GUILTY KY - Miguel Garcia, 34, robbed & killed, Jefferson County, 4 July 1998

After the murder, the body was swaddled in bed sheets and a Mickey Mouse blanket. It was placed in a van, driven far from any road in rural Henry County and dumped in a narrow creek bed, just as another July day was dawning...

The informant said he was awakened one night in July 1998 by two agitated acquaintances saying they needed his help. He so feared one of the men that he saw no way out. So he helped them lug a wrapped body out of a remote farmhouse and into a van, took a long ride, and then joined in dumping that body in a creek.

The skeptical detective asked the man for just one detail, just one, that no one else could know. The man paused, then said: The body was wrapped in a Mickey Mouse blanket...

It eventually came out. Two men and a woman had met a man they knew as Jose, or Juan, or Miguel, or Mike, in the bars of Louisville. A plan was struck days in advance to lure him to a farmhouse and relieve him of this kilo of cocaine he kept talking about. His last words were for mercy. Please, please. Don’t shoot.

In December 2002, the three defendants were convicted and given lengthy prison terms, even though no one in Kentucky, including those who killed him, knew who the victim was.

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