Carina Saunders was 19 years old in 2011. If she had survived she would now be 27. Of course her life style would have made it problematic for her to last the past eight years on this blue ball under any circumstances. That's always the case when serious drugs and possible forays into street prostitution are involved.
Obviously we'll never know if she would have made it to the year of our Lord, 2019 because she did not survive. She was reported missing to the authorities on September 28th, 2011. However none of her relatives had seen her for several days prior to then, or at least that was the story at the time. According to a cousin she was last seen getting into a blue, or dark gray SUV which was being driven by a "gray haired," man in his 40's.
Five years later the cousin would claim the man was Kenny Richards who at the time lived at a rental property in the 500 block of Oakdale Drive, not far from I-40 and Rockwell. The usefulness of this information is debatable mainly because she would also say she dropped Ms. Saunders off at the Newcastle Casino on October 8th, 2011, 11 days after the missing persons report was filed.
She made the two seemingly at odds statements during a 2016 news conference held by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. During the presser, which was called in an attempt to revive the cold case, OSBI spokespersons said they were in possession of a Newcastle security tape taken on that 8th. According to them it shows Saunders getting into a red four door pickup truck with a brush guard on front and overhead cab lights. The only available description of the driver was that both his arms were covered in tattoos. The OSBI said the tape also showed several, "girls," in the parking lot urging Saunders not to leave the casino.
They didn't have any luck persuading her. Five days later--eight years ago today--Carina Saunders' dismembered and decapitated body was found in a duffel bag dumped in a weed strewn field behind a Homeland Grocery store also located near Kenny Richards' place.
Because her body was found in the OKC suburb of Bethany, the 31 person department took charge of the case, dedicating five officers full time to the investigation. It was the first and perhaps most damaging mistake made during the aftermath of the gruesome murder.
Up until Saunders' body was found the Bethany PD was best known for the number of traffic tickets they liked to issue. Afterward their reputation expanded to include pandering to the media and casually releasing the names of witnesses and suspects to everyone.
On January 8th 2012, the local paper, The Oklahoman, was reporting two Oklahoma County Jail inmates, Jimmy Lee Massey and Francisco Gomez were being looked at for the crime. According to one account Massey was accused of forcibly taking a woman to witness the murder in order to teach her a lesson.
By February 28th of that year Massey was still a focus of the investigation, but Gomez was replaced by Michael, "Monster," Knight. Although Knight wasn't a suspect per se it was theorized his south side apartment was the scene of the murder. On the same day the state Medical Examiner ruled Saunders had suffered, "a violent death," and stated the full report would be released in two weeks.
In a scant few days the Oklahoma State Attorney General told the media that a release of the full autopsy would harm the case. The state ME immediately said he wouldn't make all his findings available, well, at least for a while. Six months later the full report was made public. Among the terrible details, it indicated Carina Saunders was alive when someone began to hack her body apart.
Before that, on July 11th of 2012, the news hit someone had actually videoed the murder. Over the month new names came to light. Thanks to the Bethany PD, Mindy Cottier, Christopher Banschbach, Tia Downour, Michelle Hanshaw, and Stephanie Howard all made the news as witnesses either to the crime itself, or having seen the tape. In the mean time Massey and a man named Luis Ruiz were charged in the death of Carina Saunders.
None of this shit panned out. Once their names were in the paper and on TV the supposed witnesses began to claim they had only heard from friends Ruiz and Massey were guilty and had only heard about the video from others. In short the whole case began to fall apart because of the press hungry Bethany cops and their complete lack of professionalism.
In February 2013 the Bethany police handed the case over to the OSBI either at the request, or demand of DA David Prater. Later in the month Luis Ruiz walked out of the county jail due to a lack of evidence, while Jimmy Lee Massey stayed only because of unrelated charges.
A few months after the 2016 OSBI press conference the agency showed up at Kenny Richards' old residence on Oakdale Drive. They brought along a portable lab, a lot of guys with shovels, and some large sieves. They stayed for a couple of days, but apparently didn't find anything of note--or if they did they've been completely silent about it for two plus years.
In that 2016 news conference the OSBI insisted a tape was indeed made of Carina Saunders' horrific death and it was possible a copy of it still existed. To this day, when questioned, not a single person named by the OKC press, admits to actually having seen it. It remains the stuff of urban legend.
As does the murder of Carina Saunders. Eight years after her unsolved death, her name still conjures up dark images of a world many of us wish to ignore, or remain ignorant of. It is out there though and we all know it. We just don't want to do anything about it.
And, in the end, that is the second great mistake law enforcement, the media, and the rest of us have made. We just don't want to do anything about it.
sic vita est
10-13-19
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