Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to Be Found. Before we get started, I just wanted to say that
episodes contain disturbing discussions on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this
podcast. Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Well, hello, Bethy Boo. How's your weekend? It was good. How was yours? Hey, I went shopping
this weekend and I found a really cool book that I'm going to be looking into. It was from The
Salvage, but it might be one of our upcoming. But how about you? Have you done anything neat in the
last couple days? Well, I did order a book and it comes out May 3rd. Oh, are you one of these people
that likes to have a physical book in front of you or are you into the digital? I'm into a regular
book where you can flip the pages, hold the book open and read. Oh, that's nice. I have a couple of
those on my bedside table, but I think they're collecting dust. So I actually picked up a handful
of books at the bookstore a couple of weeks ago and then I found the same ones on my Kindle. So
they were the same price and I thought, okay, I don't want anybody walking in my house and seeing
this collecting pile of books on crime. So I took them all back. Oh, I have books all over in my
stamp room tucked away. I love books a lot and I have a hard time saying no when somebody says,
would you like to have my books? But now I'm done. I have to start reading what I have. Yeah. I
remember back in the day where at the elementary school that we went to, there was a, our librarian
used to keep just an old stash of books. And I'm sure that they were books that were in the
classroom at one point for reading, but they were probably taken off of circulation. But she always
had this little stash of books that was kept in the custodian's closet. And I would go in there
and say, Hey, I needed, I need a new book to read. And she'd take me straight to the closet
and give me a book and tell me to come back when I was ready for another one. So I was constantly
looking for books. I love reading. Reading is good for the soul. It is. I do love how it just takes
you into a completely different world. Me too. Yeah. So anything else you want to talk about
before we get started? No, not today. Okay. We're going to talk about Crystal Theobald. And this is
a story about a situation where she was caught in the middle between, Oh goodness. Well, let me just
get into it and I'll, I'll try to tell you now, Crystal Theobald was born in 1982 in Riverside,
California. She grew up with a single mother and her mom's name is Belinda Lane, who is going to
play a huge part in this story. Crystal lived with her mother and two brothers, Robbie and Justin,
plus a cousin named Jamie. So it was a, just a single household with several kids there. And
just a little backstory on Crystal. She was married and her husband relapsed back into drug use and
violence. So Crystal ended up leaving him and moving back in with her mother and her brothers.
So, you know, she was back in the old neighborhood and she also had two younger children when she
was killed. I did see a photo online with her and her estranged husband, along with one boy
and one girl. So I'm going to assume that she has a boy and a girl that she left behind because,
spoiler alert, she was killed in this situation. And in Riverside, California, there is a gang
called 5150 Gang. And some believe that the name 5150 refers to the police code for, quote,
unhinged people who are a threat to society or themselves. So, unquote. Now, as some other
reports come up, 5150 is somewhat like a code that refers to someone who is willing to put their
life on the line. And other reports say that the code allows an adult who is experiencing a mental
health crisis to be involuntarily detained for a 72-hour psych evaluation if they are considered
to be in danger to themselves or someone else. So that's kind of where the name of this gang came
from. And I will say this, I used to work at a hospital system. So sometimes when the security
people came through, they would tell me they were going up to meet at a 1013. That did mean that a
mentally unstable person was being admitted to the ER. Now, the gang is often referred to as the 5150
Mexican royalty, which is based out of Riverside, California. And it's located east of Los Angeles.
So if you're looking at the map, I believe Orange County is the huge county where Los Angeles is.
And if you look to the east, then you will see the outskirts, the metro area, which is Riverside.
And then somewhere around 2003, the 5150 gang merged with another gang and became known as the
5150 Mexican royalty. Riverside is considered to be the area where people live because they simply
could not afford to live in Los Angeles. And one former 5150 gang member who was interviewed,
explained that gang members were pretty much just family and they liked to hang out with each other.
And most of the gang members were under the age of 18. So they were just a group of people in the
neighborhood looking out for each other and never really expected to be considered as killers later
on in society. So there's a little history on the 5150 gang. Now, the night of the shooting,
Crystal was killed in a case of mistaken identity by 5150 gang members on February 24th, 2006,
when she was 24 years old. And the 5150 gang had heard that a rival gang had shot at their members
earlier in the day. So they were pretty much just out that night seeking revenge. And one of the
gang members mistook the car that Crystal, her boyfriend, Juan Patlin, and her brother,
Justin were in as one of the rival gang members cars. At 8.43 PM, Crystal was riding a car along
with her boyfriend and brother when she was gunned down by the rival gang member. It was all because
of a turf war. So you've got two rival gangs in the same area, basically in the middle of a turf war,
where multiple gangs claim the same territory. And in this case, in the Riverside area, you had
blacks, whites, Hispanics, and all the 5150 gangs were claiming the same neighborhoods, which led to
a lot of violence and confrontations. We have gangs in Toronto, and I was told from a friend
that she took in this basketball player for a couple of months just to get him away from the
gang life. So I thought that was very nice of her. Now he's back settled up there and he's back with
the gangs, but it did give them a little bit of reprieve away from all the violence.
Now, what do you know about trying to leave a gang though?
I don't think you can.
Exactly. So how could, I mean, so he's back into the gang life. But from my understanding,
if you ever try to leave the gang, that's when you could be in a lot of trouble.
I believe that the gang from the Toronto area went to her house trying to get that person to
go back to Toronto. So to save the family from any grief, that particular young man went back
up to Toronto. Oh my goodness. Have you heard anything more about how he's doing today?
No.
There's a couple of people in this story that were interviewed and they were former gang members,
but all I know is that when you do try to leave, then it's not always a good outcome.
Well, in this case, a 17 year old gang member named Julio Heredia, also known as little Huero,
shot Crystal in the back of the head at close range while her boyfriend, Juan, was also shot
in this incident in his midsection. While Juan survived his gunshot wounds, Crystal was unfortunate
and did not survive hers. She died two days later at the hospital and her brother, Justin,
came out of this incident completely unharmed. Crystal's mother, Belinda, happened to be following
the car. Now there are a couple of incidents where I saw that she was one car ahead of them
or one car behind, but either way, she was literally in the same vicinity. They were in
two separate cars following one another. Belinda witnessed the entire ordeal. What happened as they
drove up the street, Belinda saw someone standing at a stop sign and up ahead, a white Ford Expedition
made a U-turn just past the intersection and began speeding back towards the two cars.
So, you know, you've got these two vehicles that are having a turf war and they are creating
havoc in the streets with two vehicles coming at one another. As one of the vehicles came to a stop
in front of them, the person standing at the stop sign moved within a foot of Crystal's car and fired
four shots into the vehicle. One at Crystal's head at point blank range while another one at Juan,
and they ended up hitting his midsection, like I said, plus two more shots and fortunately
Crystal's brother was not hit. Now Belinda told police that the shooter was a light-skinned
Hispanic man with a baby face. And I had mentioned earlier, a lot of the 5150 gang members were under
the age of 18. Police canvassed the area and no one seemed to see anything. I could imagine living
to Beth in that situation or in that area. You're not going to want to say too much as well, especially
if you know there is gang activity. That's true. Yeah, that's unfortunate because as I said, the
gang members that were interviewed did say that this is just an area where people live that simply
didn't have money. So it was a poor area and you just do the best you can in that situation.
At one point, Justin was interviewed and they ended up interrogating him for hours because
from my understanding, he was not part of the gang, but he may or may not have had questionable
activities going on as well. So he does have some things on his rap sheet that I'm sure that the
police probably followed up with. So they did interrogate him, but obviously cleared him of
no wrongdoing here. A sketch artist drew a composite while police showed Belinda several yearbook
photos because Belinda was an eyewitness to this whole situation of the shots being fired on her
daughter's car. And the police knew that there were some young people that could be suspect.
I mean, what they did is they just basically went to the high school and got all their yearbooks
and started flipping through them like a mugshot, right? I mean, the yearbook photos themselves were
not mugshots, but you could certainly use those to your advantage. Great idea to pull out that
yearbook. Oh, absolutely. So Belinda identified one of the photos in the yearbook and of course,
police ended up bringing that young lad in for questioning. But what happened is this kid that
Belinda identified as the shooter was interrogated, but he had a pretty solid alibi. I think he said
he was at home with his family or he had a lot of people around him. So what happened is because
Belinda falsely identified somebody in this situation, she actually lost credibility as an
eyewitness and it really kind of messed the case up a little bit. So they couldn't really trust.
I'm sure it was not her fault. She's a grieving mother and she's just trying to look through this
book and she's got hundreds of pictures. Well, she comes across somebody that she believes was
probably involved and through no fault of her own, she's going to identify this person. But
because she misidentified them, then she couldn't go into the courtroom and be a credible witness
at this point. That's too bad. Belinda was just a grieving mother and she wanted to help out the
case and now she lost her credibility as an eyewitness. Well, four minutes after the shooting,
Justin drove to a grocery store and got Crystal out of the car and called 911. Neither Crystal,
her brother or boyfriend were considered to be linked to any gang activity during this involvement.
So it's not entirely clear as to why the 5150 gang members targeted this vehicle. But as we go on in
this story, it's all going to come together. What happened later is that after the shooting,
Crystal's mother began her own investigation on MySpace. She created fake social media accounts
and began conversations with gang members. That's pretty bold. We talked about MySpace, Beth. I did
actually go look for your MySpace and I couldn't find it. So not giving up yet. Yeah, I remember
having MySpace. Did you bling it up? I did. I will continue on the search and boy, I will let you
know when I find it. Okay. It'd be interesting to read now. Wouldn't it? I know 2006 till 2022.
Okay. So MySpace still around? No, no, it's defunct and I don't know why because like I said,
I really enjoyed it. And back in the day, there was like 66 million users at the time. Wow. Well,
do you remember me telling you about Crystal's cousin, Jamie? Yes. Jamie was living with them
and she was 14 years old at the time. So she was talking to Crystal's brother, Nick, who said that
the members of the 5150 gang, they were all on MySpace because who wasn't 66 million people? Well,
Jamie offered to help set up two fake MySpace accounts while posing as Crystal. And just like
the average teenager, I'm thinking even today, she was pretty well-versed. I mean, you know how
teenagers are with their social media. Yes. They're the experts in the field right now. Well,
she was the average teenager and she decided to create her own social media sites and opened one
up under the name of Rebecca. She went online and found a random girl that was just a stock photo.
She took that photo and put it up as herself. Do you know what catfishing is? Yes. So she's really,
truly one of the first catfish. She built Rebecca's profile to cater to whatever she thought the gang
members would like. Now remember the 5150 gang out of Riverside, California, most of their members
are under the age of 18. She was probably in the same mindset as these guys. Yeah, she would be with
being the same age. I can't believe that there's actual gangs where they're under 15 years old.
That's true. That's when parents are at work. And then what do the kids do when they come home from
school? Like I said, Rebecca began to start posting things on what she thought that the 5150 gang
members would get into or so she could get into that social circle. And Rebecca, the catfish,
had around 150 friends. I do not even have that many friends on my Facebook now. Probably a good
idea. Yeah, I'm real selective on my Facebook. Well, Jamie continued to catfish 5150 members
while earning their trust. And she also created a second MySpace account using Crystal's photo
and named this account under the name of Angel as her profile name. It's a beautiful picture
of Crystal. If you've never seen what she looks like, I highly recommend that you go look up Crystal
Theobald. Now Belinda asked Jamie to write on Angel's profile, quote, I am going to be your
biggest life mistake and your deepest, darkest, best kept secret, unquote. Jamie toggled between
Rebecca's and Angel's profiles to monitor activities, communications with the 5150 gang
members. And she made it very specific that Rebecca was pretty much the naughty girl and Angel was,
well, the angel. So you've got one angel sitting on one shoulder and you've got a little devil on
the other one. So I'm imagining that Rebecca was quite flirtatious and just into all the party
scenes while Angel was just the sweet little thing that everybody liked. As the police investigation
continued, they began to focus on those two white Ford Expedition that were there the night that
Crystal was shot. And word on the street was that the 5150 gang members like to play cat and mouse
around the neighborhood. So what they would do is they would see each other in the streets and
basically just chase each other around in their vehicles. And I'm sure you've seen enough movies
to know what I mean. Yes. Well, Belinda's other son, Robbie, was witnessed as being part of this
game from time to time. And so this is where the police were thinking, Hmm, are any of Crystal's
relatives involved? Because Robbie was known to be in vehicles being chased. So police asked Belinda
about it. And as it turned out, Belinda withheld a little bit of information from the police because
she knew that her son, Robbie, was getting involved in these cat and mouse chases. And they did occur
well before the night that Crystal was shot. So I could see why the police may have started to
question if Crystal's brothers may have been involved. So did Belinda know that this was
gang related, the cat and mouse? I don't think so. And the only reason I say that is because
think about back when we were teenagers or young adults, I mean, how much did we really tell our
parents? You were the bad one. What? What do you mean? Sneaking into the house late at night in the
middle of the night. I don't remember that. I, Oh yeah. Mom was waiting in the bedroom. You had the
bedroom downstairs. I was 19 years old. Still under mom's roof with a curfew. At 19 years old. Yes.
Okay. That made me the bad one. I'll take it. All right. So I'm going to kind of back it up here
because the police are doing their investigations and they're looking at some videos. I had mentioned
them being at the grocery store and there was a video of the car coming up to the grocery store
and some of the people in the car, I believe it was Crystal's boyfriend that went in to call 911,
but backing up just a little bit, five minutes before the shooting, Robbie was sitting across
from his own house, talking to a friend when he too saw a Ford Expedition pull up behind them.
Remember Crystal left her driveway along with Belinda's car leaving the driveway. Robbie's
sitting across the street talking to a friend and Robbie saw the expedition zoom by and they were
playing cat and mouse. So from an eyewitness standpoint and all these different vantage points
with Belinda and Robbie, um, nothing that I could find. There was no feedback on any of this, anything
that was going on by any of the members that were in the same car as Crystal. It was just basically
Belinda and her other son, Robbie, that were witnessing these cars kind of flying around the
neighborhood. So police dug further and when they did, they discovered that several of Crystal's
family members did have records, including possession and distribution of meth. So now,
besides Belinda having a bad reputation from that false identification that I told you about earlier,
right? The police began to wonder if Crystal's shooting was connected to her family's drug
involvements and activities in the neighborhood. Yeah, because in an interview Crystal's mother
openly admitted that she was doing meth and she was a drug dealer. And of course, as the police
kept investigating, they too saw that she had been arrested for dealing drugs in the neighborhood.
Goodness. Yeah. Now getting back to my space, Jamie began talking to a guy named Jokes, whose
real name was William Satella and regularly went under Angel's profile. So Jokes had the hots for
Angel, but remember now this is actually Crystal's profile picture. So he keeps talking with who he
believes is named Angel, but Jamie had put Crystal's picture up as the profile picture.
And soon Jokes messages went from playing the tough guy in the neighborhood, self-professed
5150 member. He ended up moving more towards being a sweet guy who showed an interest in Angel
as the conversations progressed. So he's letting down his guard a little bit. Now one night Jokes
invited Angel to a party. And remember this is Jamie who's really talking to him. She's 14 years
old. So she's starting to freak out because one, she's a catfish, but two, she's being invited by
a gang member to a party and she does not know what to do. I don't know how I would handle that.
There is actually a show called The Circle. Have you seen that yet? No. They have different versions
in the United States, Brazil, and I feel like they have one for France too. Yeah. It's really
cool because you've got a bunch of people living in a hotel and they have never met each other.
The only way that they can communicate with each other is through a big screen TV where they're
texting. That sounds very interesting. I think there's only two seasons right now. I'll definitely
look it up. Oh yeah. I think you'll enjoy it. Well, Jamie's the catfish here and she did actually
egg jokes on a little bit. She agreed to come to the party and at the very last minute she said
she couldn't make it. Well, you know, they were trying to find out a lot of information. They
were doing their own investigations here just as a layman because you know, we've talked a lot
about these renegades that get on the internet and start doing their own homework. Angel said
she could not make it to the party because she did not have a ride, but jokes came to the rescue
and said that he would come pick her up. Now, Jamie and Belinda for some time before had been
trying to figure out how do I get these people to tell us what kind of car they're going to drive?
It's going to sound fishy if we just come out and say, what kind of car are you driving? Well,
this was her opening. Jamie agreed for jokes to come pick her up, but before doing so,
she was able to ask what kind of car he was driving and he typed back an expedition.
Bingo. You got it. So this is all they needed and Belinda called the investigators with this
information. It took the police a little bit by surprise because Belinda had not been telling them
what she was doing. Well, of course not. Why not? Because she wouldn't be allowed to do it.
That's very true. Of course, they're probably thinking her safety and they didn't want her to
get involved in this, but they turned out being pretty impressed with Belinda's strategy to get
online and catfish. And they began working that angle since they already knew in their investigation
that the 5150 gang members were driving a Ford expedition that night. And they were eventually
able to call jokes in for questioning. Well, of course he's going to deny any involvement,
but the police were able to wear him down. Again, remember he's young, he's impressionable,
he knows he's in trouble. So even though he's part of a gang, I'm sure he's still a little bit
intimidated. Of course, jokes made a statement that the night of the shooting at 8 36 PM,
just seven minutes before the shooting that he and several of his friends were cruising around the
neighborhood when another expedition cut them off. They're just driving around minding their own
business. And here comes that second expedition and they got cut off while they were driving.
Well, jokes stated that the other car just stopped in the middle of the intersection and started
shooting in his truck. Now remember at the beginning of this story where I had told you
that one of the expeditions sped up and did a U-turn and came back. I'm imagining this is about
the time that this is happening. And there was another person in the truck named Julio Heredia,
also known as Lil Huerto. He gets out of Joke's truck and nobody's really sure where he went.
But remember that Belinda had made the statement earlier that she saw somebody standing at a stop
sign. Very intriguing. So I'm imagining it was Lil Huerto that did that. And basically after that
incident, after he had gotten out of the truck, Joke's never saw him again after that night. In
fact, any activity that Lil Huerto was known for in the area just completely came to a halt. There
was no more activity on his part. He basically disappeared. Disappeared like forever? Yeah,
he just disappeared off the face of the earth. Nobody saw him again. He took off. That's
interesting. During his questioning Joke's admitted that it looked like the car that they had come
up to at the stop sign, its passenger window had shattered out. So when they're playing their cat
and mouse and he comes up on the vehicle sitting there at the stop sign, he had already seen that
the window was broken out. And we're going to assume that is after the incident with Crystal,
unfortunately. So in the meantime, Jamie was finding it pretty difficult at this point to
keep up the charade of playing angel on MySpace. Just because she was still grieving Crystal's loss,
she told Belinda she could not do this anymore. It was just too much on her. And she stepped back.
She's just like Belinda, I cannot do this. In my heart, it's killing me to continue on with this.
So I just can't do it anymore. So Belinda, being Belinda took over. What a trooper. Well,
guess what? She took a little bit of a different approach on this. She wasn't the, let's just say
she did not take a cautious approach. She began pressing the 5150 members really, really hard.
She would drive by their houses, take pictures of license plates. And now this one kind of threw me
for a loop because it's pretty random. She would drop voodoo dolls right in their yards. That's
funny. Yep. I mean, is she doing this in the daylight? Is she doing this after hours? And I
hope it's after hours because they would see her. Yeah. And how does she not get caught? Exactly.
Well, online Belinda befriends the 5150 rival gang members. Now, remember I told you there's
some turf wars going on. So she goes ahead. Like I said, she's taking a different approach. She
befriends the rival gang members and begins taunting them and told them pretty much they
were welcome to come for a visit and stated in one of her posts that I'm the one driving the
white Ford expedition. So she is trying to set up some of these gang members. And I don't know,
that's playing with fire. I don't, I think she's getting a little bit too close. Yeah. I totally
agree with that. Now, let me just tell you why she's doing all this. She's a grieving mother
and she was looking for vengeance for her daughter. And she had every intention of setting up every
5150 gang member that she could find. And she was going to take them out one by one. She was going
to kill them. That's, that's so wrong. I can understand her being passionate, but what does
do in the end? Yeah. Well, the detective who was on this case paid Belinda a visit to say that there
was an exceptionally large increase in white Ford expeditions in that area that had been shot up,
torched or vandalized. Because why? Remember she told the rival gang members that she was the one
in the white expedition. Detective Wheeler told Belinda, she just simply needed to cool it or
whatever it was that she was doing because she's just continuing on doing her thing and going about
her business in her own way and not keeping the police in the loop. So he's like, whatever it is
that you are doing, you better stop. Now he did tell her to shut down her MySpace. Do you think
she shut down her MySpace? Did you look her up? I did not look up her MySpace for this account. No,
but when detective Wheeler said, Belinda, I don't know what it is that you're doing, but you better
cool it. And I would suggest that you just go ahead and shut down your MySpace accounts.
Do you think she did it? Oh, heck no. Belinda took it as a personal victory and started organizing
a party under Angel's profile. She got an address off of the internet where it was a back road
somewhere in the area. And she set it up where she was able to see people driving in onto that road,
but they would not be able to see her. So basically she was planning to lay in wait for them and pick
them off one by one as they drove in. That's creepy and wrong. And what would the heck was
she thinking? I don't know if I could ever imagine that I would get away with that,
especially when you're dealing with gang members. But exactly. So she planned on shooting every
single one of them as they drove up, but her husband and sons knew what she was doing and
were able to talk her out of it. Instead, she did get back on the computer and got back in touch with
jokes. She's like a hornet at this point. She is ticked off. She is getting in touch with jokes
and she just wrote the words, do you love me? And of course jokes answered, yeah, you know, I do.
Well, Angel wrote back, say it jokes. I want to hear it. And he did. He answered her by saying
that he loved her and her response to him was then why did you kill me? My name is Crystal Theobald.
I'm the one you killed. Oh my, that's really terrifying. Yeah, for sure. What happened was
as soon as she typed that jokes dropped off the line and never responded to what anything more
that she typed into the instant message. Wow. Okay. So jokes did the same thing as Lil Huera
and dropped off the face of the earth. No one saw him again. So it's typical for gang members.
Once they feel that they are being threatened, let's just say in a legal way, I don't think that
they would back out so easily, especially if they're up against rival gang members, right?
I wonder where do they go? I will tell you in just a little while. Okay. Well, no one saw him again.
And I'm assuming it's because maybe they had a code that if they were feeling threatened by
possibly being closed in on by the police or legal matters, of course, they're going to just dip.
Right. Right. So Belinda turned her MySpace account over to detective Wheeler after she had
typed all that. And at this point in time, she just decided, okay, I'm done. I did what I was
supposed to do. I have done as much as I could in this situation. And she turned over all access of
angels profile to the police. Good choice. Absolutely. And then from that point on,
the 51 50 gang members who were in the car, the night of crystal shooting, they were all brought
in for questioning. And later in the investigation, another former 51 50 gang member said that there
was a lot of rivalry going on between gangs in the area. And a second white Ford expedition showed up
in the area to retaliate against some violence against one of their family members. So yeah,
they were doing the cat and mouse thing, but also just coming into somebody else's turf and
starting things, I guess. And this is pretty much how everything went down between the two SUVs,
like I described earlier. So I'm going to talk about three vantage points here. You've got
several gang members from the 51 50 gang in one SUV cruising the neighborhood. Then you've got
Crystal's brother, Robbie, who's witnessing the other white SUV come tearing through the neighborhood
and start playing cat and mouse with that first SUV. And the former 51 50 gang member explained
that the rival gang members were the ones to show up. So no one knew of the Theobald family members.
They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught in the crossfire of two gangs.
Now, Belinda admits that on the night that Crystal was shot, this is quite sad. She was high,
but the good coming from this is that she has not touched drugs since this incident. And this is
basically what Crystal had wanted the entire time. She just wanted her mom to quit. She knew her mom
had been in and out of jail over the years for drug use and dealing. And she had just said,
mom, please just stop. And she did, which it's sad that Crystal got in the way of that, but that is
what happened to Crystal. And so I'm going to just briefly go over the arrests. Now remember,
this incident happened with Crystal back on February 24th of 2006 on August 8th of 2007.
It took everybody this long to connect the dots and search warrants were issued and local
authorities went out to the neighborhoods on a gang sweep. The police planned a massive takedown
of 25 to 30 homes in that Riverside area. And they arrested a bunch of people for Crystal's
shooting. Now in Rosarito, Mexico, remember me talking about Julio Heredia, also known as
Lil'Huero? Well, you asked what happened to him. Lil'Huero was captured by Mexican police and a
total of eight defendants were arrested in Crystal's murder, but they were not all charged in her death.
Some received conspiracy charges and only spent a few years in prison. Now you had asked earlier
what happened to William Jokes Sotelo. He was the getaway car driver, by the way. He fled to Mexico
and evaded capture for a total of 11 years. And he was captured without incident only in 2008.
He was in prison for a total of four years. He was arrested for a total of two years. Now he was
arrested for a total of two years because of a police incident only in 2017 in Central Mexico
after Belinda received a tip on Facebook. You go Belinda, you're a bulldog. You're keeping up on
top of this. Good for you that you were turning in all of these little things that you are finding
out to the police. Good for you. Now Jokes was married with four children and working in Honest
and thing came along and Julio Heredia, he was the shooter, by the way, at the stop sign. In 2011,
he was sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder without the possibility of parole
along with other charges. He received an additional 138 years to life for other crimes unrelated to
Crystal's murder. And the district attorney initially wanted to seek the death penalty,
but Belinda asked that this would not take place because she believed that Heredia was
dealing with psychological issues. So there's her human spirit, you know?
Yes. God bless her. Well, Heredia is now serving time in Sacramento, California for his crimes
in Crystal's death. William Jokes Sotelo in January of 2020, he was sentenced to 22 years
for voluntary manslaughter and is now serving time at the Centenella State Prison in California.
He is eligible for parole in May of 2030 because he was considered a youth offender at the time of
Crystal's death. His first parole hearing will occur in only a couple years, Beth. He is up for
parole in May of 2025 because he already spent time in custody between 2016 and 2020 while he
was awaiting trial. So he's up for parole in just a couple more years. At Sotelo's sentencing,
Belinda made a 166 minute victim impact statement to the court and accused Jokes' family of aiding
and abetting him for the 10, 11 years that he had remained in Mexico working on the chili farm.
Wow. Yeah. So there you have it. That's the story of Crystal Theobald. And it's not known
for sure if the 5150 gang still exists today, but it is possible because two former members
were targeted in their homes in the Riverside area in recent years. I did find a link to the
Riverside Sheriff's Department that a list of recent gang activity is there and they have a
task force dedicated to violent crimes and gang activities in Riverside. Well, that's interesting.
You went on and found a link. Yeah. I always seem to find these little things at the very last
minute. I'll put those in my show notes because it is pretty neat to look. I mean, it's relevant.
This happened back in 2006, but they have this amazing task force that's relevant today. And I
will tell you, Belinda continues to track down criminals online because she's a renegade and even
has her own Facebook set up in Crystal's memory called Unsolved Murders in Riverside. She does
post old cases, but I will say that when I went to go look up this profile, because that's just what
I do when they say that they still have a social media post out there, I'm going to go look it up.
But I didn't see anything as far as activity from Belinda on her Facebook page since 2014. I'm sure
she has another site at this time, but I could not find much more on the dedication page to Crystal.
Anyway, that's the case of Crystal, Theobald, and anything to add. Thank you for sharing that with
us. Yeah. Deb, do you have a teachable moment for us this week? A teachable moment. Recently,
we got a flyer in our mailbox and it had everything to do of something similar to
a neighborhood watch. So whoever it is in our neighborhood set up a social media account that
is specific to my neighborhood. And I think this is a good idea. So we don't get out and talk to
our neighbors very much. I don't know if you do either, Beth. This is a great way to just
let everybody know what's happening, if they have anything suspicious in the neighborhood,
or that's something I'm thankful that I can at least start monitoring. And I would highly
recommend everybody starting a little social media neighborhood watch for your neighborhood.
Great idea. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for listening, everybody. I hope that you enjoyed
this and go check out our social media at Dying to be Found. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter,
and Facebook. And don't forget to go to our website at dyingtobefound.com. Otherwise,
we will talk to you soon. That's a wrap. And that's a wrap. We'll talk to everybody next week.
Bye.