Post by HeadMarshal on Apr 30, 2022 23:10:11 GMT -5
Photo Credits: Mlive.com
Vital Stats (Provided By Image In Article)
DOB: 07/10/1954
Current Age: 67 (As of April 30, 2022)
Height: 5'7
Weight: 160 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
The following article was done by Cole Waterman for Mlive.com
SAGINAW, MI — On a fall afternoon in 1977, a 10-year-old boy walked into his Saginaw home to find a horrific sight: his mother, Laura L. Gomez, shot to death, her boyfriend wounded nearby.
Though police quickly identified a suspect, he evaded capture.
Just over a year later, Joseph C. “Jojo” Espinosa was shot seven times on a Saginaw street, his body run over several times by the fleeing killers. While two suspects were arrested and convicted, a third slipped through investigators’ fingers.
Apart from their geographical and temporal proximity, the cases are unrelated. One thing connects them, though — for more than 40 years, arrest warrants have been outstanding for suspects in each killing. They are the oldest active murder warrants in Saginaw County.
This aspect separates them from most cold cases, where a suspect is unknown or at least not charged.
“A cold case is essentially: you’ve run out of leads and you don’t have a suspect,” said Saginaw County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Blair N. Stevenson. “With these cases, we have suspects and have charged the suspects. I don’t think ‘cold case’ is even the right term for it. They just were never able to apprehend these suspects.”
With Michigan having no statute of limitations on murder, the suspects could yet be brought to justice, if only their whereabouts were known to police.
Yet the two suspects’ rumored fates make it unlikely that day will come. One allegedly fled the country, while the other may have also met a violent end.
Laura L. Gomez
The earlier homicide is that of Laura L. Gomez, nee Garcia. Nicknamed “Kookie,” Gomez was a Saginaw native who for a time lived in Chicago before moving back to her hometown. A mother of two sons and a daughter, she worked at the Prestolite factory in Bay City when she was killed at age 26.
“She was young, full of life, and beautiful. That’s what I can say about Kookie,” remembered Antonia Garcia, Gomez’s former sister-in-law, now living in Texas. “She was very loving.”
“She was so affectionate and very independent,” added Linda Michela, Gomez’s sister, describing her three children as her greatest joy. “She was a hard worker who never had a problem getting a job. She was a good homemaker and good cook, so trusting and giving.”
Gomez’s favorite color was blue, she loved makeup, and she had an affinity for bowling, playing on leagues, Michela said.
Twin siblings Esperanza Gomez and Paul Gomez III were six when their mother died. Now 50 and living in Holland, Esperanza said she has faint memories of her mother.
“Little spots here and there,” she said. “We were so little. We would hear stories now and again and, even as we were older, like, she loved to dance. She was very strong minded. She was headstrong and she was going to do what she wanted to do.”
Her twin brother said he likewise only has hazy firsthand memories of his mom, such as visiting her home on Wilkins Street before her death.
“I don’t even know if it’s a memory or not, but being at her funeral,” said Paul Gomez III, now living in Orange County, California. “That’s as far back as I can remember. I feel kind of bad not knowing her or having too many memories. If I see a picture of all of us together, I can’t even recall that moment. I don’t know if it’s something that has been suppressed or if it’s just a memory I don’t have.”
According to Saginaw Police Department reports obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, officers at about 3:30 p.m. on Oct. 12, 1977, went to Gomez’s house at 2021 Wilkins on the city’s East Side. They went there after Gomez’s 10-year-old son came home to find his mother bleeding.
“It was later advised by radio prior to arriving at the above address that this address was known for boyfriend and girlfriend trouble,” police reports state.
As officers approached the house, they noticed a storm door window had been broken by a bullet. They entered and found Gomez’s son, who told them his mother’s boyfriend, 25-year-old Julio Martinez, was in a bedroom.
The officers found Martinez lying on the floor, his knees up to his chest, blankets covering him. He was suffering from a gunshot wound to the upper left area of his chest and pointed to where Gomez was lying.
Gomez was face down in an ironing room, seemingly deceased for a few hours. She wore a hot pink bathrobe and yellow slip, a gunshot wound near her right hip.
Martinez was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital as officers secured the scene. The house showed signs of a struggle, with several bullet holes and bloodstains scattered about. A fresh pot of coffee was on, indicating the shooting occurred shortly after Gomez and Martinez awoke and were starting their day.
Gomez’s son told police his mother had been having troubles with a man he knew only as Carmen. He said Carmen had recently threatened Martinez.
Police went to the hospital to interview Martinez. As Martinez was not fluent in English, an officer interviewed him in Spanish.
Martinez said he lived near Chicago and came to Saginaw to visit Gomez. About 9:30 a.m., they heard a door being broken into. When Martinez went to check it out, he saw Carmen “Carmello” V. Sanchez walk in.
“He stated that Carmello did not say anything to him except he pointed a handgun at him and fired once,” reports state. “He said at this time Carmello went to the other room where he fired a few more shots.”
Martinez ran out of the house but was unable to get far. He eventually made it back to the house, lay down, and lost consciousness.
Martinez described Sanchez as a former boyfriend of Gomez’s who also lived around Chicago. Gomez and Sanchez had apparently met in Chicago.
A neighbor told police that about 8:30 a.m. he saw a man in Gomez’s tan 1972 Oldsmobile, repeatedly blowing its horn. He then exited the car and entered the house, only to emerge a short time later, chasing another man who was grabbing at his chest as though he were hurt.
“It is theorized at this point that this could have been the wanted subject, Carmen Sanchez, chasing Julio down the street,” reports state.
The same evening, Saginaw County Prosecutor Robert L. Kaczmarek authorized a warrant for Sanchez. Police obtained a possible address for Sanchez in Chicago from a diary found in Gomez’s house.
Police later determined Sanchez had arrived in Saginaw the morning of Oct. 11, having taken a Greyhound bus from Chicago. That same evening, Sanchez bought an airplane ticket at Tri-City Airport. He boarded a plane at 6:30 p.m. and left for an unspecified destination, but not before witnesses saw an unfired bullet fall from him while he was talking on a payphone, reports state.
Despite apparently flying out of the area the night before the shooting, Sanchez was picked up by a taxi from the airport early the next morning. Police spoke with the cab driver, who said he dropped off Sanchez in the 1900 block of Wilkins about 9 a.m. on Oct. 12.
Another cab driver told police she had given Sanchez a ride to the Bancroft Hotel in Saginaw on Oct. 11. Police went to Sanchez’s room at the hotel, finding the suspect gone and only an empty half-pint whiskey bottle.
On Oct. 14, police sent a copy of Sanchez’s warrant to the Chicago Police Department’s Fugitive Detail. The same day, prosecutors authorized a warrant for Sanchez on charges of first-degree murder and assault with intent to murder.
A sister-in-law of Gomez later told police she had heard Sanchez had spent the night of the killing with a Saginaw woman. This woman arranged for Sanchez and her to go to Chicago, and then to Texas, the sister-in-law said.
Police contacted the U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization, asking the agency to keep its eyes out for Sanchez trying to leave the country. Meanwhile, Chicago police checked Sanchez’s residence and bars he was known to frequent. They turned up nothing.
And then, the case went cold, Sanchez evaporating into the wind.
A starkly worded update of Dec. 10, 1977, sums up the investigation’s stalemate:
“Carmen Sanchez has not been heard from since the homicide of Laura Gomez. The warrants are on file. Chicago P.D. has copies of the warrants. The Border Patrol … have been notified both in Texas and California at the Mexican border. It has been determined Carmen Sanchez has never been arrested in the United States, therefore, has no fingerprints on file. Warrants on this case will be held open until the subject is arrested.”
Court files on the case were last updated on June 29, 1983, featuring a letter from Assistant Prosecutor Howard B. Grave to District Judge Daniel R. Webber stating his office was declining to dismiss the outstanding warrant.
If Sanchez is alive today, he’s 67. Gomez, meanwhile, is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery.
“Wife Mother Daughter And Sister,” reads her headstone, which features her nickname of Kookie.
After Gomez died, she was not discussed much around her children, though her presence was still felt, Esperanza Gomez said.
“It was something that just nobody talked about,” she said. “With me, it was always, I looked exactly like her. It would take (my grandparents) back a bit when I’d see them, me looking like their daughter. I didn’t mind it.”
“They just didn’t really want to open up to us about her,” added Paul Gomez III. “I don’t know if they just felt it wasn’t the right time because we were so young.”
Frequently as a child, Paul Gomez would ask his grandmother about his mother’s killer.
“I remember asking her all the time, ‘Why haven’t they caught him?’ Growing up, I wanted that justice for her.”
The twins agreed their father, Apolonio Gomez, regarded Laura Gomez as the love of his life. Apolonio Gomez died in May 2013.
“I know they’re together,” Esperanza said.
As the twins’ older brother was the one to find their slain mother, they did not question him too heavily about her, Paul Gomez III said.
“We never pressed it,” he said. “When we did ask, he didn’t want to talk about it. As we got older, we understood and we didn’t really bring it up.”
As Esperanza grew into adulthood, she began researching her mother’s death and what became of her killer.
“I had gone so far as to look up his name, even lookup the gentleman who also was shot to see if he was still alive,” she said. “I was very curious as an adult, especially these last few years because I’ve started doing my ancestry and family tree.”
As with investigators, Esperanza found no word on what became of Sanchez.
Based on crime location, it is advised to contact the Saginaw Police Department at 989-759-1289 if you have any information on Carmen Sanchez's whereabouts.
Moderator Note: If you have any news-related updates on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form
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