Episode 190 - Hollywood Horror - The Murder of Hervey Medellin
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The opinions expressed in the following episode do not necessarily reflect those of the Minds of Madness podcast. Listener discretion is advised.

On the morning of July 17th, 2012, Lauren Kornberg, a dog walker and her mother embarked on a trail in the direction of the iconic Hollywood Hill sign, accompanied by a pack of nine furry companions. But as the mother and daughter meandered along the trail, a golden retriever in the group suddenly bolted off and started digging frantically.

When the faithful Goldie finally emerged from the underbrush, he proudly carried back something in his mouth. A bag that concealed a horrifying discovery.

Just the day before, 66-year-old Herve Medellin had been reported missing, with no one having seen or heard from him since December 26, 2011. As more unsettling findings came to light, the fate of Herve started to become distressingly clear.

Join me now as we uncover the tragic fate of Jervé Mataguin, a Mexican native who sought out a new life in the heart of Hollywood only for it to become the haunting backdrop of his gruesome murder.

You'll hear how speculation surrounding a Canadian adult film actor turned killer, the cartel, and the involvement of a cadaver dog named Indiana Bones all intertwined, ultimately leading to a maze of dead-end trails, all in the search for her vase-elusive murderer.

Joining us to help unravel this case is my good friend and another fellow true crime podcaster, Jamie Rice, from the very popular podcast, Murderish. Being out of California, I thought Jamie would be the perfect person to help me bring this case to you.

Hey everyone, this is Jamie Rice, host of Murderish, the podcast. I'm happy to be joining Tyler today to bring you a case that happened right here in Southern California over a decade ago. A jaw-dropping case that began to unravel not far from where I used to work, overlooking the Hollywood Hills.

In the heart of Southern California, beneath the brilliant sun and palm-fringed boulevards, lies the iconic District of Hollywood, a place where dreams are spun into reality, and where the names of legends are immortalized along the streets, like constellations in the night sky. The Hollywood sign, perched majestically on the hills,

serves as a symbol of ambition and fame, and has been home to countless stars. Notable figures like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, as well as more recent additions like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Keanu Reeves and Brittany Murphy,

The list goes on and on, but for every tabloid darling, there are thousands of unknowns desperate to break into the entertainment industry, a phenomenon that has persisted since the golden age of Hollywood and continues to this day. In 1932, the 50-foot tall sign across the hills read Hollywoodland, beckoning dreamers and fortune seekers promising a shot at stardom.

For a lucky few, those dreams came true. But most would never make it, painfully giving up and returning home. And for others, they'd never make it home at all. Peg Entwistle stands as a poignant example of tragedy, her life marred by a tumultuous past.

Born in the UK, Peg came from a family deeply rooted in the theater scene. Her father was an experienced actor, while her uncle had the sort of connections that made Hollywood aspirations seem tangible.

After the sudden loss of her mother, and later her father, who tragically died after a hit-and-run, Peg grappled with lifelong depression. Nevertheless, Peg's passion for the stage propelled her into a career on Broadway, where she met and married another fellow performer at the tender age of 19.

Shockingly, it eventually became revealed that her husband had a secret family on the side, leading to a heartbreaking divorce. Still, Peg was determined to advance her career, especially in the face of the Great Depression. This is when Peg made the bold move to Los Angeles in 1931, hoping the film industry could offer better opportunities.

But competition in Hollywood was fierce at the time, as it is today, with countless dreamers pursuing the same path. And when she finally did secure a role, it was a part that ended up on the cutting room floor.

Battling depression and drowning her sorrows in alcohol, Peg found herself in a dire situation. Unable to even afford a train ticket back to New York, 24-year-old Peg found herself at the iconic Hollywoodland sign in September of 1932.

That night, she climbed the ladder on the back of the towering letter H and then leapt to her death. Her crumpled body and suicide note found the following day. Legend has it that right after her death, a letter came for Peg. Inside was an offer for a role where she'd play a woman who ultimately commits suicide.

But that isn't where Peg's story ends, because her memory persists, with reports of her ghost wandering Griffith Park near the Hollywood sign, blonde and mournful, trailing a scent of gardenias. Without a doubt, Hollywood is known for drama, and on the morning of January 17th, 2012, Lauren Kornberg, a dog walker, and her mother unexpectedly found it near Griffith Park.

They'd been out walking a pack of dogs just off the Bronson Canyon Trail, headed toward the Hollywood sign, when Ollie, the golden retriever of the nine dogs, darted off and started digging. Although it's been 11 years since that day, it's a day Lauren still clearly remembers. And although she's turned down numerous interview requests in the past, she graciously agreed to speak with me about what happened next.

You were with your mom that day. You had the nine dogs with you in total. And then what happened? Yeah.

We were actually off the trail. We weren't in the main area. And one of the dogs, Ollie, a golden retriever, was digging at something under a tree. You know, he would find petrified squirrels and all kinds of crazy stuff on the trail all the time. So it wasn't that weird for him to kind of be digging and sniffing. But he was frantically digging under a bush. My mom and I were talking. The other dogs were milling around. Then all of a sudden, Ollie had something in his mouth and he dropped it and it rolled down the hillside.

and into the ravine in front of us. And we kind of paused and looked at each other and sort of went, what was that? And I said, it looked like a soccer ball or like a skull, like a head. So we walked to the edge of kind of the ravine and looked down in and it had kind of gotten buried in the leaves. My mom and I both looked down at it and kind of went, oh, but we assumed that it was like a prop mask.

We just assumed it was somebody making a little movie and that was a leftover prop. And I was like, it's creepy. I was like, let's let's go. I was like, I don't I don't want to look at that. You know, and she's like, well, we have to check. And I was like, there's no way. Absolutely no way. And she's like, well, we have to look. And I was like, OK, fine. So she walked down just down into the little ravine area and brush some of the leaves aside. And then she looked up at me from there and said, we need to call the police. And I just said, shut up. I thought she was kidding. I was like, shut up. Let's go.

She's like, no, we need to call the police. She's like, this is real. Neither Lauren nor her mother were carrying cell phones on them for their walk. So they flagged down two other hikers to make the call to authorities. So we did not have our phones. This was 2012. I had a BlackBerry. The reception was bad and I didn't even bring it on the trail generally because it didn't work up there. So I'd usually just lock it in the car. I don't even know if my mom had a cell phone, owned a cell phone at that point. So...

she was going to go back to the car to get a phone or to figure out how to call. So she ended up intercepting some tourists that were walking on the trail. And she told them that she needed them to call 911. And they kind of looked skeptical, like it was like a scam or a hoax or whatever. And she explained to them what had happened. And they let us use the phone, but she brought them back to where we were.

So we called 911 from their phone. She went to go wait at the entrance for the rangers. She went to go wait to show them where we were because we were in an odd place on the trail. I waited with the dogs and the two tourists. Then they began snapping photos of me, the dogs, the head, everything. So I yelled at them and they took off. So I was there waiting with the nine dogs for what felt like the longest wait of my entire life.

We didn't know if somebody had just done that. We didn't know if the person was still there. We didn't know why it was there. All I knew was I was standing in a place where I'm not visible to anybody walking by off the trail with nine dogs and possibly a killer around. I don't know how long my mom was gone. You know, I'm holding on to the dogs because I don't want them going down there or doing anything. I don't want anybody to come and remove the evidence or do anything. So I'm just standing there. She showed up with a park ranger.

I think they probably thought it was fake or it was a hoax. So they didn't send out the police initially for the call. They sent out a park ranger. He walked down over, took a look and then thought on his phone. And that was very rapid. There were more police and helicopters arriving. And I don't remember the time frame, but I remember it was fast. And there were more than I'd ever seen in my entire life.

When Los Angeles police arrived, they quickly assessed the scene and confirmed that the head was in fact real. Two of the dogs began to play with the bag and what appeared to be an object. While the dogs were playing with it, at some point the object came out of the bag and they discovered that it was a head, a severed head. The head appears to be rather new. There's not a lot of signs of decomposition yet.

As law enforcement began to clear all the hikers off the trail, Lauren pointed out the two people she'd borrowed the phone from. But the officer never stopped to question them. Ollie, the golden retriever who found the head, was detained in the back of a squad car while Lauren and her mother were questioned. Maya Rudolph, who's friends with Ollie's owner, discussed the traumatic situation with Conan O'Brien a few weeks later.

I got into work and Will Arnett said, "You know that head?" Just like I'm telling you, he's like, "You know that head they found?" His daddy goes, "It was Aaron's dog."

We could not believe it. He was on a walk with his dog walker, my friend's dog. Which was in the news. Yes. His name is Ollie. He is a golden retriever. And I think he's a digger. And so he was digging and he came out like all proud with this bag and something fell out and it was the head. I'm not kidding you. They questioned the dog walker and they kept the dog for like four hours.

While Lauren, her mother, and the dogs were being detained, Lauren texted her clients to let them know that she'd be late returning their pets without going into any details. In the meantime, the chaos in the Hollywood Hills had already attracted media attention.

So as we were getting ready to go, they were like, well, you don't have to talk to the press. And I was like, press? And then as we drove out of the gates, the car was mobbed with people and microphones. And I didn't realize what was unfolding outside. I mean, I saw the helicopters and stuff above, but...

I didn't quite realize what was kind of unfolding outside. Then I had to drive from house to house to house delivering the dogs. And it was I couldn't really like call and have a conversation with each person. So it took me forever to get home because, of course, each time I got to somebody's house, then I was explaining what had happened. I don't remember what time I finally got back to the house here. And then they sent an officer over some point that evening to my house and to my mom's house to ask more questions about it all.

Lauren then explained why, at first glance, she assumed the head was a stage prop and why she believed whoever had disposed of it must have done it recently. Part of the reason it looked fake was because it looked kind of too fresh, which I found out later with the court case and stuff that it was because it had been frozen. I think it was very, very soon before that he was there. I don't exactly know when. There was another dog walker friend who,

whose a client of hers had been on the trail when we kind of pieced everything together not long before we were there. And she was pretty sure she saw the guy who did it, like later when pictures were released and things. There was something about him that made her notice when we kind of pieced all the things together. A cadaver dog named Indiana Bones soon discovered more body parts buried only six inches deep and about 150 feet from the head.

The body parts found included two feet and a hand, wrapped up in a 99 cents only store bag. The next day, the left hand was found. The head and appendages were no props. Someone had intentionally, brutally, and efficiently butchered another human being. That meant a ruthless killer was at large, in one of the planet's most iconic settings.

But before law enforcement would be able to unmask the murderer for this heinous crime, there was an even more fundamental mystery that had to be unraveled: the identity of the victim. Without identifying the victim and without identifying why this person was killed and the people that he's associated with, it could be anything. It's a very extensive process. You know, there's a number of ways they can reference it, including dental records.

Hopefully somebody will be able to ID it. Hopefully they'll be able to come up with a sketch of the victim in an effort to identify who he is. Ah, no hay nada más satisfactorio que dejar tu casa completamente limpia. Excepto, tal vez, los ahorros de Labor Day. Ahorra en todos tus artículos de limpieza favoritos como el O-Cedar Spin Mop y Fabuloso. Y con entrega gratis en productos seleccionados, pídelos hasta la puerta de tu casa.

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Imagine you and your sweetheart horseback riding on pristine quartz sand beaches or drifting toward the sunset in a tandem kayak. As evening falls, you're sitting at a sidewalk cafe in the island's charming downtown and dinner under the stars puts you over the moon. When one of a kind memories are tailor made for two, it must be an island thing. Visit AmeliaIsland.com to learn more.

On Christmas Day 2011, 66-year-old Herve Medellin and his partner Gabriel Campos Martinez sat down to lunch with Herve's friend Amelia at their apartment, a small but beautifully decorated Hollywood home located not far from Sunset and Vine.

Herve was born November 16th, 1945, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a 10-minute drive from Laredo, Texas, just across the U.S. border. Herve had worked at Mexican Airlines for years before retiring, keeping many of the friends he'd made there. And for Herve, that hadn't been hard to do.

He was charming, popular, and had impeccable taste. In fact, his apartment boasted a fabulous fine art collection, valued somewhere in the six-figure range, including works by Diego Rivera, a world-renowned artist from Gervais' own homeland of Mexico. The collection was massive, taking up all the wall space and then some. Gervais also loved to travel and had a lifestyle that allowed him to enjoy his retirement thoroughly.

It was ultimately Hervé's expertise in the world of luxury that landed him a unique experience in the 1990s after serving as a concierge with the airline, connecting him to the Mexican cartel. His intimate knowledge of the finest hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues allowed him to create unforgettable experiences for cartel members' wives and girlfriends, keeping them entertained throughout their visits.

But as Hervé got older, he yearned for a quieter life and eventually managed to find it in sunny Los Angeles, where he not only found a new home, but also love.

In March of 2011, while out walking in Griffith Park with his faithful canine companion, Coco, fate led Hervé to cross paths with Gabriel Campos Martinez and his partner at the time. As the three men exchanged pleasantries, Hervé was struck by Gabriel's genuine affection for Coco, showering the dog with pats on the head and endearing words. It was as if he had a special connection with dogs.

Gabriel seemed like he'd make the perfect dog walker, and so Hervé got his phone number with the intention of hiring him. At least, that was the original idea. Despite the significant age gap, with Gabriel in his mid-30s and Hervé three decades older, their connection was instant and quickly grew into something more, with Gabriel abruptly ending his three-year relationship with William.

William, as you can imagine, was quite upset with the breakup. So upset, he started harassing the new couple, threatening them, and calling so often that Hervé had to change his phone number. But it didn't stop there. William also dumped a load of horse manure on Hervé's porch, along with some dog treats, clearly trying to send a message.

Things eventually got so bad that a restraining order was filed against William, which seemed to do the trick. So in May of 2011, Gabriel moved in with Hervé just two months after meeting. Perhaps now the couple could finally live in peace.

Christmas 2011 was a busy time for Hervé, who was fully booked with outings. Christmas lunch with his friend Amelia and lunch the next day with another friend Sandra, who he'd made plans with for New Year's Eve.

Later that day, when Amelia called Gervais home to speak with him, Gabriel picked up and told her he was sleeping and to call back the next day. But when Amelia called back on the 27th, Gabriel told her Gervais was gone. He'd left on an impromptu trip back home to Mexico with a couple of friends.

When Sandra called the apartment a few days later to confirm her New Year's plans with Hervé, Gabriel told her the same thing. Hervé was in Mexico, but should be home by the 6th of January. But when the 6th came and went, Hervé's friends tried to track him down. But Gabriel told them that while he'd spoken to Hervé on the phone a few times since he left, he hadn't actually heard from Hervé since the 4th.

While friends were ready to report Hervé missing, Gabriel was prepared to wait, at least for a little bit longer. By January 16th, authorities arrived at Hervé's apartment, acting on a Crimestoppers tip sent in by someone who'd heard about Hervé's disappearance through an email that had actually come from Hervé's own email address.

Hervé and Gabriel did share a laptop, which meant they probably had access to each other's email accounts. When authorities showed up to speak with Gabriel, he finally filed a missing persons report. Although it wasn't unusual for Hervé to travel, it was the lack of communication that was most worrisome. It was only a day later, on January 17th, that a head

hands, and feet were found on the Bronson Canyon Trail. Using fingerprint analysis and visual identification of the head, it would eventually be determined that the man who'd been so savagely butchered was Hervé. When the coroner called Hervé's niece, Christina, to break the news to her about her uncle's untimely and horrific demise, she was stunned.

Who would do such a thing to a bright, charming, and kind person? What kind of monster was out there, pretending that nothing happened, with blood on his hands? It was unthinkable. It was the kind of thing you'd expect to read about in the newspaper or see on TV, not something that could just happen to anyone.

And when the details finally came to light, it would become all too clear that someone truly depraved had ended Hervé's life. According to the medical examiner, it was likely Hervé had died from strangulation. The evidence? Hervé had petechia in his eyes and mouth.

tiny red and purple blood spots caused by broken blood vessels that burst due to pressure. Then it looked like Hervé's head, hands, and feet had been removed with some kind of saw and with some level of skill. And because there was only moderate decomposition, it appeared that the body parts had been refrigerated or frozen before being poorly concealed around the popular Bronson Canyon Trail.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Hervé's death was ruled a homicide. And that meant it was time to track down the perpetrator. But in this particular case, there were so many angles to cover that investigators would have their work cut out for them. An investigation straight out of Hollywood, literally and figuratively.

Investigators first began with Gabriel's version of events. Herve had gone on a trip to Mexico on December 26th, and while they'd spoken on the phone a couple of times since he'd left, Gabriel hadn't heard anything from Herve since the 4th of January.

Phone records confirmed Gabriel had been calling someone using a calling card on the dates he provided, but there was no record of Hervé actually ever crossing the Mexican-Tijuana border checkpoint. Had something happened to Hervé in Mexico, or had he even made it there to begin with?

One of the first things investigators noticed while examining Hervé and Gabriel's apartment was the fine art collection. Let's for a moment consider the notion of people meeting their tragic demise, seemingly without any discernible cause, all in the ruthless pursuit to secure a fortune. Now that, my friends, sounds like the stuff of countless movie plots, and was indeed a motive that would loom large in this case.

But where and how exactly had Hervé acquired all this expensive art?

An airline salary was good, sure, but it usually wasn't a six-figure art collection featuring Diego Rivera good. So speculation ran wild, but police were eventually tipped off by a retired narcotics detective who told them Hervé used to have ties to the cartel. Maybe the cartel had given the art to Hervé as gifts for his work.

And if Hervé was mixed up with the cartel, then maybe they had something to do with Hervé's murder. After all, gangs weren't usually the biggest fans of people leaving their organization, and Hervé had done just that, albeit a couple of decades previously. But the cartel angle would be a massive undertaking, and investigators needed to cover all their bases before they went all-in on the cartel theory.

The next suspect on their list was, predictably, Gabriel's ex-boyfriend William, the man who terrorized them to the point they had to get a restraining order against him. But when William was questioned about Hervé, he freely admitted to being completely devastated by his breakup with Gabriel, taking drastic measures to make his feelings known. Even so, he adamantly denied being involved in Hervé's murder.

When William took a polygraph test, he failed. The results coming back is inconclusive. Had authorities found their man? Unfortunately, it wouldn't be that easy. Even with the failed polygraph test, William had an ironclad alibi, and investigators were back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, Gabriel packed up his things and moved out of Hervé's apartment after living there for six months.

Without Hervé bankrolling his lifestyle anymore, Gabriel couldn't make the rent and even had to sell off some of Hervé's things, draining their joint bank accounts. Accounts they'd opened up in mid-December, just two weeks before Hervé disappeared.

Gabriel told investigators he was moving to San Antonio, Texas, to live with his brother for a while, so he could get back up on his feet. But he remained in contact, ready to help investigators should they need it. By the end of February, Gabriel was gone, leaving the apartment and Hollywood behind.

A few months later, in May of 2012, another dismemberment case rocked the world. But this time, it happened north of the U.S. border, in Montreal, Quebec. 29-year-old Luca Magnata, whose name was Eric Newman before having it legally changed, was a diagnosed schizophrenic with a troubled upbringing. He dabbled in the adult entertainment industry and reality TV with little success.

as a way to make extra money and find the notoriety he so desperately craved. But when the adult movies, escorting, modeling, reality TV appearances, and plastic surgery didn't get his name in lights, he decided he'd make himself famous another way.

At first, he began making multiple online accounts across various social media platforms, using them to spread rumors about himself, trolling anyone who didn't have a complimentary opinion of him. By 2010, still without fame, Luca took things in a drastic, horrific direction when he uploaded a video to YouTube showing him sadistically killing two kittens.

He then uploaded another video of himself killing another kitten, and then another. The online community erupted, hurling web sleuths into Overdrive, doing everything they could to bring Luca to justice. Documented in the Netflix documentary made in 2019, Don't F with Cats.

Luca reveled in the attention, but if he wanted to continue getting the notoriety he thought he deserved, he needed to go bigger. Much, much bigger. In May 2012, an 11-minute video was uploaded to the internet showing a man without clothing, 34-year-old Chinese international student Jun Lin, tied to a bed frame, being stabbed over and over again before being dismembered.

It was absolutely horrific. Shockingly, someone had been promoting the video for more than a week before it was released. It was murder. It was planned. All for the sake of fame. The killer was just waiting for a victim to fulfill that plan.

A few days later, a package containing a left foot was delivered to the Conservative Party of Canada, and a left hand was sent to the Liberal Party of Canada. More parts arrived at a boarding school and an elementary school. Evidence led directly to Luca, who'd flown to Europe just hours after the murder.

Could this plane-hopping, self-proclaimed maniac be responsible for Hervé's murder? His M.O. fit the bill, but as Los Angeles investigators looked into it further, they discovered Luca hadn't been in the U.S. when Hervé was killed, which meant they were once again back to the drawing board. But authorities now had a new angle.

Up until now, Gabriel had seemingly been nothing but cooperative with authorities. But perhaps there still might be something there to explore that could lead them to the killer.

When a criminologist checked for blood in the apartment and inside Hervé's car, all the tests came back either negative or inconclusive, except for a single swab taken from the floor of the bedroom. Although it wasn't exactly earth-shattering to find a trace of blood here or there in someone's home, at the very least, it was something. Cadaver dogs also found nothing terribly unusual inside the apartment either.

Perhaps the lack of physical evidence had been one of the reasons investigators pursued so many different leads in the first place. But even with the Mexico trip, there were still questions that had no easy answers. According to Hervé's friends, it just wasn't like him to take a spontaneous, unplanned trip.

He liked to have things mapped out, organized, and prepared. When Amelia went to Hervé's apartment looking for him, she noticed his prescription medication lying out, medication he would have definitely taken with him to Mexico. And when Sandra had urged Gabriel to report Hervé missing, Gabriel told her it wasn't possible because he had no pictures of Hervé, which was strange for someone who'd been in a relationship for the past six months.

There were other weird anomalies too, but did they point to Gabriel as the murderer? What could have been the motive? Well, we're getting to that. It was eventually discovered that after Hervé disappeared, Gabriel impersonated him and had his direct deposit social security checks transferred over to their joint bank accounts.

Although Gabriel admitted to using Hervé's ATM card while he was gone, he claimed it was only to buy household necessities like dog food, gas, and groceries. After all, Hervé had been supporting them both, and even with Hervé's shocking murder, Gabriel still couldn't get by without him.

The money theory definitely made for a good motive, and impersonating Hervé was definitely an illegal act. But fraud was a small-time crime compared to murder. Still, it was something concrete.

The more investigators looked into the version of events Gabriel had given them, the more they fell apart. Calls he claimed to have received from Hervé while he was supposedly in Mexico soon crumbled under scrutiny. Some reports say that while the calls did come from Mexico, they came from a female friend of Hervé's, not Hervé himself.

Other reports say they didn't come from Mexico at all. Whatever the case may be, the phone calls were all bogus.

Another clue was the 99 cents only store bags used to wrap her vase remains, because a matching bag was found in the apartment. And while there were plenty of plastic bags in the world, it was a notable coincidence. Or was it a clue? It seemed like all the coincidences were piling up into a case of circumstantial evidence, and investigators were ready to focus on one man, Gabriel.

The boyfriend who'd been the last person to see her vae alive. The last person to communicate with him. And the last person on the list of possible suspects. In the end, it all hinged on one crucial piece of evidence. An ordinary laptop.

A laptop with the power to tip the scales of justice, pointing the finger squarely at one individual and one individual alone as the sole perpetrator responsible for her vase tragic murder.

While searching Hervé's apartment, investigators obtained a MacBook, a laptop with a treasure trove of evidence. What they discovered was that on Christmas Day 2011, the same day Amelia had lunch with Hervé, someone had been doing some research.

History on the laptop showed that someone had accessed a website called SausageMaker.com, a site that advertises meat saws and sausage-making supplies. It was kind of a ghoulish line of research for the holidays.

Even more damning was a search performed in the hours before dawn on December 27th, the day after Sandra last saw Hervé. A search for Opus Dei Church of Euthanasia, not exactly your usual random rabbit hole. The user of the MacBook followed that rabbit hole to an article called "Butchering the Human Carcass for Consumption."

It seemed that someone had death on their mind, but not a natural death, with an open casket funeral as the final goodbye.

Whoever had been doing these searches, which had to be one of the two men sharing the laptop and apartment, was figuring out how to dismember a human body and drain the blood from it in preparation to be consumed. And only one of those men was alive. The other had been found brutally murdered and cut into pieces, the majority of which was never found.

For years, evidence had been painstakingly gathered, false leads discarded, and the suspect list finally narrowed down to one man. It was time for authorities to close in on their suspect, Gabriel Campos Martinez, now living in Texas.

Detectives have had him as a person of interest since the onslaught of the investigation, but I can't go into details on what exactly led him to the arrest.

In early March 2014, members of the San Antonio Police Department arrested Gabriel and charged him with the murder of his former boyfriend, Herve. Gabriel had been working at the San Antonio Convention Center and had married a woman who'd also been his coworker, moving into her home and making himself comfortable.

But Texas wasn't going to be his home for long. And after being held in San Antonio on a $1 million bail, he was sent back to Los Angeles to stand trial for murder. In a shocking stroke of luck for the prosecution, on March 28th, 2014, just a couple of weeks after Gabriel was arrested, another grisly discovery was made at the entrance of Bronson Caves.

The landmark was where the 60s TV show "Batman" had filmed their Batcave sequences, and it was only a short distance where Hervé's remains had first been found back in 2012. A city worker doing some excavations uncovered something truly horrifying wrapped in a 99-cents-only store bag: the same bags Hervé's other remains had been found in.

It was a package of human tissue, three pieces in total. Once again, Indiana Bones, the cadaver dog, was brought in, but found no other traces of Hervé. But what authorities did have was Gabriel and enough evidence to pursue a conviction. Now it was time for the trial.

The trial started in September 2015, coinciding with DNA test results confirming that the human tissue at the Bronson Caves belonged to Hervé. Gabriel's defense tried to have the evidence thrown out.

because it was too new for them to prepare for, but their request was denied. Gabriel's public defense claimed that all the prosecution had were theories and argued not a single drop of blood was found in the apartment.

But blood had been found in the apartment. They also asserted there was no definitive proof it was Gabriel who'd used the laptop to look up butchering, dismemberment, and cannibalism. But there was one glaringly obvious difference between the two men. One was deceased, and the other was still alive.

The defense also suggested Hervé could have died from natural causes or suicide. And fearing he'd be wrongfully convicted of the death, Gabriel dismembered Hervé's body and disposed of it so he wouldn't look guilty. As far as an alibi goes, it wasn't a great one. As for Gabriel himself, he never confessed to the murder. The prosecution, on the other hand, had a pretty believable theory.

They proposed that Hervé might have intended on terminating his relationship with Gabriel, evicting him from the apartment, thereby ending his access to the lavish lifestyle he'd become accustomed to. So on December 27th, 2011, Gabriel strangled Hervé to death, dismembered him, refrigerated him, and then disposed of his remains throughout the Hollywood Hills.

The prosecution did a stunning job presenting the evidence they had, without a murder weapon or an eyewitness. Although the deception around the trip to Mexico, the phony phone calls, the 99-cent store bags, and the internet searches were all circumstantial, they were also impossible to ignore.

Lauren, Ollie's dog walker, testified at both the preliminary hearing and at the trial. And although being part of the discovery of Hervé's remains was shocking and horrifying in itself, Lauren says the creepiest part by far was sitting in the courtroom face to face with the man who murdered Hervé and watching him react to her testimony.

When I was telling the story about finding it and with the dogs was like the slightest

little bit of like smirk of amusement of like the circumstances as I was like, and I couldn't help, but just stare at him as I'm telling, answering questions and telling the story. You just can't help, but continue to look over there. And the only time that I saw the face change was at some point with me telling the story about the pack of dogs and, and the dog, you know, picking it up in his mouth and it rolling down the hill, like, you know,

There was just like the slightest little like

smirk of amusement at the story of it all. I think that was the hardest part was being in court twice. Just being in the room with someone that emanates that much evil and you can't help but look over and try to see if there's any glimmer of like humanity, like as you're telling the story or as people are asking things, like when you're in that courtroom. I mean, and I'm sure that that's why people are sort of fascinated by the murder things and the podcast is it's just

You kind of can't help but wonder, like, what goes through somebody's mind to be able to be that horrible and do that or get to that place and to be in the room, like face to face with somebody telling the story like I'm telling you to you right now. But it's, you know, a lawyer asking you questions. But looking at the person that did it, it was just that that's sort of the most chilling of it all. The other parts kind of don't seem real. The other parts.

On October 1st, 2015, after only a day and a half of deliberation, the jury handed down their verdict. The now 40-year-old Gabriel Campos Martinez was found guilty of first-degree murder.

Making no statement to Hervé's family, Gabriel never once offered any motive or explanation for the brutal slaying of a man that had taken him in and supported him. No one knew why what happened had happened, and is a mystery that will likely remain that way. But what had been the true motive behind Hervé's murder? Had it been a crime committed for financial reasons?

Fear of being cut off from a decadent lifestyle? Or had it been something far more gruesome? The vast majority of Hervé's body has never been found. And then there was that hair-raising internet search about butchering a human carcass for consumption. But Gabriel isn't talking. And maybe the motive behind the murder is so heinous that he never will.

On November 16, the judge sentenced Gabriel to 25 years to life, the maximum sentence. Gabriel appealed the conviction, centered around evidence discovered in the Bronson Caves and introduced during trial, but his appeal was denied. Gabriel will be eligible for parole in February 2033.

Hervé's niece told the courts how much Hervé was missed. As for Gabriel, and according to an article by NBC Los Angeles, Christina was quoted as saying, "...I personally never want him to see the light of day."

Christina couldn't bear to tell her father, Hervé's brother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, about the brutal slaying, which means he has no idea his brother is even gone. Instead, she makes up stories about why Hervé is no longer around, a heavy burden to bear for someone who has already lost so much.

When Lauren took her pack of dogs for a walk in the Hollywood Hills that fateful day, she played a pivotal role in bringing her face killer to justice. It was a stunning stroke of luck that Lauren had only off the leash on that particular trail, in the short window between the killer's disposal of the evidence and animals dragging off the remains.

For Hervé and his family, it was a case of the right place at the right time, though it might not have felt so lucky to Lauren, who endured media pressure and testifying twice.

I'm so happy that you were there at that time, even though I'm sure at the time it was very jarring and somewhat traumatizing. But you played a pivotal role in this case in bringing some sense of peace to Hervey's family and answers. But also you may have kept other people safe because like you said, the perpetrator, you know, Gabriel Campos Martinez wasn't a good dude. And he may very well have.

gone after other people and caused harm to other people. So I feel like I was where I was supposed to be. I feel like if I hadn't been there, if we hadn't been there with the dogs, that the person who did this might never be found. And someone who's capable of doing something like that has probably done a lot of things that they didn't get in trouble for. I don't know a lot about murders, but I know that you probably your first thing is not killing somebody, chopping them up and hiding that this is a creepy person who's done probably done some bad shit in their life.

So I feel fortunate that I was there and that the person responsible for this is in jail for the rest of his life.

I met his niece at one of the court proceedings and talked to her. Because every year, basically, there are a number of people that want to like interview or do things about it. Sometimes it does feel sort of like sensationalized. And I worry about the people that are involved in the family and, you know, for them to have something like that happen and be in the process of their journey healing and have it over and over. I mean, if I'm interviewed, you know, called every two, three, four times a year, they certainly are as well.

So sometimes it just sort of feels like the people that are involved might not have the closure that they need because this case has remained such one that's particularly interesting to everybody. It's definitely a Hollywood written story.

And it's just, you know, when you have something that is a traumatic event in your life or you have loss, the lasting thing about it was the media, that it was whenever there's a large like media focused event. Now it's sort of having been at the center of something like that and seeing how you're, I mean, every five seconds a producer was prophesying.

calling and they, you know, I did a bunch of different interviews and a bunch of different things. And then I just get, I wouldn't do, I stopped and I wouldn't talk to anybody or do anymore and didn't want any involvement in it because it was just sort of too much.

And then I forget what happened. I feel like a prominent couple broke up or something happened. And immediately the entire news story shifted. And as I watch things that happen or there's a mass shooting and that's all anyone can think about. And it's just this massive focus until instantly that ends. And those people are left to deal with it for the rest of their lives.

the loss of it and the healing and the trauma and go from everyone focused on them to it just the sort of deafening silence. And it even happens in loss in your own life. You know, if you've lost a parent or a sibling, everyone crowds around you, you know, initially and, you know, there's flowers and people bringing you food and then immediately everybody goes back to their life and nobody ever even, unless there's people who have also had loss that remember, but people don't even remember sort of to check in once that, that,

blurry fades. So I think being with this, it was sort of being caught in that media fury and then it disappearing and then it sort of reappears a few times a year whenever there's someone who wants to use it for their purposes.

In Hollywood, a successful story has a plotline that's not only exciting, but understandable. But if we can't comprehend the motive behind the characters, we can't help but feel like we've missed something integral. But when a life is taken in the real world, even when we finally find out what really happened and who perpetrated the crime, even when justice is served and

and the murderer is safely locked behind bars until the end of their days. If we never find out why it happened, we're left with lingering questions that haunt us until the end of our days. Sometimes, a neat Hollywood ending is only found in Hollywood, and in the real world, we and the victim's loved ones have to live with the uncertainty of reality.

I want to give a special thanks to Lauren Kornberg for taking the time to help us with this episode. It's always important to remember the impact these crimes have on the greater community, witnesses to crimes, and people like Lauren who've actually had the traumatic experience of stumbling upon something so shocking. It's also important to remember the people left behind who continue to grieve long after the news fades from the headlines.

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