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Teen found shot to death
Authorities have no motive, few clues and no solid suspects yet in the shooting death of Teresa Garcia, 17, who was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds outside her aunt and uncle's home just off Frontage Road north of Mountain Home last Tuesday, June 8.
Garcia, universally described by those who knew her as "a good kid," was shot once in the face and three times in the back with a "large caliber" (.357 or better) handgun.
"It's frustrating," said lead investigator Det. Mike Barclay of the Elmore County Sheriff's Department on Monday. "Very frustrating. Usually, the first 72 hours after a homicide are crucial" to solving the crime, he noted.
During that time span investigators interviewed more than 30 people who they hoped might shed some light on the homicide.
A tip from a Bruneau resident, who had heard from his daughter in Grantsville, Utah, of a shooting there, sent Barclay to Utah to determine if the suspect in that shooting might be tied to the Garcia death. Both he and Sheriff Rick Layher admitted it was a "long shot," but something that couldn't be ruled out.
Barclay took one of the bullets from the Garcia shooting with him and Monday learned that the guns used in both incidents were from the same caliber weapon, but he was still waiting for a report as to whether or not there was a ballistics match that would link the Grantsville shootings with the Mountain Home homicide.
Garcia began the last day of her life with a trip to the sheriff's office to take a driver's test. Then, she and her uncle, Richard Eagly, went to Boise to do some shopping.
At about 1 p.m. the pair returned to the Eagly home, located on NW Eagly Lane, which runs at right angles to Frontage Road, roughly half way between Burger King and the Canyon Creek mobile home park. The house is about 200 yards off Frontage Road, facing I-84, which runs parallel to Frontage Road at that point.
Garcia's aunt, Cheryl, and her uncle, who are long-haul truck drivers, then headed to Jerome for a job interview, leaving Garcia at the house. Sheriff Rick Layher said she told the couple she was tired and intended to lay down in the bedroom she used when staying at the home.
At about 2:45 p.m. a teenage girl, not identified by authorities, who lives in the house just behind the Eagly residence, was driving home with some of her young siblings when she saw Garcia's body lying face down about ten yards off the road, just beyond the driveway to the Eagly home. She continued on to her house without stopping, so that the young children in the car wouldn't notice the body, and called 911.
As soon as deputies arrived and realized they had a homicide the scene was cordoned off and state police investigators were called in to carefully comb the crime scene.
The Eagly's, who returned home shortly afterwards to find nearly a dozen deputies and state investigators on their property, were put up in a motel room for the next two nights while authorities went over every inch of their home looking for clues.
Investigators determined that Garcia had been shot four times, once in the face and three times in the back, in her bedroom at the Eagly home. Somehow, she made it out of a side door at the house and up the lane before collapsing 30-40 yards from the home.
Considering the nature of her wounds, Sheriff Layher said, "to me, it showed she had a strong determination to live."
Layher said there is no evidence that Garcia knew her killer. Investigators found no indication that there was a struggle at the house and no one who would have had a reason to harm her.
Nothing appeared to have been stolen in the home, every room of which was dusted for fingerprints, and no shell casings were found. The three bullets that initially struck Garcia in the back were recovered from the walls of the bedroom, Barclay said.
Garcia was found fully clothed (except for her shoes), and autopsy reports apparently showed no "defensive" wounds that would indicate she had been fighting off an attacker.
Layher noted that multiple rounds being fired usually indicates an assailant is under some emotional stress, such as anger, and in most homicides the victim knows the assailant. But, while Layher said "everyone is a suspect until we clear them," initial interviews did not turn up any solid suspects or motive. Investigators were re-interviewing some individuals this week and were continuing to seek out people who knew her.
Layher said Garcia did not have a current boyfriend, and had not had one for some time. She apparently was not involved with drugs, did not run around with a "bad crowd," and other than one minor status crime incident a few years ago had no dealings with police other than positive ones. Just last fall she had selected law enforcement for her job-shadowing class at Mountain Home High School, and had indicated an interest in a law career.
Suzanne Rankin, vice principal at Mountain Home High School, who had worked closely with Garcia, said "she was a very good kid."
Rankin said Garcia came to Mountain Home from Arizona just before her sophomore year. Rankin said, and authorities confirmed, that her parents, Paul and Julie Garcia, had been arrested several times on drug charges, and Garcia had been made a ward of the courts in Arizona. Her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Eagly, had offered to take her in, and Garcia initially lived with them when she first came to Mountain Home.
Because of the nature of their jobs, however, which often kept them away from home for several days at a time, last year Garcia moved in with her cousin, Jo Ann Henrick, 40, of Mountain Home, but often visited and stayed at the Eagly home.
"She had a very supportive family here," said Rankin.
"When she first came here, she was sort of in 'gothic' mode, but she got out of that quickly" and soon was a member of the "mainstream" at the high school. "She was a strong girl."
She had a 3.5 GPA and was a member of the soccer team. "She was a caring kid," Rankin said, adding that "she was one of my best elementary aides," enjoying her time helping students in the elementary schools and reading to them. Rankin said she looked forward to graduating and joining Americorps (a volunteer organization that is the domestic equivalent of the Peace Corps), before going to college.
"She was pretty focused on what she wanted and would have made a very successful adult."
Her cousin, Henrick, said she was active in the LDS church, loved art, and was "fun loving."
"She was a great kid," she said. "How could anyone do this to her?"
"We've got tons and tons of gorgeous memories,'' said Cheryl Eagly.
"The part I have to hang on to is that she can never be hurt by anything. She is now safe.''
After the initial reports of the homicide aired Tuesday night the sheriff's office received three separate reports that an individual had been seen running across the interstate, close to where the Eagly home is located, at about 2:30 p.m.
The man was described as wearing cargo pants and either wearing or holding a white t-shirt. No car was seen parked on the interstate at the time. A 4-foot-high fence topped with two strands of barbed wire runs alongside the interstate in that area. The man was seen running from the Frontage Road side to the far side of the interstate. A state dog team was brought in to search for any clues there, but nothing was turned up.
Authorities also carefully searched the fields for nearly a mile surrounding the Eagly home looking for any evidence, such as a gun, but came up empty.
Layher said he also was puzzled by who might have known Garcia was at the Eagly residence. There is no phone in the home (the Eaglys use a cell phone that was with them at the time), and they're not aware of Garcia calling anyone that day from some other location, or telling someone, that she was going to be there
With few leads to go on at that point, the tip about the shootings in Grantsville seemed worth following up.
Richard Wilson, 39, of Walla Walla, Wash., a Washington prison parolee, apparently shot two people in Grantsville during two separate robbery attempts, before he was cornered by police and killed himself.
Wilson had been sought in a crime spree that authorities believe may have included a burglary in Walla Walla, the rape of a woman in Biggs Junction, Ore., and the disappearance of a Brigham Young University Student in Corvallis, Ore.
"He's had every law enforcement agency in the Columbia River Gorge looking for him,'' said Frank Rivera, a Sherman County, Ore., detective.
Wilson, whose felony record dated back to 1989, was paroled from the Washington prison system in February. In 1995, he was convicted of committing rape at knifepoint in Vancouver, Wash.
Since his release, Wilson had been living with his parents in Walla Walla, according to police Sgt. Matt Wood of the Walla Walla Police Department.
Police believe Wilson burglarized a residence on May 17, pawned the loot the next day and took off, Wood said.
Over the next two weeks, Wilson was believed to have committed crimes at numerous towns.
Corvallis police have described Wilson as a "person of interest" in the case of Brigham Young student, Brooke Wilberger, who vanished May 24 from a parking lot at an apartment complex owned by her family near Oregon State University.
Wilson's life came to an end following a high-speed chase after two shootings last Wednesday night in western Utah.
In the first, Kimberli Lingard, 17, a high school senior who worked at a laundry in Grantsville, Utah, was shot in the head and chest before being found by patrons about 7:30 p.m. Less than $50 had been taken from the till, Police Chief Danny Johnson said.
Lingard was listed in critical condition following brain surgery at University Hospital in Salt Lake City.
In the second shooting, Dee Jensen, 59, a clerk at a gas station and restaurant in Delle, 70 miles east of the Nevada line, was shot in the neck about 9:30 p.m. Tooele County spokesman Wade Mathews said.
Jensen, who managed to call 911 and describe her assailant and his car, was later listed in fair condition at LDS hospital in Salt Lake City.
A Utah Highway Patrol officer spotted a westbound car matching her description on I-80 and gave chase at speeds up to 100 mph.
Troopers used spikes in the road to flatten the tires on the car, which Wilson reportedly bought in Washington with a bounced check, and it came to a stop about six miles from of the Nevada line.
Wilson fired one shot out the window as a warning, then turned the gun on himself after a brief standoff, Mathews said.
Layher said he believed there could be a connection with the Garcia slaying because of its randomness and the seeming randomness of Wilson's shootings in Utah.
But other than the possibility of a ballistics match, Layher said his detectives returned without any new information.
"We're in the same place we were before,'' he said.
In an unusual move, Layher released the name of the victim last week before he found the parents, whose locations were unknown by local relatives.
He eventually found Garcia's mother, who also goes by her maiden name of Julie Klecknew, on Friday in a jail in Arizona, Layher said.
The father, Paul Garcia, still has not been found to be notified of his daughter's death.
(This story was compiled by the Mountain Home News staff with assistance from the Associated Press).