15-year-old high school student, should he be allowed to live after that? On July 5, 2017, the jury decided to give Antolin Garcia-Torres life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of the death penalty.
This decision completely stunned and shocked prosecutors and Sierra's family, who all hoped that Garcia Torres would be sentenced to death. In a statement, Sierra's father said, quote,
The crime I thought he deserved was the maximum sentence, not the minimum, end quote. Even after all of these years, including an arrest, a guilty verdict, and a life sentence, Garcia-Torres will not answer any questions about Sierra or where her body is. Volunteers are still unofficially searching for her, but to this day, her remains still haven't been found. There are also still so many unanswered questions.
Why did he pick Sierra? He may have seen her walk to the school bus if he lived only a few miles away from her house. He might have even known that she was the only student who got picked up there, so she would be completely alone. But if he had seen her before, why her? Why that particular day? Although it was a remote spot with few potential witnesses, he still risked getting caught and
It would have just taken one witness for this to have never have happened. So why risk it? Then how did he kidnap her? Did he use a gun like he did with the other female victims outside the Safeway grocery stores? It's possible he pulled up alongside Sierra in his bright red VW, pulled out a gun, and told her to get inside. Then finally, what did he do with her? Was she assaulted? How was she killed? Did she fight back like I think she probably did?
And what did he do with her body? At this point, there's only one person who holds the answer to all of these questions, and he's not talking. In December 2020, a reporter wrote a handwritten letter to Garcia Torres in prison asking him to tell Sierra's family where her body is, but he never responded. Sierra's family has said that they have found peace knowing that Garcia Torres won't be able to hurt anyone else.
But that will never bring her back. They haven't even been able to bring themselves to hold a funeral service for her. They don't think it makes sense without her body. Hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year in the United States. And on March 16, 2012, Sierra Lamar became one of them. Sierra was born and raised in Fremont, California. When her parents divorced, she and her mom Marlene moved to Morgan Hill.
People close to her described her as funny, playful, and bright. In high school, she was a cheerleader with a big social life, and by all accounts, her life was going perfect. Sierra was just 15 at the time, but little did she know that in March 2012, while waiting at a bus stop for school, it would be the last anyone would see her.
It took years, but justice was finally served when her abductor and killer was arrested and put behind bars. DNA evidence confirmed her killer left behind his DNA on her abandoned clothing, and her DNA and hair were found inside his vehicle. So without a body, this was strong enough forensic evidence to send him to prison for the rest of his life. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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