He waited for this news for years.
But when the message arrived on August 26, 2022, Josephine Wentzel suddenly faced a tragic prospect. She had spent six years tracking the man authorities believed responsible for her daughter’s murder, a search that spanned thousands of miles, international borders, and dozens of possible locations, but in the end, yielded little results.
Wentzel declined to identify the sender of the message, but said it allegedly contained a recent photograph of Raymond McLeod, who was at the time. Was one of the most wanted fugitives of the US Marshals ServiceWas he actually found – or would this be another bout of false hope?
She focused on the image, she said, and “just panicked like, Oh my God, it’s her. I didn’t even want to think about it because someone might hear my thoughts and warn her to run away.”
McLeod, a 42-year-old former U.S. Marine, was captured days later in El Salvador and is awaiting trial in San Diego on charges of first-degree murder in the June 2016 strangulation of Crystal Mitchell. he requested Pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in March. His lawyers either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. In court filings, they said McLeod accidentally killed Mitchell “during rough, consensual sexual intercourse.”
Wentzel, a 67-year-old grandmother and former police detective, was preparing for life as an RV’ing snowbird when her daughter was murdered. She has used the incredible platform she developed following MacLeod to write two books – “The Chase” and “The Capture” – and to help other grieving parents deal with the mix of frustration, despair and confusion left by an unsolved murder.
Wentzel has assisted a nonprofit that helps law enforcement agencies with several cases in recent years The disappearance and alleged murder of Maya MileteAccording to the co-executive director of the Cold Case Foundation. Through a non-profit Wentzel founded, Angels of Justice, he launched a campaign urging the White House to treat Piles of unsolved murders in the country As a national emergency.
In a statement, a White House spokesperson blamed former President Joe Biden for failing to enable law enforcement agencies to “truly fight crime” and said President Donald Trump is “restoring integrity in our justice system.”
A spokesman for the Marshals Service, which apprehended McLeod, declined to comment. Questions about Wentzel’s role in finding him arose, but in a statement after McLeod’s capture the agency’s director said that Wentzel had “worked diligently with law enforcement over the years to see this day of justice come.”
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office has said that she was “crucial” in the search for McLeod.
“She goes for it,” said Pat Kuiper, who credits Wentzel with helping investigators in Washington state revisit her son’s nearly two-decade-old unsolved murder. “She goes for it in such a way that people can’t really say no to her, because she’s so genuine and kind, but also persistent, determined.”
For Rachel Glass, whose daughter was strangled to death along with her pregnant roommate in Arizona 15 years ago, Wentzel provided a sympathetic ear and insight into an investigative process about which Glass – a longtime nurse – knew nothing.
Glass recalled, “If things like that are going on and you think, what the hell is this, I would call him and say, you won’t believe what’s happened now.” “And she can tell me x, y and z why it has to play out that way.”
Wentzel’s husband of nearly three decades, a retired post office maintenance engineer, credits her latest chapter to the perseverance she’s always shown.
“That’s what I’m missing,” he said. “I can easily get discouraged and say, forget it. But my wife, she’s not going to forget it.”
A Fatal Date in San Diego
For Wentzel, that chapter began soon after his daughter’s death. According to a statement of facts filed by the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, McLeod got into a fight at a San Diego bar on June 9, 2016, when he grabbed Mitchell by the throat and a man intervened and told him to stop.
The next day Mitchell was found dead in the apartment where they were staying. According to the statement, a deputy medical examiner determined she had been strangled and later compared the severity of the injuries to someone who had been hit with a baseball bat or had their neck strangled.
Mitchell, 30, was visiting the city with McLeod from Phoenix, where they were divorced The mother of two worked as a property manager, Wentzel said. To her mother, Michelle was the life of the party – and everyone’s attention whenever she walked into a room.
Mitchell had met McLeod a few weeks earlier for work – his mother said, he had gone to her office to rent an apartment – and they took a trip to San Diego. Mitchell was impressed by how much McLeod cared for her young son, Wentzel said, and it appeared that she was not aware of his previous allegations of domestic violence.
Court records in California show one of those alleged incidents occurred shortly before his trip. According to the statement of facts, he was charged that April in Riverside County with corporal injury on a spouse – an alleged crime that included allegations that he strangled his wife.
Riverside County records show McLeod has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys in Mitchell’s case said in a filing that he has a “history of consensual sexual behavior that includes elements of the BDSM community such as bondage, whipping, slapping, strangulation and erotic asphyxiation, sometimes up to unconsciousness.”
However, a verdict was not given on that first case, and MacLeod disappeared after Mitchell’s death. According to prosecutors, on June 10, he allegedly drove Michelle’s car to San Diego International Airport, where he rented another car and drove to Mexico.
an international search
San Diego Police Department identified McLeod As a person of interest in Michelle’s death almost immediatelyA warrant for his arrest in the murder case was filed on June 13,
But MacLeod was nowhere to be found. Eventually, Wentzel recalled, the Marshals Service got involved and offered a reward. But she was frustrated by the government’s inability to quickly investigate leads abroad, she said. The American embassy seemed less enthusiastic about helping, he said, and he recalled that a deputy marshal told him they couldn’t just “run in and grab the guy.”
“This is another country,” she recalled him saying. “We have to get approval.”
The Marshals Service declined to comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
So Wentzel began to search for himself. Although she had worked for several years as a police officer and detective in her native Guam decades ago, she said the experience had not prepared her for the years of social media detective she was about to embark on.
Her first step, she said, was to put up a “wanted” poster with photos of McLeod, a brief description of the murder and the reward amount — $5,000 at the time, she said. She focused on Belize, where she had heard he might be, and circulated the information among dozens of Facebook accounts — gyms and resorts, restaurants and a university, as screenshots of the messages show.
After posting the information in a buy/sell group, responses started pouring in, Wentzel recalled. Some were by phone. Others came through WhatsApp or Facebook.
According to a screenshot, one message read, “Madam I saw this guy, I’m sure of it from his tattoos and his face.”
“If he is here he will be caught,” read another.
But then again, he wasn’t. And the messages continued. There were reports that he was in Honduras, that he was in Guatemala. That said, it seems some tipsters legitimately want to help. Others looked like scammers.
“A guy approached me and said, OK, he’s here,” she recalled. “I know where he’s working. I have pictures. I have it all. So, you know, I need you to send me $1,000.”
There were so many tips, Mike Wentzel said, that fielding them became a 24/7 job for his wife. At times, he considered asking her to dial things back, but could never do so.
“It’s her baby,” he said. “How do I tell him to stop?”
But there were many times when this thought came to his mind. Keeping hope alive during the pandemic, when the steady flow of tips dried up, was especially difficult, he said.
final tip
As this drop in information grew, local and federal officials told Wentzel Announced that MacLeod had been added to the list of marshals Among its 15 most wanted fugitives. In the spring 2021 announcement, they also announced that the reward for information leading to McLeod’s arrest had been increased to $50,000.
His last known location was in Guatemala in 2017, officials said.
Wentzel said he believes it was a tip off to that Central American country that ultimately led to McLeod’s capture. Five years after the sighting in Guatemala, he said, some tipsters told him they had seen McLeod at a hotel just north of the country’s border with El Salvador.
Wentzel surveyed YouTube videos from the hotel to see if she could see his face, she recalled, and she posted a “wanted” ad on Facebook that targeted accounts in the area. Wentzel said he set a 100-mile radius for the ad, meaning everyone in that area would see McLeod’s face.
ultimately, Wentzel said, they learned from the Marshals Service that someone saw one of their ads and shared a brochure with authorities that featured McLeod. The brochure was from a Salvadoran English school not far from the Guatemala hotel, he said.
It was this image that led Wentzel to conclude: “This is the one.”
Four days later, on August 30, 2022, Authorities announced that McLeod had been taken into custody. In Sonsonate, El Salvador, where he was teaching English. He landed in San Diego the next day,
As McLeod’s indictment approached, Wentzel struggled with a confusion of emotions. She remembered, thought about her daughter’s last moments and indulged in fantasies of revenge. But she didn’t want to wallow in hatred and bitterness. So she tried to focus on her daughter’s children, whom she and her husband are raising, and on other victims she wants to help.
“Murder does that to you – it makes you into someone you’re not, if you allow it,” she said. “I didn’t imagine living my life this way. I wanted to be a grandmother and I just wanted to travel, have fun, and live the rest of my life with my family. But it turned me into something else.”
