When 34-year-old Ana Maria Garcia went missing last month, the Ontario woman's family immediately suspected her boyfriend was somehow involved, authorities said.
There was a trail of blood leading from the couple's bedroom to the living room and, like Garcia, Mario Reyes was nowhere to be found.
"We knew right away," said Garcia's brother, Lorenzo Garcia. "Because he never left her alone for a moment. He was very possessive."
Investigators began to monitor credit and debit cards belonging to the couple, and pieced together a trail of evidence that seemed to indicate that Reyes, 35, had killed Garcia and fled to Mexico to avoid prosecution, authorities said.
In the past, that often would mean months or even years before a suspect was apprehended. But with increasing cooperation between U.S. authorities and their counterparts in Mexico, hiding out south of the border isn't as easy as it used to be -- as Reyes was about to find out.
Garcia, the single mother of a 9-year-old daughter and a maintenance supervisor at UC Riverside, was reported missing Oct. 7. Her parents called Ontario police after discovering the bloody scene in the East Yale Avenue home she shared with Reyes, an unemployed construction worker who family members said Garcia was planning to leave.
Unable to locate Garcia or Reyes, detectives contacted bank officials and asked for a list of recent transactions on credit and debit cards belonging to both, said Det. Byron Lee, one of the investigators on the case.
Investigators determined that someone had been using Garcia's debit card at ATMs and a Ralphs supermarket in the Inglewood area, Lee said.
Detectives went to the locations where the card had been used and seized surveillance video that allegedly showed Reyes making the transactions, Lee said.
In at least one of the videos that captured footage of Reyes' vehicle, there was "what appeared to be a body wrapped in a blanket," the detective said. When investigators followed up on the transaction at Ralphs, they learned that Reyes had bought two dozen roses.
Believing that Reyes may have dumped the body, detectives searched nearby Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area as well as trash bins in the area, but found nothing.
Meanwhile, other investigators were following up on ATM transactions in the San Diego area. Those led to the discovery of the borrowed pickup truck Garcia was driving before she went missing. It was parked in a lot at the San Ysidro border crossing, and detectives found a large amount of blood in the vehicle, Lee said.
