Worst Roommate Ever (2022) s01e02 Episode Script
Be Careful of the Quiet Ones
I'm scared of him.
Vanished without a trace.
An Army veteran and Orange County student has disappeared.
They are not considering Ramos a victim of a crime right now because they simply don't know what happened to her, but they are investigating this case as a missing persons case with suspicious circumstances.
The city of Orange is a very nice town.
It's a very safe town.
Downtown Orange, kind of a sleepy little historic town.
There's not a lot of serious crime in the city of Orange.
So having an incident like this, it was a big deal.
It was a media frenzy.
Cal State Fullerton student Maribel Ramos has been missing since last Thursday.
Ramos never showed up to work Monday.
Meanwhile, Ramos' family and friends simply don't know what happened to her.
It just kind of took on a life of its own.
Everybody was looking for Maribel Ramos.
There were cousins of Ramos in the neighborhood canvassing, handing out these flyers.
She is my best friend.
Actually, she's my only friend, only family member I have.
Her roommate, K.
C.
Joy, began to worry when Ramos, an Army veteran, missed class six days ago and her on-campus job.
Unusual thing was being next day, Friday morning, she was not here.
That's unusual.
That's when I called the police.
I remember that I was home, and I got a call from my boss at the time, Dennis Gomez, and he said, "Hey, we have a suspicious missing persons case.
" "We need you to come in.
" I was briefed.
I learned that Maribel Ramos missed a softball game with family and friends, and they're saying, "There's no way she would not come to this softball game.
" "This is just way out of character.
" It really started to scare the family, and then, as a detective, we start ramping things up.
Because she's a missing person, we're interviewing family members, we're interviewing coworkers, we're interviewing people she dated, we're interviewing neighbors.
So after talking to all these different people, everybody that we spoke to had alibis or could not have been involved in this case.
Her roommate, K.
C.
Joy, was the one question mark we kept coming back to, but at the time, we were just, you know, looking for Maribel.
Growing up, my sister Maribel was inspirational to all of us.
Especially me.
I'm her little sister.
I mean, she had her temper, you know, we were sisters.
We fought a lot and things like that, but Maribel was always, you know, very compassionate, thinking about the future, and She had so much to give.
She was a great human.
A great human.
My aunt was very fun to be around.
Always wanted to be doing something.
She was kind of the tomboy of the family, I believe.
She was very competitive.
She was in the Army, and she kicked butt, and she was very inspirational.
So when Maribel left for training, a couple months later, 9/11 happens.
And then she went to war for 18 months.
She did two tours.
During that time, me and my aunt actually exchanged a lot of letters.
I would tell her when I was being bad with my mom.
I would tell her about school.
I would tell her that I wanted her to take me to the park so we can play.
I have a book that she gave me, actually.
She wrote a note in it.
"This book is for you because I love you.
" "Pray for my safe return.
From your Aunt Maribel.
" I missed her a lot.
And she was part of the military for eight years.
After Maribel came back from her second tour, she wanted to get her bachelor's in criminal justice.
She decided not to reenlist, finished up her time.
Her and my mom moved to Orange, California, got an apartment, and she then transferred to Cal State Fullerton, continued her studies.
Then my mom got sick.
We lost my mom in 2009.
So Maribel wanted me to move in with her, but, you know, I was settled, and Giselle was in school, and this was just not the time.
But I said if she doesn't find a roommate, I'll move in with her.
And that's how she met K.
C.
So Maribel needed a roommate.
She put an ad in Craigslist, and Mr.
Joy answered the ad.
He drops out of the sky.
He's educated.
He has a little dog.
She has a little dog.
He sells himself as a very nice person, and he's really good at that.
He looked like a nice older man.
He said he was applying for a job in Huntington Beach, California.
Wanted to maybe see the apartment while he was in town for his interview.
That's what he did.
He came out, met my sister.
I met him as well.
He told me that he doesn't have any family, has never had a wife, has never had children.
He wouldn't be bringing people to the house.
She can work and do her school and not worry about, you know, the things you worry about if you have a younger roommate.
At the time, Maribel was close to getting her degree.
She was very focused, working and studying.
It seemed like it would be a good fit.
Me and my sister tend to always see the good in people.
You know, it's like, "Oh, he seems nice.
He's quiet.
" My mom was right.
She said, "Be careful of the quiet ones.
" So K.
C.
moved in.
Everything was going smoothly.
A couple of months go by, and he was always at home.
He didn't have friends.
It's sad because we felt his loneliness.
Maribel, being the type of human that she is, invited him to come out and share a meal with everyone.
He met our aunts and uncles, and they would joke with him, and he was laughing and fit in, and that's how he gradually became friends with Maribel.
They went to the dog park together.
If my sister went to the grocery store and he needed something, she'd bring it for him.
If there was a family party, "Hey, we're going if you wanna go.
" This was a very nice time for him.
At the very beginning of these investigations, the last person that sees the person alive is always gonna be a suspect.
In this case, K.
C.
Joy was the last one that was with Maribel, so he became the target of our investigation.
Well, um, again, you're not under arrest.
Thanks for coming down here voluntarily.
Um, that's huge.
As you know, right now, there's some people, some family, and friends that are worried about Maribel, your roommate.
I'm also her friend, and I care about her very much.
- Uh-huh.
- She's my best friend and roommate.
Uh-huh.
So when was the last time that you saw her? About 9:00 p.
m.
That's when we talked, at nine o'clock, then I went out.
So you last saw her at 9:00 p.
m.
, and then you left for an hour, came back at ten, and she was gone.
So where did you go for an hour? I'm not really I just drove almost down to the Tustin or something.
I just drove down, and I drove back.
I just came back in.
You just drove down to Tustin and came back? Yeah, I just drove down and came back.
Didn't go anywhere.
So, according to Mr.
Joy, when he was asked where he was, he said that he had gone for a drive.
That he drove up and down Tustin in the city of Orange, and when he got home, she was gone, and he never saw her again.
I don't think that it's It didn't sound like the truth, but you couldn't prove otherwise at the time.
The summer before she went missing, I was driving, and he called me.
He starts telling me, "I wanna tell you something, and I know that your sister wants to get married.
" "She wants to have kids.
" "I want to be the man that she's looking for.
" I I'm like, "What is" I was in shock.
Like, whoa, you know? This was out of the blue.
And then he said he was in love with her and that they had a great friendship and that he loves the family.
I told him, like, "K.
C.
, you're a nice man.
" "You can definitely have everything that you're looking for.
" I said, "But it's not my sister.
" "You guys are not a match.
You're older.
" "She's young.
She wants to get married.
She wants to have kids.
" "The type of partner that she needs, that's not you.
" "You're her friend.
" "I'm sorry, but my sister will never like you like that.
" He just stayed quiet.
He didn't say much, and then we ended the conversation.
It was interesting, now that I think about this.
I mean, I didn't feel comfortable with the situation, for whatever reason, and I then called and talked to her.
I said, "Maribel, you have to talk to him.
You have to figure it out.
" "If this is the case, then he can't live with you anymore.
" I definitely felt the weight of his words, and that was just not okay.
He's in her house.
Those things can go terribly wrong.
That was a first major red flag.
And then after that, Maribel called me, and she said, "Lucy, don't worry about it, sis.
" "We talked, and he was just having a moment.
" "He said he just has a crush on me.
" "You told him everything, so he's fine now," she said, "It's okay.
" After that, there was a lot of weird things that all of a sudden just spiraled.
There was some attempts by him to better position himself to be, you know, more than a roommate to her.
We learned that Maribel said, "Hey, you know what, K.
C? You'd look good with a tattoo.
" So he comes home with a giant Bengal tiger tattoo on his arm.
He was all of a sudden doing all of these things, just changing himself.
He is like dressing differently and going out a lot.
Trying to be more, I don't know, hip.
Maybe to look more appealing to Maribel, he spent over $10,000 to have his face look younger and some plastic surgery done.
One day, I go over, and he was all bandaged up.
I said, "What happened, K.
C.
?" "Oh, I just got some, you know I just had to do some stuff.
" And I said, "Okay.
" I don't know what he did to himself.
This weird behavior kind of snowballed, and K.
C.
's feelings towards Maribel were not reciprocated.
She didn't want a relationship with him.
I believe that put him over the edge.
I think he snapped.
You know, he was so obsessed with her.
If he couldn't have her, no one was gonna have her.
When we start an investigation like this, we do an in-house search of our records.
And in this case, we learned that approximately two weeks prior to Maribel's disappearance, Maribel calls the police.
He didn't pay Maribel rent, so then she paid everything herself.
That was actually very nice of her.
That's not something my sister usually You don't mess with her money.
So, she talked to him and was like, "K.
C.
, what's going on?" "Regardless of the friendship, you have a responsibility.
" He was really upset.
They got into a huge fight, and that's when my sister said, "Oh, we're not gonna be friends anymore.
You're gonna have to move out.
" The responding officer that went out to the apartment, he talked to both of them.
Maribel didn't make a report.
All she wanted was him to go.
She didn't elaborate much more than that.
The officer asked Maribel if she was gonna be okay, and she said, "Yeah," and he was gonna move out at the end of the month.
She was good with that.
She wanted it documented he has to get out because he's not paying rent, and she was feeling uncomfortable and threatened.
The last time Maribel was actually seen was at 7:15 p.
m.
on May the 2nd while she's depositing her rent check into the dropbox at the apartment complex.
That was the last time we actually got her on video.
When Maribel went back to the apartment, she got into a heated argument with K.
C.
Joy.
K.
C.
was supposed to be out of the house, but he wanted a life with Maribel.
At this point he had every excuse to try to stay there as long as he could.
He needed more time, he was trying to get another job, and he wasn't moving out.
Maribel told him, "You're out, and you need to be out tomorrow.
" So he starts cussing at her.
Maribel gets upset, and she contacted her friend Paul, who she puts on speakerphone.
Paul tells him, "If your stuff's not out by tomorrow, I will physically take your stuff out of that apartment.
" And that was the last phone call on Maribel's phone.
How bad did the argument get? Nothing bad.
I was talk She talked to Paul.
She goes into her bedroom, closed the door.
Then I just went out, came back in, and when I came back in, she was not here.
Friday morning, I was at work.
Then I got a message from K.
C.
telling me, "Oh, your sister didn't come home.
" "I called the police, but they said that I couldn't make a report because she hasn't been missing for 24 hours.
" "It would look bad on her record.
" And I'm like, "What is he talking about?" Because he had told me that he was in love with her, I thought, "Oh, God.
He's just wants to know where she's at.
" "He probably wants me to tell him where she is.
" And so I told him, "K.
C.
, it's none of your business.
Don't worry about it.
" "Oh, well, she left her light on, and she never leaves her light on.
" And I'm like, "Oh, my God, this guy is just ridiculous.
" He doesn't need to be calling me, texting me.
All we need to know is, "You're gone.
" After K.
C.
messaged me on Friday morning, I messaged her just to say hi, something along those words, and then she didn't text me back.
But it was a Friday.
I know she's busy.
I didn't feel anything weird at the moment.
I just felt he was weird.
Like, "What's wrong with this man?" After work, I had dinner plans with a friend.
Went to dinner.
Then I got a phone call from my cousin's wife, and she said, "Please don't worry, but Maribel did not make it to the game.
" "None of us have talked to her.
" "Go to her house.
We're all going there.
We called the police.
" I think subconsciously my feelings, everything just really crashed, and I just started crying.
I was a mess, like, on a whole other level.
After she doesn't show up for the softball game, that's when the family goes to her house to do the welfare check.
Maribel's car was in the garage.
Her bedroom light is on, and nobody's answering the door.
The police come and knock on the door.
They can't get ahold of anybody in the apartment, so they make the decision to force entry.
As soon as I get there, I pull up to her street, and there's like four cop cars out there.
There's lights.
I just see all these red lights.
And the first thought that came to my mind was, I imagined my sister dead in the house on her bed.
And so I, like, park my car somewhere.
I left it.
I got out.
I ran into the house.
The door is open because the police is already in there.
I go to her room, and her bed's not done.
It's like, her bed's always done.
She doesn't leave without making her bed.
I mean, it wasn't just undone.
It was a mess.
At that moment, I just knew something was really off.
And where's K.
C.
? I just knew that he did something to her.
The police try to locate Mr.
Joy.
Several phone calls are being made to his phone.
He doesn't answer those calls.
That was kind of a red flag for us.
We have police, and family, everyone trying to find out where she's at, and the roommate was not there.
It turns out K.
C.
was sitting in the car outside the apartment with binoculars, just watching the house.
He actually watches as the family members are knocking on the door, and they're trying to get somebody's attention inside.
He watches as the police come and knock on the door.
Maybe an hour into it, he actually leaves his vehicle and actually walks up to the residence.
He kind of just walks up to the officers and kind of asks what's going on.
Very casual, very nonchalant.
Then all of a sudden, K.
C.
pops out of the back of a car into the crowd.
And I see him, and I'm like, "K.
C.
, where's my sister?" He didn't even look at me.
He didn't even turn around.
He went straight to the police officer, and immediately I said, "Okay.
All right.
" So I pointed the finger at him immediately.
That night, Detective Ramirez asked K.
C.
if he'd come down and talk to us.
So we brought him here to the station and asked him some follow-up questions.
Her baseball bat's still in the closet.
Her baseball bat was right in the closet.
She didn't go play the game.
Her baseball bat was in the closet because she didn't go to the game.
It was a little bit frustrating getting facts out of him because he kind of spoke broken English.
The test.
Maribel knows about this.
The test.
First time when I'm Like, I also He would make question-and-answer a little difficult.
Act confused like he wasn't sure what I was asking him.
We found that, afterwards, K.
C.
had moved to the States as a young kid.
He spoke very good English.
Very good English.
People that knew him real well didn't even know where this accent came from.
They even asked me, "Hey, where did that accent come from?" And I'm like, "What accent?" They said, "He's never talked like that.
" I said, "My real concern about her friends or relatives.
" I said, "I think I have nothing to hide something.
" "I just have I worry about that.
" Some of the neighbors said ever since this investigation started, his English kind of went downhill.
He was trying to give off that "feel sorry for me" vibe.
Acting like he's this nice man who didn't do anything, who barely speaks English all of a sudden.
Oh, God.
He was just what a show.
Do you have anything to do with her being gone right now? Absolutely nothing.
I'd like to know where she is too.
And who picked her up.
Okay.
How'd you get all these scratches on you? During the initial interview with the police, Detective Ramirez notices something on K.
C.
Joy's arms.
That is something I never knew I had a scratch there.
He's sitting there with these scratches on him.
Those alone made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
They're fresh.
They're raised.
They have dried blood on them.
You can tell they've been within a few days.
I'm thinking, "How is he gonna explain these?" We go to Eisenhower Park all the time.
- Uh-huh.
- We pick up fishing lines all the time.
- You go over there Fishing lines.
- Let me see.
- Those are from fishing lines? - No, no, no.
I will explain.
His answer to us was that he had received those scratches taking some fishing line from some bushes or something.
He told us right off the bat, "This is where it happened.
" "This is the exact park.
" Sure enough, you get up there, and there's these vicious thorns that absolutely could cause something like that.
And it's just like, "Wow, where did he come up with that one?" Even though it was hard to believe, how would we prove that he didn't? We were all just crying, almost I wouldn't say 24 hours of the day, but it felt that way.
It just felt so unreal.
We were all just hoping that she was still out there.
I opened up an account on Facebook, and I posted her picture and was hoping this interaction with the public will help us.
I don't know how, but it will.
Um, I have friends that actually helped me pass out flyers.
My teachers put them up at school since my high school was kind of closer to my aunt's house.
So many people were involved and wanted to help out.
Everyone was looking for Maribel.
Her Army family.
Her Marine family, coworkers.
We were trying to think about anything that could help.
We did hold a candlelight vigil.
It was friends and family, so we just all came together to support one another, because we were all there for the same reason, and it was just to find my Aunt Maribel.
K.
C.
did, in fact, attend.
He wasn't part of it.
He just kept saying, "I'm very sad.
" "I don't wanna be around the family right now.
" And it just seemed very off since he seemed to care so much about my Aunt Maribel.
And then there were some online discussions where Maribel was referred to by K.
C.
in the past tense.
Which seemed odd.
And there were actually people that commented on it.
Like, "Why are you using past tense?" I remember Saturday we were supposed to go to dinner with her as her guest.
Cal State was having a dinner, and Maribel was going to be speaking.
I went to Maribel's apartment, thinking if she took things with her, maybe that lets me know that she's planning on going to the dinner.
I wanted to look for clues, but everything looked the same.
She had not taken any items.
And then, when I left the apartment, K.
C.
was standing at the door.
And then I just said to him "If my sister's not at this dinner, then somebody must have killed her.
" And he said, in his, uh in his fake voice, obviously, "Oh, Lucy, don't say that.
" And then I left.
Um, I didn't understand the moment, but I understand it now.
This case had challenges, mostly because Mr.
Joy is a smart man.
He's educated.
He sells himself as a very nice person, and it just seemed that everything that we brought to him, he would reason out of it.
He had done a decent job covering his tracks.
During the initial investigation, we had no evidence.
We searched in her house, in her vehicle.
As the days passed, we talked to everyone.
Everyone that was important in her life.
Friends that she had, coworkers that she had, people that she'd met at school.
There were prior boyfriends and people she had been dating that the police investigated.
Each and every one of them had a solid alibi.
The only person that didn't have a good explanation of where they were and what they were doing at the time of her disappearance was K.
C.
Joy.
Every day that went by just seemed like he was beating us.
Based on the scratches that he had on him, the 911 call to the police, you couldn't help but have this feeling that he's responsible for her being gone.
I decided to dig into Mr.
Joy's history.
He came from Tennessee, and he fled that state because everything had gone bad for him over there.
Just prior to him moving from Tennessee to Orange, he had lost his job.
His parents passed away.
He got into an argument with his sister over money, an inheritance from his parents.
So he was kind of isolated.
He really had nowhere to go.
I called, and I spoke to his sister, and she told me that Mr.
Joy had a really bad temper.
She was scared to the point where she got a restraining order against him.
She'll tell you that he's a monster.
We decided to assign a surveillance team to monitor Mr.
Joy's activities 24/7.
If he did this, you know, most likely he will slip.
They set up a surveillance team and watched him.
So K.
C.
Joy ends up going to the library.
And at Orange Library, you can check out or rent, if you will, free of charge laptops.
K.
C.
Joy would use the public computers there and log in.
And then we could obtain intel inside the library, remotely.
We were able to monitor his every movement on the computer.
The surveillance team would radio back to us at the station what he was doing or what he was looking up.
He's asking, "Does a cell phone has to be turned on to trace?" He had some really suspicious searches on some search engines.
Another time he entered in, "How long does it take a human body to decay?" The problem with that was those facts, in and of themselves, are not enough to file the case.
He could wanna know, as an innocent person, how long do we have until the body decays? Or if she's got her cell phone on her, will we be able to find her? There were still innocent explanations even with those items that make you look guilty.
It looks like he's typing in the missing person's name.
The goal was to make sure all the evidence was collected because you gotta prove he killed Maribel beyond a reasonable doubt to all 12 jurors.
He's reading the comments on the article.
Looks like he's writing one too.
Every morning, every time I heard the birds outside, it was like, "Ugh, another day.
" And I felt extreme sadness.
Extreme.
I asked friends from a church that I used to attend to come and pray with me outside of her house.
And I went inside, and I looked at K.
C.
, and he looked terrible this time.
His face, he just looked ugly.
And he just looked ugly.
And I said, "Do you wanna pray with us?" He said, "Oh, no, no, no.
You guys go ahead.
" So he sat there in the living room.
He was just a couple feet away from us while we were praying outside for Maribel.
He was there.
I was at my desk working on the case when I received a phone call from the guys at the library saying, "You're not gonna believe what he just did.
" He logs in, he sees they were doing an awareness walk at Peter's Canyon.
It was my mom that planned the awareness walk.
Peter's Canyon was actually a trail that my Aunt Maribel took me and my mom to, so we had planned it to walk out there and see if maybe, for some odd reason, she was over there.
Ultimately, the awareness walk is what kind of pushed K.
C.
over the edge, if you will.
He typed in the address for the awareness walk onto a Google map.
And then zooms out and then switches to satellite view.
And he kind of zooms in close, zooms in close, and then zooms in on a tree in a remote canyon.
Then he deletes his history.
I didn't even have to say it.
Somebody had already told a couple of guys to start going out to that area.
It's up here.
The location was so remote that the only marker we had was this large bush that was right off the side of the road.
That's where the detectives kind of led us.
Everyone kind of took a portion of this open area and looked for anything suspicious.
As we kind of turn this corner underneath this large tree I don't think it was more than a half hour that I got a call back from him saying, "You're not gonna believe this, but we found her.
" That autopsy is being conducted today.
As of now, we do not know the identity of that body, so we don't know if it is that of missing Cal State Fullerton student Maribel Ramos.
Now take a look behind me.
That body was I see Channel 5 talking about there's a body that they found, and at that point, in that moment, honestly, it was not even news to me.
Joey called me while I was watching the TV, and I said, "Joey, can you take me over there?" You show me any piece of her, and I will know.
Show me her hand.
Show me a piece of that body, and I can tell you right now if it's her or not.
"I can't do that.
" "Okay.
" So I hung up on him.
There's no need to talk.
My grief was rage.
At that point, we went to make contact with Mr.
Joy.
the Iraqi war veteran.
Within just the past hour, police in Orange announced that they had identified We believe that he was monitoring, you know, news.
He knew that the body had been recovered, and he knew something was gonna be happening soon.
So, when we got to the apartment, he jumped out the window and fled.
Surveillance had seen him do this, and they stopped him and detained him, and then we ultimately arrested him.
When the guys were handcuffing him, I remember him saying, "You better have some good evidence.
" I cannot believe she's dead.
So I'm really curious to see what kind of evidence you've found.
What evidence you've found me guilty of murder.
I'd really like to know.
That's what I'd really I mean.
What? My theory is that because she was such a tough person, because she was fit, and I believe that had she had a chance, she would have either killed him or left quite a crime scene.
And because it wasn't there, I believe that he had the drop on her.
That he was able to come into her room when she was asleep and smother her.
And then take her body out to the canyon.
As close as I thought we were to having him tell us what happened, to this day, I don't think he's taken any responsibility.
He almost got away with murder, ladies and gentlemen.
He almost got away with it.
But he didn't.
At the trial, we couldn't really prove how he actually killed her.
But when K.
C.
did the Google search and zoomed in on the tree, it was like a virtual drive-by, which we ultimately used to prove K.
C.
Joy killed Maribel Ramos.
I think he was wrapped up in Maribel.
I think he loved her, and I think he couldn't just wrap his head around thinking he was gonna live his life without her.
He's not gonna have a place to live, doesn't have a job.
He's got nowhere to go.
K.
C.
knew he came to the end of the road, and he just couldn't deal with it.
I wrote a letter to read to him at the sentence hearing.
Didn't get to it.
I couldn't.
What do you mean? I didn't have the courage to read it.
I just didn't.
I mean, he wasn't going to listen to anything I had to say.
What did it say? I basically was asking K.
C.
what he had done, and I wish I never had met him.
I wish he would have never been in my life.
I don't wish any bad on anyone ever, but definitely his time will come to where he just is gonna maybe feel what we felt, but in a different way.
But I couldn't.
It was too much for me to read it.
My sister is gone.
It's an emptiness that will not be filled.
It's very painful to know that she should be here and to see my daughter, to feel her pain and see it.
It-it it crushes me.
I felt guilty for a long time.
I did.
I feel like if I would have moved in with her, she would have never met him.
I'm better with that now.
With my faith and what I believe in, at the end of the day, I know that, regardless I mean, this was not, you know, in God's will, but it was gonna happen.
There's more to this life than just this life.
That is what keeps love in my heart.
That is what keeps hope in my soul.
If Maribel was still here, what would you say to her? Oh, my God.
That I love her.
That I love her, um, that I would do anything for her.
And I would just love to grow old with her.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Um, one more hug.
Vanished without a trace.
An Army veteran and Orange County student has disappeared.
They are not considering Ramos a victim of a crime right now because they simply don't know what happened to her, but they are investigating this case as a missing persons case with suspicious circumstances.
The city of Orange is a very nice town.
It's a very safe town.
Downtown Orange, kind of a sleepy little historic town.
There's not a lot of serious crime in the city of Orange.
So having an incident like this, it was a big deal.
It was a media frenzy.
Cal State Fullerton student Maribel Ramos has been missing since last Thursday.
Ramos never showed up to work Monday.
Meanwhile, Ramos' family and friends simply don't know what happened to her.
It just kind of took on a life of its own.
Everybody was looking for Maribel Ramos.
There were cousins of Ramos in the neighborhood canvassing, handing out these flyers.
She is my best friend.
Actually, she's my only friend, only family member I have.
Her roommate, K.
C.
Joy, began to worry when Ramos, an Army veteran, missed class six days ago and her on-campus job.
Unusual thing was being next day, Friday morning, she was not here.
That's unusual.
That's when I called the police.
I remember that I was home, and I got a call from my boss at the time, Dennis Gomez, and he said, "Hey, we have a suspicious missing persons case.
" "We need you to come in.
" I was briefed.
I learned that Maribel Ramos missed a softball game with family and friends, and they're saying, "There's no way she would not come to this softball game.
" "This is just way out of character.
" It really started to scare the family, and then, as a detective, we start ramping things up.
Because she's a missing person, we're interviewing family members, we're interviewing coworkers, we're interviewing people she dated, we're interviewing neighbors.
So after talking to all these different people, everybody that we spoke to had alibis or could not have been involved in this case.
Her roommate, K.
C.
Joy, was the one question mark we kept coming back to, but at the time, we were just, you know, looking for Maribel.
Growing up, my sister Maribel was inspirational to all of us.
Especially me.
I'm her little sister.
I mean, she had her temper, you know, we were sisters.
We fought a lot and things like that, but Maribel was always, you know, very compassionate, thinking about the future, and She had so much to give.
She was a great human.
A great human.
My aunt was very fun to be around.
Always wanted to be doing something.
She was kind of the tomboy of the family, I believe.
She was very competitive.
She was in the Army, and she kicked butt, and she was very inspirational.
So when Maribel left for training, a couple months later, 9/11 happens.
And then she went to war for 18 months.
She did two tours.
During that time, me and my aunt actually exchanged a lot of letters.
I would tell her when I was being bad with my mom.
I would tell her about school.
I would tell her that I wanted her to take me to the park so we can play.
I have a book that she gave me, actually.
She wrote a note in it.
"This book is for you because I love you.
" "Pray for my safe return.
From your Aunt Maribel.
" I missed her a lot.
And she was part of the military for eight years.
After Maribel came back from her second tour, she wanted to get her bachelor's in criminal justice.
She decided not to reenlist, finished up her time.
Her and my mom moved to Orange, California, got an apartment, and she then transferred to Cal State Fullerton, continued her studies.
Then my mom got sick.
We lost my mom in 2009.
So Maribel wanted me to move in with her, but, you know, I was settled, and Giselle was in school, and this was just not the time.
But I said if she doesn't find a roommate, I'll move in with her.
And that's how she met K.
C.
So Maribel needed a roommate.
She put an ad in Craigslist, and Mr.
Joy answered the ad.
He drops out of the sky.
He's educated.
He has a little dog.
She has a little dog.
He sells himself as a very nice person, and he's really good at that.
He looked like a nice older man.
He said he was applying for a job in Huntington Beach, California.
Wanted to maybe see the apartment while he was in town for his interview.
That's what he did.
He came out, met my sister.
I met him as well.
He told me that he doesn't have any family, has never had a wife, has never had children.
He wouldn't be bringing people to the house.
She can work and do her school and not worry about, you know, the things you worry about if you have a younger roommate.
At the time, Maribel was close to getting her degree.
She was very focused, working and studying.
It seemed like it would be a good fit.
Me and my sister tend to always see the good in people.
You know, it's like, "Oh, he seems nice.
He's quiet.
" My mom was right.
She said, "Be careful of the quiet ones.
" So K.
C.
moved in.
Everything was going smoothly.
A couple of months go by, and he was always at home.
He didn't have friends.
It's sad because we felt his loneliness.
Maribel, being the type of human that she is, invited him to come out and share a meal with everyone.
He met our aunts and uncles, and they would joke with him, and he was laughing and fit in, and that's how he gradually became friends with Maribel.
They went to the dog park together.
If my sister went to the grocery store and he needed something, she'd bring it for him.
If there was a family party, "Hey, we're going if you wanna go.
" This was a very nice time for him.
At the very beginning of these investigations, the last person that sees the person alive is always gonna be a suspect.
In this case, K.
C.
Joy was the last one that was with Maribel, so he became the target of our investigation.
Well, um, again, you're not under arrest.
Thanks for coming down here voluntarily.
Um, that's huge.
As you know, right now, there's some people, some family, and friends that are worried about Maribel, your roommate.
I'm also her friend, and I care about her very much.
- Uh-huh.
- She's my best friend and roommate.
Uh-huh.
So when was the last time that you saw her? About 9:00 p.
m.
That's when we talked, at nine o'clock, then I went out.
So you last saw her at 9:00 p.
m.
, and then you left for an hour, came back at ten, and she was gone.
So where did you go for an hour? I'm not really I just drove almost down to the Tustin or something.
I just drove down, and I drove back.
I just came back in.
You just drove down to Tustin and came back? Yeah, I just drove down and came back.
Didn't go anywhere.
So, according to Mr.
Joy, when he was asked where he was, he said that he had gone for a drive.
That he drove up and down Tustin in the city of Orange, and when he got home, she was gone, and he never saw her again.
I don't think that it's It didn't sound like the truth, but you couldn't prove otherwise at the time.
The summer before she went missing, I was driving, and he called me.
He starts telling me, "I wanna tell you something, and I know that your sister wants to get married.
" "She wants to have kids.
" "I want to be the man that she's looking for.
" I I'm like, "What is" I was in shock.
Like, whoa, you know? This was out of the blue.
And then he said he was in love with her and that they had a great friendship and that he loves the family.
I told him, like, "K.
C.
, you're a nice man.
" "You can definitely have everything that you're looking for.
" I said, "But it's not my sister.
" "You guys are not a match.
You're older.
" "She's young.
She wants to get married.
She wants to have kids.
" "The type of partner that she needs, that's not you.
" "You're her friend.
" "I'm sorry, but my sister will never like you like that.
" He just stayed quiet.
He didn't say much, and then we ended the conversation.
It was interesting, now that I think about this.
I mean, I didn't feel comfortable with the situation, for whatever reason, and I then called and talked to her.
I said, "Maribel, you have to talk to him.
You have to figure it out.
" "If this is the case, then he can't live with you anymore.
" I definitely felt the weight of his words, and that was just not okay.
He's in her house.
Those things can go terribly wrong.
That was a first major red flag.
And then after that, Maribel called me, and she said, "Lucy, don't worry about it, sis.
" "We talked, and he was just having a moment.
" "He said he just has a crush on me.
" "You told him everything, so he's fine now," she said, "It's okay.
" After that, there was a lot of weird things that all of a sudden just spiraled.
There was some attempts by him to better position himself to be, you know, more than a roommate to her.
We learned that Maribel said, "Hey, you know what, K.
C? You'd look good with a tattoo.
" So he comes home with a giant Bengal tiger tattoo on his arm.
He was all of a sudden doing all of these things, just changing himself.
He is like dressing differently and going out a lot.
Trying to be more, I don't know, hip.
Maybe to look more appealing to Maribel, he spent over $10,000 to have his face look younger and some plastic surgery done.
One day, I go over, and he was all bandaged up.
I said, "What happened, K.
C.
?" "Oh, I just got some, you know I just had to do some stuff.
" And I said, "Okay.
" I don't know what he did to himself.
This weird behavior kind of snowballed, and K.
C.
's feelings towards Maribel were not reciprocated.
She didn't want a relationship with him.
I believe that put him over the edge.
I think he snapped.
You know, he was so obsessed with her.
If he couldn't have her, no one was gonna have her.
When we start an investigation like this, we do an in-house search of our records.
And in this case, we learned that approximately two weeks prior to Maribel's disappearance, Maribel calls the police.
He didn't pay Maribel rent, so then she paid everything herself.
That was actually very nice of her.
That's not something my sister usually You don't mess with her money.
So, she talked to him and was like, "K.
C.
, what's going on?" "Regardless of the friendship, you have a responsibility.
" He was really upset.
They got into a huge fight, and that's when my sister said, "Oh, we're not gonna be friends anymore.
You're gonna have to move out.
" The responding officer that went out to the apartment, he talked to both of them.
Maribel didn't make a report.
All she wanted was him to go.
She didn't elaborate much more than that.
The officer asked Maribel if she was gonna be okay, and she said, "Yeah," and he was gonna move out at the end of the month.
She was good with that.
She wanted it documented he has to get out because he's not paying rent, and she was feeling uncomfortable and threatened.
The last time Maribel was actually seen was at 7:15 p.
m.
on May the 2nd while she's depositing her rent check into the dropbox at the apartment complex.
That was the last time we actually got her on video.
When Maribel went back to the apartment, she got into a heated argument with K.
C.
Joy.
K.
C.
was supposed to be out of the house, but he wanted a life with Maribel.
At this point he had every excuse to try to stay there as long as he could.
He needed more time, he was trying to get another job, and he wasn't moving out.
Maribel told him, "You're out, and you need to be out tomorrow.
" So he starts cussing at her.
Maribel gets upset, and she contacted her friend Paul, who she puts on speakerphone.
Paul tells him, "If your stuff's not out by tomorrow, I will physically take your stuff out of that apartment.
" And that was the last phone call on Maribel's phone.
How bad did the argument get? Nothing bad.
I was talk She talked to Paul.
She goes into her bedroom, closed the door.
Then I just went out, came back in, and when I came back in, she was not here.
Friday morning, I was at work.
Then I got a message from K.
C.
telling me, "Oh, your sister didn't come home.
" "I called the police, but they said that I couldn't make a report because she hasn't been missing for 24 hours.
" "It would look bad on her record.
" And I'm like, "What is he talking about?" Because he had told me that he was in love with her, I thought, "Oh, God.
He's just wants to know where she's at.
" "He probably wants me to tell him where she is.
" And so I told him, "K.
C.
, it's none of your business.
Don't worry about it.
" "Oh, well, she left her light on, and she never leaves her light on.
" And I'm like, "Oh, my God, this guy is just ridiculous.
" He doesn't need to be calling me, texting me.
All we need to know is, "You're gone.
" After K.
C.
messaged me on Friday morning, I messaged her just to say hi, something along those words, and then she didn't text me back.
But it was a Friday.
I know she's busy.
I didn't feel anything weird at the moment.
I just felt he was weird.
Like, "What's wrong with this man?" After work, I had dinner plans with a friend.
Went to dinner.
Then I got a phone call from my cousin's wife, and she said, "Please don't worry, but Maribel did not make it to the game.
" "None of us have talked to her.
" "Go to her house.
We're all going there.
We called the police.
" I think subconsciously my feelings, everything just really crashed, and I just started crying.
I was a mess, like, on a whole other level.
After she doesn't show up for the softball game, that's when the family goes to her house to do the welfare check.
Maribel's car was in the garage.
Her bedroom light is on, and nobody's answering the door.
The police come and knock on the door.
They can't get ahold of anybody in the apartment, so they make the decision to force entry.
As soon as I get there, I pull up to her street, and there's like four cop cars out there.
There's lights.
I just see all these red lights.
And the first thought that came to my mind was, I imagined my sister dead in the house on her bed.
And so I, like, park my car somewhere.
I left it.
I got out.
I ran into the house.
The door is open because the police is already in there.
I go to her room, and her bed's not done.
It's like, her bed's always done.
She doesn't leave without making her bed.
I mean, it wasn't just undone.
It was a mess.
At that moment, I just knew something was really off.
And where's K.
C.
? I just knew that he did something to her.
The police try to locate Mr.
Joy.
Several phone calls are being made to his phone.
He doesn't answer those calls.
That was kind of a red flag for us.
We have police, and family, everyone trying to find out where she's at, and the roommate was not there.
It turns out K.
C.
was sitting in the car outside the apartment with binoculars, just watching the house.
He actually watches as the family members are knocking on the door, and they're trying to get somebody's attention inside.
He watches as the police come and knock on the door.
Maybe an hour into it, he actually leaves his vehicle and actually walks up to the residence.
He kind of just walks up to the officers and kind of asks what's going on.
Very casual, very nonchalant.
Then all of a sudden, K.
C.
pops out of the back of a car into the crowd.
And I see him, and I'm like, "K.
C.
, where's my sister?" He didn't even look at me.
He didn't even turn around.
He went straight to the police officer, and immediately I said, "Okay.
All right.
" So I pointed the finger at him immediately.
That night, Detective Ramirez asked K.
C.
if he'd come down and talk to us.
So we brought him here to the station and asked him some follow-up questions.
Her baseball bat's still in the closet.
Her baseball bat was right in the closet.
She didn't go play the game.
Her baseball bat was in the closet because she didn't go to the game.
It was a little bit frustrating getting facts out of him because he kind of spoke broken English.
The test.
Maribel knows about this.
The test.
First time when I'm Like, I also He would make question-and-answer a little difficult.
Act confused like he wasn't sure what I was asking him.
We found that, afterwards, K.
C.
had moved to the States as a young kid.
He spoke very good English.
Very good English.
People that knew him real well didn't even know where this accent came from.
They even asked me, "Hey, where did that accent come from?" And I'm like, "What accent?" They said, "He's never talked like that.
" I said, "My real concern about her friends or relatives.
" I said, "I think I have nothing to hide something.
" "I just have I worry about that.
" Some of the neighbors said ever since this investigation started, his English kind of went downhill.
He was trying to give off that "feel sorry for me" vibe.
Acting like he's this nice man who didn't do anything, who barely speaks English all of a sudden.
Oh, God.
He was just what a show.
Do you have anything to do with her being gone right now? Absolutely nothing.
I'd like to know where she is too.
And who picked her up.
Okay.
How'd you get all these scratches on you? During the initial interview with the police, Detective Ramirez notices something on K.
C.
Joy's arms.
That is something I never knew I had a scratch there.
He's sitting there with these scratches on him.
Those alone made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
They're fresh.
They're raised.
They have dried blood on them.
You can tell they've been within a few days.
I'm thinking, "How is he gonna explain these?" We go to Eisenhower Park all the time.
- Uh-huh.
- We pick up fishing lines all the time.
- You go over there Fishing lines.
- Let me see.
- Those are from fishing lines? - No, no, no.
I will explain.
His answer to us was that he had received those scratches taking some fishing line from some bushes or something.
He told us right off the bat, "This is where it happened.
" "This is the exact park.
" Sure enough, you get up there, and there's these vicious thorns that absolutely could cause something like that.
And it's just like, "Wow, where did he come up with that one?" Even though it was hard to believe, how would we prove that he didn't? We were all just crying, almost I wouldn't say 24 hours of the day, but it felt that way.
It just felt so unreal.
We were all just hoping that she was still out there.
I opened up an account on Facebook, and I posted her picture and was hoping this interaction with the public will help us.
I don't know how, but it will.
Um, I have friends that actually helped me pass out flyers.
My teachers put them up at school since my high school was kind of closer to my aunt's house.
So many people were involved and wanted to help out.
Everyone was looking for Maribel.
Her Army family.
Her Marine family, coworkers.
We were trying to think about anything that could help.
We did hold a candlelight vigil.
It was friends and family, so we just all came together to support one another, because we were all there for the same reason, and it was just to find my Aunt Maribel.
K.
C.
did, in fact, attend.
He wasn't part of it.
He just kept saying, "I'm very sad.
" "I don't wanna be around the family right now.
" And it just seemed very off since he seemed to care so much about my Aunt Maribel.
And then there were some online discussions where Maribel was referred to by K.
C.
in the past tense.
Which seemed odd.
And there were actually people that commented on it.
Like, "Why are you using past tense?" I remember Saturday we were supposed to go to dinner with her as her guest.
Cal State was having a dinner, and Maribel was going to be speaking.
I went to Maribel's apartment, thinking if she took things with her, maybe that lets me know that she's planning on going to the dinner.
I wanted to look for clues, but everything looked the same.
She had not taken any items.
And then, when I left the apartment, K.
C.
was standing at the door.
And then I just said to him "If my sister's not at this dinner, then somebody must have killed her.
" And he said, in his, uh in his fake voice, obviously, "Oh, Lucy, don't say that.
" And then I left.
Um, I didn't understand the moment, but I understand it now.
This case had challenges, mostly because Mr.
Joy is a smart man.
He's educated.
He sells himself as a very nice person, and it just seemed that everything that we brought to him, he would reason out of it.
He had done a decent job covering his tracks.
During the initial investigation, we had no evidence.
We searched in her house, in her vehicle.
As the days passed, we talked to everyone.
Everyone that was important in her life.
Friends that she had, coworkers that she had, people that she'd met at school.
There were prior boyfriends and people she had been dating that the police investigated.
Each and every one of them had a solid alibi.
The only person that didn't have a good explanation of where they were and what they were doing at the time of her disappearance was K.
C.
Joy.
Every day that went by just seemed like he was beating us.
Based on the scratches that he had on him, the 911 call to the police, you couldn't help but have this feeling that he's responsible for her being gone.
I decided to dig into Mr.
Joy's history.
He came from Tennessee, and he fled that state because everything had gone bad for him over there.
Just prior to him moving from Tennessee to Orange, he had lost his job.
His parents passed away.
He got into an argument with his sister over money, an inheritance from his parents.
So he was kind of isolated.
He really had nowhere to go.
I called, and I spoke to his sister, and she told me that Mr.
Joy had a really bad temper.
She was scared to the point where she got a restraining order against him.
She'll tell you that he's a monster.
We decided to assign a surveillance team to monitor Mr.
Joy's activities 24/7.
If he did this, you know, most likely he will slip.
They set up a surveillance team and watched him.
So K.
C.
Joy ends up going to the library.
And at Orange Library, you can check out or rent, if you will, free of charge laptops.
K.
C.
Joy would use the public computers there and log in.
And then we could obtain intel inside the library, remotely.
We were able to monitor his every movement on the computer.
The surveillance team would radio back to us at the station what he was doing or what he was looking up.
He's asking, "Does a cell phone has to be turned on to trace?" He had some really suspicious searches on some search engines.
Another time he entered in, "How long does it take a human body to decay?" The problem with that was those facts, in and of themselves, are not enough to file the case.
He could wanna know, as an innocent person, how long do we have until the body decays? Or if she's got her cell phone on her, will we be able to find her? There were still innocent explanations even with those items that make you look guilty.
It looks like he's typing in the missing person's name.
The goal was to make sure all the evidence was collected because you gotta prove he killed Maribel beyond a reasonable doubt to all 12 jurors.
He's reading the comments on the article.
Looks like he's writing one too.
Every morning, every time I heard the birds outside, it was like, "Ugh, another day.
" And I felt extreme sadness.
Extreme.
I asked friends from a church that I used to attend to come and pray with me outside of her house.
And I went inside, and I looked at K.
C.
, and he looked terrible this time.
His face, he just looked ugly.
And he just looked ugly.
And I said, "Do you wanna pray with us?" He said, "Oh, no, no, no.
You guys go ahead.
" So he sat there in the living room.
He was just a couple feet away from us while we were praying outside for Maribel.
He was there.
I was at my desk working on the case when I received a phone call from the guys at the library saying, "You're not gonna believe what he just did.
" He logs in, he sees they were doing an awareness walk at Peter's Canyon.
It was my mom that planned the awareness walk.
Peter's Canyon was actually a trail that my Aunt Maribel took me and my mom to, so we had planned it to walk out there and see if maybe, for some odd reason, she was over there.
Ultimately, the awareness walk is what kind of pushed K.
C.
over the edge, if you will.
He typed in the address for the awareness walk onto a Google map.
And then zooms out and then switches to satellite view.
And he kind of zooms in close, zooms in close, and then zooms in on a tree in a remote canyon.
Then he deletes his history.
I didn't even have to say it.
Somebody had already told a couple of guys to start going out to that area.
It's up here.
The location was so remote that the only marker we had was this large bush that was right off the side of the road.
That's where the detectives kind of led us.
Everyone kind of took a portion of this open area and looked for anything suspicious.
As we kind of turn this corner underneath this large tree I don't think it was more than a half hour that I got a call back from him saying, "You're not gonna believe this, but we found her.
" That autopsy is being conducted today.
As of now, we do not know the identity of that body, so we don't know if it is that of missing Cal State Fullerton student Maribel Ramos.
Now take a look behind me.
That body was I see Channel 5 talking about there's a body that they found, and at that point, in that moment, honestly, it was not even news to me.
Joey called me while I was watching the TV, and I said, "Joey, can you take me over there?" You show me any piece of her, and I will know.
Show me her hand.
Show me a piece of that body, and I can tell you right now if it's her or not.
"I can't do that.
" "Okay.
" So I hung up on him.
There's no need to talk.
My grief was rage.
At that point, we went to make contact with Mr.
Joy.
the Iraqi war veteran.
Within just the past hour, police in Orange announced that they had identified We believe that he was monitoring, you know, news.
He knew that the body had been recovered, and he knew something was gonna be happening soon.
So, when we got to the apartment, he jumped out the window and fled.
Surveillance had seen him do this, and they stopped him and detained him, and then we ultimately arrested him.
When the guys were handcuffing him, I remember him saying, "You better have some good evidence.
" I cannot believe she's dead.
So I'm really curious to see what kind of evidence you've found.
What evidence you've found me guilty of murder.
I'd really like to know.
That's what I'd really I mean.
What? My theory is that because she was such a tough person, because she was fit, and I believe that had she had a chance, she would have either killed him or left quite a crime scene.
And because it wasn't there, I believe that he had the drop on her.
That he was able to come into her room when she was asleep and smother her.
And then take her body out to the canyon.
As close as I thought we were to having him tell us what happened, to this day, I don't think he's taken any responsibility.
He almost got away with murder, ladies and gentlemen.
He almost got away with it.
But he didn't.
At the trial, we couldn't really prove how he actually killed her.
But when K.
C.
did the Google search and zoomed in on the tree, it was like a virtual drive-by, which we ultimately used to prove K.
C.
Joy killed Maribel Ramos.
I think he was wrapped up in Maribel.
I think he loved her, and I think he couldn't just wrap his head around thinking he was gonna live his life without her.
He's not gonna have a place to live, doesn't have a job.
He's got nowhere to go.
K.
C.
knew he came to the end of the road, and he just couldn't deal with it.
I wrote a letter to read to him at the sentence hearing.
Didn't get to it.
I couldn't.
What do you mean? I didn't have the courage to read it.
I just didn't.
I mean, he wasn't going to listen to anything I had to say.
What did it say? I basically was asking K.
C.
what he had done, and I wish I never had met him.
I wish he would have never been in my life.
I don't wish any bad on anyone ever, but definitely his time will come to where he just is gonna maybe feel what we felt, but in a different way.
But I couldn't.
It was too much for me to read it.
My sister is gone.
It's an emptiness that will not be filled.
It's very painful to know that she should be here and to see my daughter, to feel her pain and see it.
It-it it crushes me.
I felt guilty for a long time.
I did.
I feel like if I would have moved in with her, she would have never met him.
I'm better with that now.
With my faith and what I believe in, at the end of the day, I know that, regardless I mean, this was not, you know, in God's will, but it was gonna happen.
There's more to this life than just this life.
That is what keeps love in my heart.
That is what keeps hope in my soul.
If Maribel was still here, what would you say to her? Oh, my God.
That I love her.
That I love her, um, that I would do anything for her.
And I would just love to grow old with her.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Um, one more hug.