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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash forensic tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On Christmas Eve 2015 in New Mexico, a peaceful jog turns into a nightmare. A young woman goes jogging along a trail she's been to so many times, but is suddenly attacked.
For the next five years, her attacker's identity remains a mystery, until investigators in New Mexico try a new forensic technique to try and track him down. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 213, The Case of the Jogger in New Mexico. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, and produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to the episode, we've got four new Patreon supporters to thank.
Thank you so much to Kathy J., Michaela M., Eileen, and Christina M. for becoming the show's newest supporters on Patreon. Now, let's get to this week's episode. On Christmas Eve, December 24th, 2015, a young woman went for a jog on a drainage ditch along the Rio Grande South of Rio Bravo in New Mexico. The woman went out there that day thinking that it was just going to be like any other jog.
Not only was this a popular spot for her, but it was also a popular spot for a lot of local runners. So she went out there that day to go running, she didn't think much about it. She'd get her exercise in, and then go about the rest of her Christmas Eve. But that's far from what happened. Before going into too much detail, it's worth mentioning that the victim's name won't be mentioned in this episode.
We'll refer to her as the victim because that's how she'd like to remain, and I want to respect that. I also won't get into much detail about who she is or what she's doing now. That Christmas Eve, as she was running her regular route, she saw a guy that caught her attention. He wasn't doing anything suspicious or weird. He just looked like he was out there for a run, just like she was. But there was something about him that just made her spiny senses go off in her head.
But once the guy ran past her, she put him out of her mind. A little while later, once she got farther down the trail, she saw the same guy again. Like before, he looked like he was out there exercising. It wouldn't be the first time she came across another runner that day. But this time, he was standing next to a tree and looked like he was talking to someone on the phone. A little weird for him to be on the phone if he's out there for a run. But maybe it was an emergency.
But something about him still didn't feel right, and she didn't know what to do. If she turned around and ran back the same way she came in, it would look too obvious. And if he wasn't really out there doing anything wrong, then she thought it might look a little bit weird. So the only way out of there was to run directly past him and the tree. So she took a deep breath and ran past him.
But as soon as she did, the man sprinted toward her and tackled her to the ground. There was absolutely nothing she could do at that point. As soon as they were on the ground and he was on top of her, she knew she was in trouble. So she tried to plead with the guy's human side. She told him she was a mother of a young child, and if he killed her or do anything bad to her, he would be leaving a child without its mother. Maybe, just maybe, he had a heart and wouldn't want to do this anymore.
But none of this seemed to work or appeal to him. And once they were on the ground, he started sexually assaulting her. At one point during the assault, she saw the guy reach for something in his back pocket. That's when she thought, he's going to kill me. Surely he's reaching for a gun or maybe a knife, and he's either going to shoot or stab me to death. And she'd be dead.
But to her surprise, he didn't pull out a gun, knife, or any other weapon. He didn't shoot her, he just kept assaulting her. After he was done attacking her, he pulled out his cell phone and did something really strange. He took a picture of her while she was on the ground, partially naked. It was almost like he wanted to take a photo so that he could remember this moment.
At first, she tried screaming, hoping someone might hear her. But it was Christmas Eve. There weren't many people out there. Most people were either at home or doing last-minute Christmas shopping. Also, this was a pretty quiet trail. Yes, there were usually other walkers or joggers out there, but it wouldn't be uncommon to run this entire route without seeing a single person.
So if someone wanted to commit a crime just like this, well, this would be the perfect spot to do it. So unfortunately, no one heard the screams. As soon as he got off of her, he seemed to run up the river trail back to the bank without saying a single word. So once she thought that he was far enough away, she got up and started running in the opposite direction.
This was the moment for her to get away and call for help, not knowing if he was going to come back and try to follow her. Once she was able to get home, she found someone to watch her young child so that she could go find some help.
But instead of heading directly to the police station, she decided to go to a crisis rape center in the area. She never went to the police to report what happened to her. And the crisis center she went to wasn't under any obligation to report what happened to the cops either. Unfortunately, this happens far more than we'd like to think. A victim is raped and doesn't want to go to the police to report it.
Sometimes it's because the victim knows her attacker and doesn't want them to get into trouble. Other times it's because the victim is scared or embarrassed. And the last thing they want to do is have to retell in detail exactly what happened to them. So some people decide to stay quiet. And that's exactly what this victim did. After she went to the rape crisis center, she went home and never went to the police.
By the time law enforcement found out about the rape, it was already March 2016, about three months later. She had a change of heart and decided to come forward. The case was taken on by the Bernalillo Sheriff's Department in New Mexico. By this point, investigators were already well behind the ball. Whoever raped this poor girl was long gone and valuable evidence was probably lost. The only thing they had was the rape kit, which doesn't always contain usable DNA.
It also meant that this victim spent the last three months of her life knowing that her attacker was somewhere out there. Maybe he would come find her and do it again. Or even worse, maybe he would try to kill her. So to try and catch up, the first thing the cops did was sit down with the victim. They needed to get her story and a good description of what the person looked like. She told detectives everything that happened, why she was out there that day, and how she first spotted the man.
She even talked about the strange thing he did by pulling out his cell phone and taking a picture of her. Then she told them what he looked like. According to her, the guy was wearing a hat, but you could still see parts of his thick brown hair hanging out the back and the sides. He had brown eyes and looked like he had recently shaved, so he didn't have any facial hair. His skin was tan, like maybe he was Hispanic, but he could also be Caucasian.
She thought he was around 5 feet 7 inches tall and didn't have any tattoos, or at least none that she could see. He wore a black sweatshirt and red athletic pants with a black stripe down each one of the legs. Now, as far as a witness description goes, this was textbook. It was exactly what every law enforcement officer hoped for.
That's because a lot of victims in these situations can't remember what their attacker looked like, or maybe they just never got a good look at them. So for this victim to provide such a good physical description was absolutely huge for investigators. But it gets even better. It was the victim herself who drew up a sketch of her attacker.
As an art teacher and artist, she was able to draw a suspect sketch at home and bring it to detectives. So they didn't need to worry about trying to translate her description to a sketch artist. Once they had a good enough sketch created, the police did their best to circulate the image out to the public. All it would take was just one good tip to come through from someone who recognized this guy.
But at the end of the day, it's just a sketch. It's someone's best guess of how someone looks based on their description. And by no means is it an actual photograph of the person. So although the police had, in this case, a really, really good physical description of who they were looking for, it just wasn't enough. Maybe a few people called in saying they thought they recognized the person, but none of them turned out to be it.
Early in the investigation, the police considered every single male in the victim's life as a potential suspect. They had to. All of her ex-boyfriends were looked at, including the father of her young child. Her male family members and friends were also considered. Like any other criminal investigation, the police typically start with those closest to the victim and then work their way out from there.
So one by one, male family members and friends were brought in for questioning. But after each interview, they were cleared. And the case of the New Mexico jogger's rape was on the brink of turning cold. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.
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That's betterhelp.com. The biggest piece of evidence the police had was DNA. Even though it took three months for the police to hear about the rape, the crisis center she went to performed a rape kit. And through that process, they had collected unknown DNA. The DNA was put through CODIS, or the Combined DNA Index System, to see if there was a match.
If her attacker had ever been arrested for a serious crime before, chances are their DNA was already in CODIS. But to a lot of detectives' disappointment, there wasn't a match in CODIS. And once again, they were back at the beginning. Several months after the start of the investigation, the victim called the New Mexico police. This time it was to say that she thought she saw her attacker at a local sandwich shop.
According to her, as soon as she stepped into the sandwich shop, she thought she saw the guy who looked exactly like the guy who attacked her. He had the same short brown hair. He was the same height, weight, everything. So as soon as she laid eyes on him, she ran out and called detectives.
Well, after hearing this, the police got a search warrant to investigate this sandwich guy. If he looked like their suspect, then, well, he was certainly worth looking into and getting a search warrant. But that was a dead end. The search warrant didn't turn up anything connected to the rape. And as it turned out, this guy was completely innocent. The only thing he was guilty of was looking exactly like a rape suspect.
Months quickly turned into years and hope began to fade. And the victim thought she might have to live her entire life not knowing who attacked her, while law enforcement was left with the real possibility that their suspect got away with a perfect rape. And if he did it once, he would probably do it again. Because this wasn't done by someone the victim knew, it was most likely done by a complete stranger.
So what are the chances this was this person's first and only rape? Well, chances are it wasn't. It might have been the first attack, but law enforcement didn't think so. These types of offenders usually strike more than once. It would be extremely rare for this to be just a one-off situation where he only rapes someone once and then never does it again.
So the longer they went without making an arrest, the greater fear became that there would be additional victims out there. And as far as the victim is concerned, again, she lived in complete fear for months and then eventually years. She feared that this person would come back for her. Maybe he would rape her again or maybe he would do something worse.
Between 2015, when the rape happened, through 2019, the case pretty much remained cold and at a standstill. The police in New Mexico continued to work it and received tips every once in a while, but that was it. There weren't any major leads in the case for months. That is, until 2019. By the summer of 2019, the police in New Mexico went to the district attorney's office with an idea.
They wanted to see if forensic genetic genealogy could be used in a case like this. Everything else had failed at that point, but they did have unknown DNA from the rape kit, so this made it a perfect case for genetic genealogy.
By the summer of 2019, every police department across the country had heard about genetic genealogy. It was impossible to miss after everyone heard about the arrest of Joseph James D'Angelo, better known as the Golden State Killer. In that case, D'Angelo had committed countless murders and rapes all up and down California's coast for years without being arrested.
In many of the attacks, the police had his DNA, but the problem was trying to identify him. His DNA had never been uploaded to CODIS or any other DNA database. So when the police kept collecting unknown DNA at all of these crime scenes, they had no one to match it with. So they turned to genetic genealogy.
a process that takes unknown DNA from crime scenes and identifies relatives of the person law enforcement is searching for. So when it came to the New Mexico jogger case, forensic genetic genealogy was worth a shot. Once the DA had a chance to review the case, they immediately turned it over to the Crime Strategies Unit to begin the process.
By August 2019, the police and DA's office had taken the unknown DNA from the rape kit and uploaded it to various public DNA databases, including GEDmatch and Ancestry.com. Now, the first hope is that you'll get an exact match. The suspect had previously uploaded their DNA to one of these consumer websites, and you'll get an instant hit.
But that's not usually the case. It's actually very rare for law enforcement to get an exact match this way. Instead, they typically can identify distant relatives of the person they're looking for. A great-great-grandparent or a second or third cousin. In New Mexico, investigators were able to get a list of around 2,000 people who might be related to their suspect.
Or at least a list of 2,000 people who shared some DNA with him. From that list, they had the incredibly challenging job of narrowing it down to a single person. Something that not only can take weeks or months, but sometimes it takes years. So it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Once the New Mexico police had their list of people with shared DNA, they began narrowing it down until they found someone promising. He wasn't their suspect just yet, but he was someone very close. A second cousin twice removed from the guy who had attacked the jogger. As it turned out, this second cousin, twice removed, was a guy in his 60s living hundreds of miles away in California.
But the police felt pretty confident that this wasn't their suspect. He was much too old, plus lived in California and had never been to New Mexico before. So there was no reason for him to be out there jogging in 2015. But it was still something. They finally had a blood relative, even if it was just a second cousin.
After a little more digging, the police figured out that this cousin had uploaded his DNA to Jedmatch.com several years earlier. He probably did it so that he could find out more about his relatives, like we usually all do when we submit our DNA. Well, now that his DNA was being used to catch a rapist, because from his DNA, police in New Mexico now had two names for their jogger case.
a father and son who just so happened to live in that part of New Mexico. The first one they ruled out was the father. He didn't match the victim's description and he was a little bit too old. So that left his son, now 23-year-old Angel Garule, the second cousin twice removed from the person they found on GEDmatch. Just like with everyone else, the police needed to rule him out.
Just because he had shared DNA didn't mean he was the perp. But before they could get his DNA to be tested, the police started to wonder if this could finally be their guy. When the assault happened, Angel would have been 18 years old, the perfect age to do this. He also matched the victim's description. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, the same body type, and no facial hair or tattoos.
But before any arrests could be made, the police needed to be sure. Investigators needed a sample of his DNA to compare against the DNA from the victim's rape kit. So to get his DNA, the police came up with a plan. They would secretly follow Angel until he dropped something or threw something away containing his DNA, like a coffee cup or a cigarette butt. That way, they didn't need to get a search warrant.
So over the next several weeks, the New Mexico police watched Angel's every move. They followed him everywhere. When Angel went to work, an undercover officer watched him. When he was at home or took out the trash, the police waited. But nothing really seemed to turn up. There wasn't anything usable. And then finally, after this went on for days, the police got their chance.
Angel went to Caseman Hospital to visit his wife. She was being seen there as a patient. But before they left the hospital, a couple of officers saw that Angel had left a styrofoam cup inside one of the waiting rooms. So as soon as they left, they swooped in and grabbed it. Luckily for them, the cup had plenty of Angel's DNA. But like most DNA tests, the results weren't instant.
Even though the police put a rush order to the crime lab to test the cup as soon as possible, they still had to wait at least a couple of days to hear back. And while they waited, everyone was on pins and needles. But in the end, the wait was well worth it. The results were a match. Angel Garule's DNA matched the DNA from the jogger's rape kit five years earlier.
Angel Garule's identification was absolutely huge for law enforcement agencies all across New Mexico. This was the first of its kind. It was the first time law enforcement had used forensic genetic genealogy to arrest someone in a rape investigation. Up until that point, most agencies just relied on the suspect's DNA being in CODIS.
Once genetic genealogy had identified Angel, the police were now able to arrest him. When officers showed up on his front doorstep, he didn't seem too surprised. Maybe he had been waiting for this day to come. Instead of putting up any kind of fight, he simply put his hands behind his back. During his entire interview, Angel was extremely cooperative. He didn't argue with anyone and answered any questions the interviews threw at him.
He even agreed to go with them to the running trail where the assault happened so that detectives could fully understand what exactly happened that day. Now, maybe Angel was a little naive for being so cooperative with the police. Maybe he didn't know he didn't have to answer any of their questions if he didn't want to, and he could have simply stopped the interview by asking for a lawyer. Or maybe he was ready to face the music and finally come clean.
Let's not forget, it had already been five years. So for the past five years, he's also had to live with this. When detectives asked him why he did it, he didn't really seem to have an answer. He just said, this young woman came running past him. She was by herself. And at that moment, he decided to follow her. And then he decided to attack her. He said he didn't go to the running trail that day to commit a rape. It was just something that happened.
He didn't even know who this woman was. She wasn't a friend or anything, and he had never seen her before in his life. That was the first time that they had ever met. And as far as guilt was concerned, he told the officers he felt really bad about what happened. He's had to think and live with this for the last five years.
Now, of course, his feelings are nothing compared to the victim's feelings, who has also had to live with this for the past five years. So there wasn't too much sympathy for Angel Gurule or his feelings. Detectives also asked him about the photo, the one he took of the victim while she was naked and he was assaulting her. And this is what he said. It was a trophy.
He wanted to capture the moment. Although he claimed it wasn't planned or premeditated, he needed something to remember this moment. Instead of going to trial, Angel agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to plead guilty to two counts of rape. Instead of facing up to 80 years in prison, Angel walked away with only a 12-year sentence for agreeing to plead guilty.
That means he could be released from prison when he's still in his 30s, with plenty of life ahead of him. He's also required to undergo behavioral health treatment while incarcerated. But is 12 years a really justified sentence? Especially when he was facing up to 80 years behind bars if he didn't take the plea deal.
Well, if you ask the victim or many other rape victims, they would probably say no. 12 years in prison isn't nearly long enough for an admitted rapist. Even when you consider how young someone like Angel Gurule is. Again, he's probably only going to be in his 30s by the time he's paroled or released from prison. And that means he's got his entire life ahead of him.
even though he'll forever be labeled as a convicted felon and a sexual predator. He still has his whole life ahead of him. Another reason why he might have gotten this sentence was because of his cooperation, not just during his police interview, but even after his arrest. He was also cooperative with the judge and prosecutors. And even at his sentencing hearing, he expressed remorse for what he had done, saying in part, quote,
I am completely, completely sorry for what I committed. I am sorry to my victim. I completely blame myself. End quote. Some of Angel's background and childhood might have also been considered, especially during his sentencing. When Angel was only two months old, his father was accused of killing his then two-year-old older brother. And after that, Angel was sent to go live with a family in foster care.
He was eventually adopted by a family and ended up in New Mexico. But the abuse didn't really stop in his life even after he was adopted. So when it came to sentencing, his defense lawyers were really able to argue that there should be some mitigating factors to consider. Some might agree with it, while others might not. Now here's where there might have been some additional aggravating factors beyond the crime itself.
Just a few months before the jogger was attacked, Angel Garule was accused of raping a 14-year-old girl from a church group where he was the group leader. He was 19 at the time and the victim was only 14. In that particular incident, Angel was accused of having sex with a minor. The girl's family had walked in and confronted him and went to the police.
The cops took the used bedsheets that they were both on to have them tested, and they took statements from the family members and the minor herself. But that's where the investigation seemed to suddenly stop. It's unclear whether or not the bedsheets were ever really tested for any type of forensic evidence, and Angel was never arrested or charged with statutory rape.
This incident only really came to light after he was arrested in the Joggers case, but it definitely shows a pattern of behavior. This wasn't the first time Angel Garule committed a sex offense. Today, Angel Garule is serving his sentence in a New Mexico prison facility. He's been ordered to serve 12 years and will be required to be on probation for several more years once he's finally released.
Will he be rehabilitated and never offend again? Only time will tell. As far as this case goes, it's become a landmark case for the entire state of New Mexico. It's become the first of its kind to be solved through forensic genetic genealogy. Without it, a rapist might still be on the streets and able to re-offend. But because a relative had submitted his DNA to a public database,
law enforcement was able to identify their suspect. And hopefully, before any more victims are harmed, law enforcement can use genetic genealogy to solve rapes, murders, and the most heinous of crimes. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.
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