Cool Thanks Fm here is a link to the story as SOME of the info on our MARIPOSA
Dale Buehner, a long-distance trucker based in Michigan, remembers the moment vividly, even though it happened almost a decade ago.
"My partner was driving, coming out of Phoenix," Buehner tells
New Times from the road somewhere in Pennsylvania.
"We were going to stop in Eloy get a shower and a bite to eat. It's daytime. As we passed this Cadillac, we noticed that there was a man in the front seat, a woman in the passenger seat, and somebody in the back seat. Stuff was going on. It looked like an argument, or something, but I didn't think much of it."
The Caddy then passed Buehner's semi, got about a half-mile ahead of it, and then slowed down.
"When we pass it on the left lane for the second time, I see the driver's got one hand on the wheel and he's looking in the back seat trying to do something with his free hand."
"As we get ahead of them and pull into the right lane, I look into my rear-view mirror, and this girl comes right out of the car. Just bounces off the road!
"My first thought process was that she was pushed out, but thinking about it, she had to roll down the window, and she went out like a diver with her hands outstretched.
"She hit the asphalt and rolled into a clump in the ditch. People behind her stopped right away, but the Cadillac kept going and speeded up. We were trying to block it and call the cops. He was passing us on the right-hand side, and speeded up."
This was before cell phones were commonplace, so Buehner jotted down the license-plate number, got off at the next exit, and dialed 911.
Then they got back into their truck and continued down the road.
"Just before the Eloy exit, we saw that the police had pulled the car over. We stopped, and I went over and asked about the girl.
"All the cop told me was that the girl in the car was extremely nervous. I didn't think [the other] girl we saw rolling into the ditch could have lived. That's the only time I spoke to the cops. Twenty minutes and we were gone."
Buehner asks
New Times, "Exactly what is this all about?"
That's a hard one to answer.
Back at milepost 173, another eyewitness had stopped and rendered aid to the young girl, who was unconscious and seriously injured.
She was airlifted to Scottsdale Memorial Hospital, suffering from massive head trauma and several broken bones.
The deputies took the two people in the Cadillac, Alonzo Fernandez and Lindsey DeJong, both in their 20s, to the Casa Grande substation for questioning.
According to a Pinal County sheriff's report, DeJong said she didn't know the girl and that she'd jumped out of the moving vehicle for no apparent reason.
She said that Fernandez had met the girl earlier that day, and that the trio planned to spend a few days in Tucson before driving to Miami.
DeJong told police that the girl had been riding in the middle of the front seat, which differs from what trucker Dale Buehner says he saw. She said the girl suddenly asked to be let out because she feared her boyfriend would beat her up if she went to Florida.
Fernandez told her to wait until the next exit, and he would let her out. The girl said she was going to vomit, so DeJong rolled down the window.
DeJong said the girl then lifted herself over DeJong toward the passenger-side window, stuck her head out, and somehow propelled herself out onto the freeway.
- Jamie Peachey
Subject(s):
Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office,
Suzi Dodt,
unsolved crimes
Fernandez's story was that he had met the nameless girl outside a liquor store on 24th and Van Buren streets. He said the girl had told him that she, too, was going to Miami and could use a lift.
He also said she had jumped out of the Caddy for no reason, which had confused and frightened him enough that he continued to drive without rendering aid.
Fernandez claimed that he had stopped near Eloy because he saw police behind him "and wanted to find out what was going on."
Not surprisingly, the cops didn't buy it.
(Neither Fernandez, DeJong, nor a Valley woman named Kim Senegal, whom Fernandez later listed in court documents as his girlfriend, could be located for this story.)
On February 4, 1999, a Pinal County grand jury indicted Alonzo Fernandez on charges of manslaughter, leaving the scene of an accident, and possession of marijuana.
Lindsey DeJong wasn't charged, and police re-interviewed her the following month at a Motel 6 back on Van Buren.
Her account changed somewhat: She said Fernandez
hadn't wanted to let the girl out of the car. The girl started crying when he wouldn't stop, seemed to panic, and leapt to her death.
DeJong again swore that she never knew the girl's name.
Fernandez spent almost four months in the Pinal County Jail before he was sentenced to time served after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, a felony.
He told a probation officer that "all three of us were on the freeway smoking marijuana. She started freaking, saying her boyfriend would get mad if she left, and she jumped out of the car. I saw her in the rear-view mirror, and people were stopping to help her. I was scared and kept going. I never knew her name. I'm still haunted by this 'til this day."
In September 1999, a county judge issued a bench warrant after Fernandez failed to report to his probation officer repeatedly.
Authorities still haven't found him.
The dead girl's body ended up at the Medical Examiner's Office, where it became known as 99-305.
Among possible clues to her identity was a small tattoo of a blue heart near her chest.
Another clue was a gold-colored ring with the initials DMA engraved inside of it.
Sometime after an autopsy, authorities released the body for burial.
The advent of Dodt's Unidentified Persons Bureau two years ago brought attention to the unsolved case.
99-305 has become a
cause célèbre on sites devoted to unidentified and missing persons. So far, no luck.
http://phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-07-...eturn-the-nameless-dead-to-their-loved-ones/1