In November 2021, Detectives Jonathan Vander Lee and Calvin You had to figure out why a lifeless woman was left at a Los Angeles emergency room.
Det. Jonathan Vander Lee : For a fresh case … it's all on you. No one else is gonna solve this thing for you. It's you and your partner, that's it.
A still from video shows Christy Giles being lifted onto a stretcher outside Southern California Hospital at 5 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2021. She was dropped off there by two masked men (seen to the left and right of the stretcher in baseball caps) in a black Prius without license plates.
Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office
Video from Southern California Hospital shows staff pulling a woman out of a black Prius and helping her onto a stretcher while two men look on. When the stretcher moves into the ER, it becomes clear, the car has no license plates.
Vander Lee would later learn that the two men told the staff they found the woman "passed out on the curb somewhere nearby … " and they were trying to be "good Samaritans." They left without giving their names or phone numbers.
Det. Jonathan Vander Lee : They were masked, disguised.
Jonathan Vigliotti : This must be adding up to something that sounds very sketchy to you.
Det. Jonathan Vander Lee : Very sketchy … But then you still have to figure out if an actual crime occurred.
The woman was Christy Giles, and her mother Dusty Giles will never forget the call that came from the hospital, telling her that her 24-year-old daughter was dead from a drug overdose.
Dusty Giles : And I said, "what do you mean she didn't make it?" … and then I hung up and I fell apart.
A still from video shows Hilda Marcela Cabrales being dropped off by two men in baseball caps outside the ICU at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles two hours later.
Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office
Two hours later, at a hospital just two miles away, a second woman was left at another emergency room by the same two men also in a black Prius and wearing masks.
Det. Jonathan Vander Lee : They never give their names, never leave their phone numbers, license plates, anything like that.
That was Hilda Marcela Cabrales. The 26-year-old architect was still alive in the ICU and fighting for her life. And in Durango, Mexico, her mother Hilda Marcela Plascencia was getting the news about her eldest daughter and namesake.
Dr. Hilda Marcela Arzola-Placencia : She was very bad, she was intubated.
Jonathan Vigliotti : You are a doctor, what was going on in your mind at the time?
Dr. Hilda Marcela Arzola-Placencia : What happened? What happened to her? Why is she that bad?
CHRISTY GILES AND HILDA MARCELA CABRALES
And in the earliest hours of the investigation, there were only questions. How could this happen to Christy? It was an unimaginable ending to a life bursting with exuberance.
Christy was an adventurer, traveling the world as a high fashion model for Wilhelmina. She ultimately made L.A. her home.
At 21, her life took a dramatic turn. Christy met Jan Cillers, a South African-born artist, photographer, and special effects editor 17 years her senior. They'd been together seven months when the couple went to Burning Man — an arts festival in the Nevada desert — where, impulsively, they took a big leap.
Jan Cilliers : We just decided to elope. We just got married right there. … we said to each other that, you know, life's very short … So we kind of really just proposed to each other and the next day we got married.
Christy GiIes, left, Christy Giles, 24, a fashion model from Alabama studied interior design. Hilda Marcela Cabrales, 26, was an architect from Mexico who had just moved to L.A to start her dream job in interior design.
Jan Cilliers/Fernanda Cantisani
After they got married, Christy started studying interior design in Los Angeles – which led to a new friendship with Hilda Marcela. Hilda had just moved there to start her dream job, recalls her father.
Luis Cabrales : I feel very happy for her, but very sad for me, because we are — we are very close.
No one was surprised that the cum laude graduate of the prestigious university in Monterrey Mexico was thriving in LA, especially her sister, Fernanda.
Fernanda Cabrales-Arzola: She was always making a lot of friends. Talkative, outgoing. … just having a good time and meeting people that they also like the music, that they are also enjoying dancing.
Dancing is what the two friends were doing that night.
Christy's husband Jan Cilliers was out of town visiting his father. He knew she and Hilda had planned a girl's night out starting at Soho House, and then on to a warehouse party after midnight to see a favorite DJ. A friend who was with them said they did ketamine — a popular club drug.
But by the next day, Cilliers was on his way home knowing Christy was gone.
Jonathan Vigliotti : In less than 24 hours, your world was turned upside down.
Jan Cilliers : Shattered, yeah.
Hilda's father and mother rushed to be by her side; wh…
Read the full article at CBS News (US) →
United States