Right now, we're working a missing person, a mother of three.
There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband today.
If you don't think that the husband is somebody that we have to iron out.
It took for him two days to report her missing.
Let's face it, she could be dead somewhere.
They found the garbage bag and it just stunk so bad.
We have a job to do.
I don't know what to do.
I'm nervous that maybe something's happened to her.
We have to look at you first.
We have a goal, and our goal is to find your mom, okay?
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
In today's story.
While the subject matter may be similar to other things we've talked about before, you're really going to see and feel how an investigation works from the inside, looking out.
Here on AOM, we always try to do as many things as we can to give listeners a complete understanding, 360-degree view of a case including, whenever possible, getting the actual audio used in the investigation.
We're talking about 911 calls, interviews with the witnesses, interviews with suspects, confessions and the one unique thing about today's case there is a ton of it.
And it will take you, the listener, back in time to when this crime occurred, and you'll witness this investigation in real time, just as it was for the detectives.
We're heading to Miramar, which is a city in Florida west of Fort Lauderdale.
The day is Monday, April 2nd, 2012, and on that day, 911 dispatchers received this call.
Yeah, just a second.
Can you hear me?
I just dropped the phone, all right?
Hold on.
Can you hear me?
Yes, I can hear you loud and clear.
All right.
Hey, listen, my wife's been missing.
The caller is 38-year-old Sid Torres.
The woman he's reporting missing is Valette Torres, who's his estranged wife.
They've been married for 13 years, and they had three children, ages 5, 8, and 13.
You all live together?
And now the call comes in on a Monday, but Valette, according to Sid, has been actually missing since Friday.
So two whole days have passed without him reporting her missing.
And also, it sounds like he's in his car driving.
And I found that a very odd place to be filing a missing persons 911 call.
How about you?
I don't want to read too much into the call, but in most cases people, as you said, would not call from their car.
They would call from their home, but in this case, on their way to work.
And also, one other thing, not to expect that law enforcement would respond right away.
That is a bit odd.
Okay.
It's going to be taking about 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
Because I already put a call in.
He definitely sounds and almost says that he's reluctant to go back when the dispatcher says that the police are going to go there, so he should meet them.
Almost 30 right now, and I'm going back.
I'm going back, all right?
All right, we're on the way, though.
All right, bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Dispatch sent police to the home to meet with Sid, but the odd thing was is that Sid wasn't home, like he had said.
And in those situations the dispatcher's going to dial back the caller to be like hey, what's going on?
Hi, this is the Miramar Police Department.
You called for your wife?
Yeah, yeah.
Are you at the house now?
Because the officer's knocking and no one's answering.
No, no, no.
I'm on my way over there.
Okay, I was telling you guys when I'm on my way to work, but...
You know Scott, the fact that Sid wasn't at home and that he couldn't even nail down when he would get back there.
What did that say to you?
Well, I mean, how serious was he about making this report?
It is a bit of odd behavior, but like the 911 call, people handle stressful situations differently.
So this could be the norm for him.
Now, Sid is a manager at a dry ice company.
And one question I would want to ask him is could your work schedule be so busy that you would not have time to talk about your missing wife and also the mother of your three children?
But you know, if you know that you have to call 911, which is an emergency line, yet he doesn't even sound like there's any sense of urgency in his voice and being reluctant to go back, it almost strikes me that it wasn't a priority other than the obligatory having to make the call.
There is a protocol at almost every police agency here in the US about how to handle a missing persons report.
It normally begins by somebody reaching out to a police or sheriff's department.
That prompts a response by uniformed officers or deputies to determine at that moment how urgent of a situation it could be.
Like if it's a child or if it's someone who's elderly, those would set up different protocols than someone who is an adult who is suspected of being missing.
That's when the determination is made to upgrade the investigation to a supervisor who would likely reach out to the detective bureau.
Now, I'm not talking necessarily homicide, but probably missing persons at first.
But in this case, the one we're talking about today, we've already said there were a couple of unusual things going on that led the initial officers and missing person detectives to reach out to Detective Jonathan Zeller.
It sounded weird, the case.
There were flags that were up.
It sounded like a little bit of foul play was involved, and we got involved.
Now, one thing you're going to all see right away is that Jonathan is a really smart investigator.
You're going to hear it and what he did, and even when you hear the way he spoke to the various people involved.
Well, back in 2018, others agreed, and he was named Miramar's Officer of the Year.
You know what, it's a real life puzzle that I enjoy trying to solve, you know, these mysteries.
I liked watching Columbo and those types of cop shows.
And if you don't know who Columbo is, I'm going to suggest that you look him up, because I actually think it'll help you, as you're listening to some of this podcast, to understand who it is that Scott spoke to.
Because Columbo is the guy known for his beige overcoat.
He was clearly a relentless, excellent investigator.
And he was all about the detective work.
And that's exactly how Jonathan Zeller strikes me as I listen to him on this case.
Very quickly, detectives began to establish an important fact from day one in the investigation.
Valette didn't seem like the person to just walk away.
And most likely, something bad had happened to her.
Everybody else described.
You know Belette Torres as far as being a great mom.
You know church going, you know to work.
She also didn't make it to work that day either, okay?
And that was also not like her at all.
So these are all the flags that go up why we get involved, you know, at our level.
Now, almost right away.
Investigators did notice something unusual when they listened to that 911 call played back when Sid was giving a quick rundown of the events from Friday to Monday.
My wife met me.
Saturday, she was in here.
Sunday, I definitely did it.
So... You did what?
Sunday, I definitely did it.
The dispatcher, or the 911 call taker, you know, catches on real quick and says, you did what?
So... You did what?
I mean, um... And his response is, uh, oh, oh, uh, you know, uh, she didn't come home yet.
I mean, um, it was one of the times she didn't show up either.
I think that's the proverbial Freudian slip, if you want to call it that.
No one's saying anything to him.
He is reporting his wife is missing in the middle of a timeline.
He says, I definitely did it.
Now Anastasia, you and I have talked about this element before, and it's often referred to as guilty knowledge.
And for prosecutors, we're always going to call it what we're going to call it in court, and that's consciousness of guilt.
So, while we don't know what that did it is because we don't even know where Valette is it just makes you think that none of this is going to turn out well, at least not for Valette.
So we know this and you probably know this, but obviously detectives want to talk to Sid and get his take.
And there is a lot to unpack about Sid and also Valette.
But before we do, it's important to get an understanding of the home, the neighborhood and the timeline of events.
They always say the first 48 hours of every missing person case is the most crucial.
So let us dig into the first 48 hours.
Let's start with Friday.
Police could prove that she was alive on Friday because her car was spotted.
We had the tag for her car.
We ran it through the SunPass system, which is the toll system here in Florida.
So meanwhile, Sid took the kids out and he clearly told that to investigators up front.
So he goes to pick up the kids.
He's late in picking up the kids and used the excuse that he got tied up with work.
Sid's original plans were to take the kids to Disneyland, but he changed his mind.
What he decides to do is take the kids on a train ride starting from Miami all the way to Fort Lauderdale, going to see a movie with the kids.
While they were out, the daughter calls Valette and Valette is out having dinner with a coworker.
Come to find out.
What the daughter had told us was that, while she's on the phone with her mother, Sid asks his daughter to ask her mother, where are you at?
The response that Belette gave to her daughter was, I'm having dinner with a friend.
From there, they go to IHOP to have a late dinner.
And then they go back to Belette's house.
Sid had actually moved out September of the previous year.
That was six months before that this couple had now been separated.
According to the daughter, they didn't want to stay at their grandparents' home.
So Sid took the kids back home and they all went to bed in the master bedroom, all four of them, the three kids and Sid.
As Friday turns to Saturday, her car is spotted again.
She was making her way to her home.
She parked in guest parking and enters the gate on foot.
We also have surveillance footage from the gated community that she lives in, showing her entering the community.
And then we have another surveillance system from another house showing the car passing and parking the car in front of where she lived.
This was at 5.17 a.m.
And from that point forward, Valette was never seen again on video.
When she arrived home, that van, her minivan, okay where she parked?
That's exactly where it stayed the whole time.
There was never any evidence of her leaving the community, leaving her in her car and coming back.
There was nothing like that at all.
So at the moment, investigators have every reason to want to talk to Sid further, more than just someone who is a husband, more like someone who may be a person of interest.
Hey, sis?
Yes.
Hey, how you doing?
I'm Detective Toyota.
If the mayor might please pardon me.
This is Detective Zeller.
We often talk about the mindset investigators have walking into an interview room when speaking with someone who may be suspected of a crime, perhaps even as serious as homicide.
It's all about setting up a type of rapport, a level of trust, not revealing that you, as the investigator, already have serious suspicions.
And the reason it's unlikely the person would be giving up anything unless they're ready to confess, which we all know doesn't happen very often.
So you don't want them to know that you're suspicious of them, because they'll just lawyer up, clam up all these different things.
And you won't be successful in getting any information.
One of the moments that you'll hear a portion of is Detective Zeller's interview with Sid.
And the audio may not be great, but it is very real.
We want you to go over it again just because, so we didn't lose anything in translation with the uniformed officer.
And what's also very real that you hear is where it took place, because it was in the home that Sid once shared with Valette.
And it really you can hear how very conversational and relaxed at least to a degree this initial conversation was.
What's the status of your relationship?
She has a boyfriend and we come to an agreement that I was going to move out and eventually hopefully, work out with her.
The relationship between Sid and Valette is complicated, to say the least, but it's also long.
The couple met in high school, they quickly fell in love, and then they got married.
Now, their paths took them on different ways, although the couple remained together.
She finished her education at the University of Miami.
Sid took some classes, but then he joined the armed services and entered the Marines.
How long have you been together, totally?
20 years.
20 years.
But it was his work.
How much he worked, that really seems to be the thing that started to fray this marriage.
Okay, so there wasn't anything marital that you separated.
So did they draw divorce papers, the attorney?
Who was the attorney?
Here's another one of those very unusual moments that was born out of this interview.
Sid told investigators that he hired an attorney and filed for divorce, but he did not know the attorney's name.
I find that a bit odd.
Do you think anything as bad has happened to her?
I don't think so, but I mean...
I don't think so, really.
She's probably having the time of her life.
It would be stupid, but when she comes, I just want to hug her.
But then, all of a sudden, he is emotional to the point that he is crying when he talks about his love for this woman and the fact that their marriage is falling apart.
I don't know what she could be.
That's what worries me.
I told her, you know what, to stay up late so late.
I really could sense that inner turmoil that he was experiencing.
Detectives are going to speak to everyone that they can find that is closest to Valette.
And in this case, that's including her 13-year-old daughter.
And that formal interview is where this case takes its first big turn.
When we interviewed her, you know, she told us that that particular night she had woken up hearing these what she described as howling noises.
She also said that she heard her mother crying too.
She also then heard her father saying, no, you wake up, no, you wake up several times.
Not to her, but this is what she's hearing.
She never went downstairs to see what was going on or anything like that.
She just went back to sleep.
And the reason that it's telling is because when she describes these howling noises or whatnot, think about this.
If someone's being choked, you know, they're making that noise of being choked.
Maybe that could be the sound that she's describing or these howling noises she's describing.
I don't know.
So, right there, without even getting the rest of it, you just know that something happened inside that house.
And we probably know who it is that caused it.
Everything seems to be pointing at Sid, but there's a piece of information that investigators learn that changes this entire investigation around.
And it doesn't have to do with Sid.
This is a call police get from one of Valette's neighbors.
There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband today.
But I think I have some information about this lady.
Early on in this investigation, Detective Zeller learned much more about Valette, including that she had been seeing somebody else.
He learned this from friends and also from Sid himself.
The man in her life, explained by Sid, was Zoe, a co-worker of Valette's.
Now we have somebody brand new on the investigative radar.
So I would want to talk to Zoe and ask him questions, not only about where was he or what involvement he may have in the disappearance.
And that would give me some indications of where this investigation may lead.
He did tell us her co-worker that she was seeing at the time and trying to somehow maybe implicate him in her disappearance.
And the question was, was Zoe the person she was with the night before she was reported missing?
So to find out, Detective Zeller did a sit-down with Zoe, who was able to provide some valuable information about that day that Valette went missing.
Zoe said they had ice cream.
Later, they had dinner.
And at the end of the evening he said they all went to his house down in Miami-Dade County, which is about 20 25 miles south of Miramar.
We did interview him and he was super cooperative.
He hid nothing.
He told us what we asked and he told us more as well.
He also gave us access to his cell phone.
He gave us access to his bank accounts.
He gave us everything and more.
He then said he wasn't sure what the actual time the valet left, but he does remember an incident that occurred before leaving his home.
She just came out with it and said, I have to go.
I got to go.
I have to go.
And he found that concerning.
But you know, when you think about Zoe, there's this is that he may well have been the last person to have seen her before she entered into that gated community.
When you're talking to a potential witness, if they're an open-faced sandwich I think that's a term for someone who's just willing to tell you everything, willing to provide everything, all the information that they have about what they know, about potential disappearances or anything else relevant to a case.
For all intents and purposes, Zoe was just an open-faced sandwich.
He was willing to provide them cell phone records, any kind of video evidence that they may have, putting him in a place where he can say this is when she left and this is where I was for the rest of the night.
So they quickly ruled Zoe out as a potential suspect in her disappearance.
And so once police rule out Zoe, then they have to look at who else could be responsible for Valette's disappearance.
When we start off an investigation, we start off in the middle and we kind of spiral our way out, eliminating suspects from within and going now outside of it.
But once again, during that spiraling, I could never leave or eliminate Sid as either a suspect or somebody that had something to do with her disappearance.
And if it is Sid, then they're going to need to get the evidence to prove it.
But before they're able to start looking and speaking to witnesses, witnesses start to come to them.
A 911 dispatcher received a call from one of Valette's neighbors.
There's a neighbor of mine that was reported missing by her husband, and her name is Valette Torres.
And I spoke to her last on Thursday.
The concerned neighbor called because she believed she had relevant information about Valette's disappearance.
And she and her husband have been having problems.
And it just, I just, I don't know.
I don't want to say, I just, there's things I know.
It didn't seem like there's anything all that unusual or out of the ordinary to hear that they're having problems.
You know, this is a couple who things are so bad that they're actually getting a divorce.
So it almost seems, well, of course they were having problems.
But then police get another call.
Hi, my neighbor came over here about an hour ago.
He told me his wife, who is soon to be his ex-wife, is missing.
He says he hasn't seen her since Friday.
Although my boyfriend said that he saw her on Saturday morning, but her husband, her ex-husband, told me he last saw her on Friday.
Another important advantage of having these statements is verifying statements that Sid may have made to police which could conflict his timeline of events.
But it is what the caller told the 911 operator during that call that revealed a possible motive within that conversation.
Just a few weeks ago, she told me that he had tried to kill her and she had told me that he told her the kids were going to be orphans.
You had officers that responded there, spoke to neighbors and were getting a different picture of what life or whatever was going on in that household was not a pretty picture.
I don't know what to do.
I'm nervous that maybe something's happened to her.
And they have three small kids.
And I asked him where the kids were.
And he said he was going to pick them up.
And he hasn't been around for like a month.
And my boyfriend and I don't know what to do.
But I don't think I want Acosta to be over here because we don't trust him.
He's so creeped and weird.
And you know, hearing the call from me, while we already had it from the daughter, hearing this, it is just like everything is just the tables have turned and there's no way of coming back.
And it's just this is bad.
This is bad.
This is bad.
And just the weeks before, the friend being told by Valette that Sid had said the children were going to become orphans.
It's almost like you were hearing this self-fulfilling prophecy come to life.
Now the question must be raised.
If, in fact, these threats were real and if Sid is responsible for the disappearance of his estranged wife, what about the safety of the children now?
So they have Sid.
He's agreed to be interviewed.
He is cooperative to really every request they make.
So they try to up it one more notch.
Right now, we're working a missing person, a mother of three.
If you don't think that the husband is somebody that we have to iron out and say this is where it was, this is what happened.
We have to verify all that.
Let's face it.
Right now, you probably have hopes that she's fine.
There's an opposite side to that, that she's not fine.
She could be dead somewhere.
If that's the case, we have a job to do.
In the first place, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't know you from Adam.
I'm not saying you did anything to her.
We have to look at you first.
Reason being is because when we move on to the next guy or the other guy or a girl, whoever it may be, we don't have some defense attorney later saying well, wait a minute, what about the husband?
Look, we checked him out from top to bottom, not a problem.
Now, I can tell you right now, your cooperativeness is good.
It's good.
I mean, you're not telling me that, hey, wait a minute, I don't want to talk to you.
That would be like, wait a minute, why doesn't he want to talk to me?
His wife is missing.
But we're not playing games with you, but no doubt you're the prime suspect.
We have to be able to eliminate you.
We have to get past you first.
Get past you first.
Now, that is a very interesting statement to use within an investigation, but a great technique, and here's why.
You're showing a person that there is a path to eliminate them if they just cooperate on this next step.
Then you'll move on to potential reasons why she's missing or who may be involved in her disappearance, including perhaps the person that Sid felt was responsible, which was her new boyfriend.
Has she ever laid a hand on you or vice versa?
What was the extent of the violence?
Police had a strategy to really figure out exactly how truthful Sid was going to be.
Now it is something that all of you have heard before.
And since we're on the subject of eliminating you, do you want to take a polygraph test?
And investigators aren't just thinking about what will happen during the actual polygraph.
They're even thinking before, what's going to happen when they ask Sid to take one?
The reason that I asked if he wanted to take a polygraph or a computer voice stress analyzer was to determine whether A did he really want to do it and try to help out if he has nothing to hide.
Or was he going to say, no, I'm not doing it?
If we can set it up like, you know, now?
It's going to be in our office, not at the main police department.
You think about, let's assume for a minute that he's done something.
So how is he going to react to just being asked to take the test?
While he doesn't have to take the test, there's no obligation.
Remember, he is playing the cooperative card.
He is talking to the police whenever they want, wherever they want, saying yes to whatever requests they make.
And so if he says no, why?
So you'd almost think that he feels maybe boxed in, that he must say yes.
Sid goes in that very same day to take the polygraph test, but here's the thing.
He doesn't pass the test.
But he doesn't fail either.
You do know why you're here?
Yeah.
I'm not investigating this.
What I'm doing is I'm going to conduct the computer voice stress analyzer.
The test that Sid would agree to take wasn't a traditional polygraph examination.
At the time, the Miramar Police Department were utilizing something called CVSA, which is short for computer voice stress analyzer.
The subject is not actually hooked up to the machine, but answers the questions into a microphone.
The computer then registers microtremors, which are tiny frequency modulations, in the human voice.
And when the test subject is lying, the automatic or involuntary nervous system causes an inaudible increase in the microtremor's frequency.
The CVSA detects, measures, and displays those changes.
There's a couple of questions that the detectives want me to ask you.
They're very direct, but these are the questions that we'll be at.
While he's trying to set up the machine, he noticed that Sid was writing some things down and this investigator asked him you know what are you doing?
Oh, I'm just looking to see what bills I need to pay.
I found that odd for multiple reasons.
I mean one.
If I'm going to a police precinct to talk about my missing loved one, I'm probably not even thinking of my bills and I'm certainly not taking them with me.
I thought that was weird, too.
So did the investigator.
Hold on, you're here to take a polygraph or a CVSA and you're here worried about your bills?
Another flag.
My take is it's a way of him displaying some human behavior.
He was not nervous, right?
He was like paying his bills, which is just as routine as answering you, the detective's questions, that he is cool as a cucumber.
But Scott, if you're called into a precinct like if I'm called in the precinct today about anything that I definitely didn't do, like I can't imagine that I'm bringing my checkbook and writing out checks for you know, my gas or heat at the time.
I think this is his way of dealing with things.
And you know what?
To be fair, that could be completely his personality.
I agree with you, Scott, because as you were talking, I was starting to think just that.
You know, it's also a great example of why, as investigators and prosecutors, we can never get tunnel vision.
Like you said, maybe it's just him, and we're all reading much too into it.
So I guess we're going to find out.
Is your name Sid?
Yes.
Do you suspect someone of killing a malevolent tourist?
When investigators get the results of the CVSA, it wasn't what they expected.
It turned out there was an issue with the machine.
You can't do anything with it now.
It doesn't tell you anything one way or another.
And I would really be hard pressed to think that he's going to allow them to try it again, no matter what he's done or hasn't done.
So it was kind of like one shot and done.
And the machine totally messed them up.
Well, I wasn't happy about it.
But listen, things fail.
I get that.
It happens.
Not everything is perfect.
Do I wish that we could do it again?
Yes.
Did that time ever come?
No.
So with the lack of any information from the CVSA, they choose to interview him again.
We know she came back to the neighborhood.
But then on top of that, when we have your daughter saying she woke up in the middle of the night and she heard what she heard, I mean it starts to add up.
Wouldn't you agree?
If she hears something, I wouldn't know whether she'd hear it.
And here is where you start to see the inner workings of Sid starting to come into play full force, because there is this push and pull which is going on during that interview.
She heard her mom crying.
I don't know whether, I mean, she heard her mom crying.
Was I there?
Because I was staying in bed.
She heard you crying, too.
All right.
And you weren't in bed.
I was in bed.
And he just won't flinch, but he also won't give an inch.
And he is really, while not outwardly combative, he is tug-of-warring with them every step of the way, which is really starting to show to me that his mind is starting to try to figure out how to deal with this and still come across as the cooperative, innocent husband.
I could not, in good faith, disregard anything that Sid told us or did.
Could not rule him out whatsoever.
But who was responsible for Valette's disappearance is just a part of the mystery.
The question really remains, where is she?
So thinking about where Valette was last seen, she is seen going into the gated community.
And remember, a neighbor says that he actually saw her going into the house.
So those two areas, both the car, her car and the house, could prove vital and certainly give vital information and clues to investigators.
So they want to get into both and they get the car.
Remember, Sid let them tow it away and they search it.
But when they do, they got nothing.
The next step for crime scene investigators was to do a similar search of the Tora's home.
The goal there is to find any evidence or any indication that a crime was committed.
Would they be able to locate any signs of a struggle?
How about damage?
Evidence of a fight?
Maybe he stabbed her.
Maybe he shot her.
What about blood?
We search it.
We process it.
We photograph it.
All that to help us look for evidence.
What they did notice was very commonplace, but also telling is that all her everyday items were there.
Whether it's her toothbrush, whether it's her clothing, whether it's whatever.
All those things were still there in place.
Nothing was taken of hers.
Did it look like a normal household?
Yeah, it looked normal to me.
Was there any indication of anything that was broken or anything like that?
No, there was not.
But while overall it looked like a normal house, they did find one more thing, blood.
In a missing persons investigation where it's under suspicious circumstances, finding blood in the victim's home is a pretty big BRF or big red flag.
But before you go there, whose blood is it?
Could it be the type of blood, or a very small amount of blood just left on a wall or a floor from a small cut and that was just transferred to the surface of the house?
Could it really just be that?
Keep one thing in mind too, is that, even though there was blood in the house, we could never tell if that was from this incident or another incident.
Was it an accident from one of the children?
That's one of the scenarios that actually was true is that there was some blood there and it did belong to one of the kids that had an accident.
Just another bit of hopeful information, which turned out not to be useful.
So right now, the big question is, is Sid responsible for Valette's disappearance?
And it doesn't look from the outside like he's trying to hide anything.
I mean, he'd agreed to this stress analyzer test.
And on its face, at least, that doesn't seem like the actions of a killer.
Detectives did find out that Sid was hiding something.
This is an interview between detectives and one of Sid and Valette's friends.
One morning, I heard he was buying cameras and things, and I tried to call her.
We had a co-worker of Sid tell us that Sid would brag about and he would actually show him on the computer.
Hey listen, this is the software that I use to see who she's texting or who she's calling, and so on and so forth.
He told you details that led you to believe that That he was here.
As Jonathan is now interviewing the friends of Sid and Valette, he and other investigators find out that Sid was in fact obsessed with Valette.
In fact, he was paranoid, so bothered by seeing her with her co-workers that, even though they are separated, that he actually starts spying on her.
This is another interview between detectives and one of Sid and Valette's friends.
He was able to read the text messages that she was sending and to hear her conversations.
He told you this?
Yes.
He said that he knew everything, that she was talking with the other person that she was going out with.
And, you know, that's why he was so upset.
Because he kept listening to this conversation and reading these text messages.
Of everything, all the interchange between you know, Billette and her friend, you already do a sidestep into deeper, darker waters.
Narcissistic, obsessive behavior, and it may even fall into coercive control, in a sense, of just knowing and controlling information about them, who they're with, what they're saying, where they're going.
You know, it's not voyeuristic for just wanting to watch someone.
There is a control aspect to it that had been going on for so long.
That is just disturbing now in a whole different way, even beyond Villette being missing.
It may be weird for you.
It may be weird for me.
But for him, for a jealous person, everything that's going on with his wife, not that weird at all.
He wanted to keep tabs on her no matter what time of day it was.
He just wanted to know everything that she was doing.
Based on the information Detective Zeller was getting from witnesses, he could tell that Sid was using some type of spyware on Valette's phone.
This co-worker is the one that told us about it.
Now, he didn't have a name of the software.
I requested his credit card usage.
And from there, I saw there that he had payments to a company for the spy software.
When Investigator Zeller starts to dig deeper, he finds out that Sid has been actually tracking Valette.
He has installed spyware on her work computer.
You could actually see text messages emails, all her contacts, all the phone calls, picture videos.
And one of the premier features of this software also was that you could actually activate the microphone and listen live.
You have to remember, this is 10 years ago.
I mean, technology wasn't where it is today.
It must have been really difficult to implement this program not only in her phone but her computer.
The levels of what he went to to really be tracking her in every single way.
That is most disturbing to me.
It's incredible and it's frightening.
Going back to a 2014 NPR investigation, they found that 75 I mean just think about that 75 of domestic violence shelters that were surveyed across the United States had encountered victims whose abusers had either used eavesdropping apps, and that 85 had actually encountered victims whose abusers tracked them using GPS software.
Prior to installing the spy software, it was actually tracking her for well over a year.
This has been going on for over a year.
Hold on a second.
If you have software that can track her, why didn't you ever tell us about it?
We can also track her.
You have to raise the question once you know that.
So why not early on in the investigation, when detectives or even officers first came to his home and said hey, you know you're reporting your wife missing?
Why wasn't he helpful by saying, hey, wait a second.
I've got this app on my phone or my computer that actually tracks her.
Let me see if I can help out.
Let me take this information and see if we can pinpoint her location.
Nothing.
Bird chirps.
He could track his wife anytime he wanted to, and he failed to disclose that to us.
You'd think if he was really concerned about the mother of his three children.
And is she in trouble?
Is she being held against her will somewhere?
He'd provide this information, but never once did he admit that.
While we all seem pretty clear that we think we know who is responsible, we still need to first show that a crime happened at all, which is why investigators really need to find Valette.
In the first few hours.
They're using a lot of manpower to search.
You know a lot of territory around their house in Miramar.
We did multiple searches, the whole entire community.
But Miramar PD's efforts are about to pay off.
In one of those searches, they find a bag.
There was one particular search where they found a garbage bag, and it just stunk so bad.
They opened it, and there's bones.
But we'll let you know right now, those remains are not Valette Torres.
Who that turns out to be, and much, much more about Sid to be revealed next week in part two of our story.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original.
Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers and Sumit David are executive producers.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
Meow.
