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The Hunt with John Walsh

The Hunt with John Walsh: Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Aired 9-10p ET

Aired June 26, 2016 - 21:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[21:00:15] JOHN WALSH, CNN HOST: Back in 1981, I had the American dream, the beautiful wife, the house in the suburbs and a beautiful 6- year-old son. And one day I went to work, kissed my son good-bye and never saw him again.

In two weeks, I became the parent of a murdered child. And I'll always be the parent of a murdered child. I still have the heartache. I still have the rage. I waited years for justice. I know what it's like to be there waiting for some answers.

And over those years, I learned how to do one thing really well and that's how to catch these bastards and bring them back to justice. I've become a man hunter. I'm out there looking for bad guys.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

As children, we are exposed to all kinds of fantasies, fairy tales. I read stories to my beautiful granddaughter. We talk about prince charming and Cinderella, and all those wonderful fantasies. But in those fairy tales, there's the wolf and different monsters always lurking in the background.

And in this story, there is a guy who presents himself as the charming prince, but really, he is the real life monster. A horrible monster, Oscar Menjivar-Herrera.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

DEBRA, LUCY'S MOTHER, BELLEVUE, NE: We're a very old-fashioned family. None of the kids, boys or girls, are allowed to date until they were 16 and we had to meet them. That's just the way we are.

I noticed my 14-year-old daughter had been on my cell phone texting someone. And I questioned it because you just get that gut feeling that something isn't right. She told me she had been talking to him on the computer. I said pull him up. I want to see who this person is. And I said, honey, that is not no kid. That is a grown man. And he's got to be 30.

WALSH: There are so many ways for the sophisticated predator to get around the parent. And there are so many kids that think that they are bullet-proof.

SUZANNE KESSLER, OFFICER, BELLEVUE PD: I got called to assist some parents who wanted me to caution their daughter, almost a stranger- danger-type talk. I began speaking with her. She seemed very upset. So I didn't ask if we could talk in private, and she began shaking and she began crying. And then at that point, she told me what had actually happened.

LUCY, VICTIM: He messaged me on Facebook. He told me his name was Tony. He kept telling me I was gorgeous and that he wanted to meet me. He made me feel like I was special and important. He told me he was 18. I told him I was 14. He said that I didn't look that young. I thought it was a compliment. He kept telling me that we should meet up and just hang out. I kept saying no, but I wanted to meet him.

[21:05:00] WALSH: Every teenage kid on this planet is curious. What's the next step? What's it like to be a little bit older? And this guy is so cunning that he preyed upon that. He presents himself as not 32, but as 18. Worldly sophisticated, but not threatening. Cunning guy.

KESSLER: I ask her what she had thought was going to happen. And she thought that she was going to have her first boyfriend who would give her a kiss.

LUCY: It was about 3:00 in the morning. And I came down here and let the dog out because I knew if the dog barked, then my mom would catch me sneaking out. And I opened my front yard. And he started kissing me. He started to take me pants off and I told him no. I was scared.

KESSLER: Suddenly, we realized that there has been as bad of a sexual assault as there can be, short of her having been killed.

LUCY: When he was done, he stood up and said that he had his friend waiting in the car. He just left me there. It was scary. At first, I didn't want to tell anybody. I just went in the house and I was bleeding. Then I started to cry and then I just went to bed.

DEBRA: How could this happen? This is something I can't fix. He took her childhood away. He took it. I can't give it back. Him coming to my own house and getting her to meet him and do this to her in her own yard, I mean, the audacity of that man, that person really has to think he's something. And has to really think he's really sly and real sneaky.

KESSLER: We started doing everything possible to locate this person.

DEREK BEES, SERGEANT, BELLEVUE PD: We went to the victim's house. We took their computers as well as cell phones which she had used to contact the suspect. We just had a screen name of Tony Menjivar. We were able to obtain the phone number of the suspect. The subscriber was Oscar Menjivar-Herrera.

SHANE KNOPP, DEPUTY U.S. MARSHAL: He lived in South Omaha. He came from El Salvador. We think he came up on the rail system, kind of worked his way into the country illegally.

KESSLER: Strangely, he was using his own name on Facebook and his own actual picture. BEES: Looking at Oscar's Facebook postings with my 14-year-old victim, found out that there's something more to the story. Oscar indicated that he was bringing in a 12-year-old boy along with him as his friend.

KESSLER: That if the cops or her parents found out they were seeing each other, she would have to say she was seeing his friend.

BEES: This 12-year-old boy would be his scapegoat, basically.

KNOPP: And after we realized that, we talked amongst ourselves and said hey, we need to talk to this kid.

BEES: Oscar used this 12-year-old boy as kind of his pimp.

WALSH: He knows no boundaries to the way he gets at little girls.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:12:45] BEES: Oscar had driven to the victim's house with a 12- year-old boy in the car. We were able to find out that this 12-year- old boy was actually the neighbor of the suspect. We talked to his parents. When we found out Menjivar-Herrera, he would buy him clothes. I believe he was maybe supplying him alcohol or marijuana.

We talked to the 12-year-old boy. The 12-year-old was able to drive us to the victim's house. Had me park the car exactly where the car was had been parked that night. That really solidified the case for me. Left no doubt in my mind that Oscar was my guy.

The 12-year-old told me straight up that Oscar had had sex with our victim, had bragged about it once he came back to the car. This 12- year-old's demeanor was that this is a normal thing that just occurred, and wasn't really that big a deal to him. I don't think he understood that it was even wrong.

KNOPP: So the 12-year-old boy up front, we thought, might even have been just along for the ride. Wasn't involved with the assault. Was just kind of there. As time went on, it became apparent he had a significant role.

BEES: Oscar used this 12-year-old boy as kind of his pimp. To meet young girls, 12 to 14-year-old girls.

KNOPP: In all my years, I had never seen such a case where a grown man was using another child to help lure other victims in.

WALSH: Right away, police started to develop the pattern. They start looking at social media links that Oscar was using, and the manipulation by this 12-year-old boy reaching out to friends over the Internet. And they come up with not surprising, victim number two.

BEES: I didn't investigate the second victim's case because that occurred in a different jurisdiction.

SARAH SPIZZIRRI, DETECTIVE OMAHA PD: Our detective unit is housed out of this child advocacy center, it's called Project Harmony. We're not at a typical police department. It's just a much more comfortable environment for these children.

[21:15:07] I interviewed the second victim at Project Harmony. This young girl was 14 years old at the time. She had friended Tony or Oscar Menjivar-Herrera through Facebook. And it wasn't just a contact between this young girl and the suspect. There was actually the 12- year-old boy right in the middle of this contact.

WALSH: Most kids have a generic fear of adults. But what he does is he disarms those radar detectors by using a 12-year-old child to breach the gap, to go out and do his dirty work.

SPIZZIRRI: This 14-year-old girl, along with a 12-year-old boy and Oscar, they meet up and go to a house in Omaha. Oscar gets this girl inside of his bedroom, begins to have physical contact with her. She tries to fight him off. He tells her to be quiet. Not to scream and she wouldn't get hurt. Oscar proceeds to sexually assault her inside that bedroom.

During the assault, the 12-year-old was downstairs in the basement playing video games.

KNOPP: Menjivar-Herrera had given a message to this young boy to give to the police in Omaha. To be clean about it, it was like you're not going to find me.

We did research into the background of Menjivar-Herrera. We know he has an uncle who lives in a trailer park not too far from the Tampa Bay area. Our Florida task force partners started watching the trailer, and sure enough, Menjivar-Herrera pops his head out one day and we see him walk out of the trailer. And at that point, it was a pretty straightforward arrest.

KESSLER: We were absolutely ecstatic.

DEBRA: I was so excited when I heard they arrested him. I was so excited. They got him. They got him. They got him.

BEES: (INAUDIBLE) County sheriff's office handles our transports on extradition from other states, and they had used a private transport company.

WALSH: There are a lot of private companies who ferry prisoners. Who basically load up different prisoners from different agencies that caught them, put them in a secured van, and drop them off state to state, back to places that they're wanted.

KNOPP: In this case, they started in Florida with 10 or 11 prisoners, and they worked their way up the east coast, through the Midwest. They were actually in South Dakota.

Late one night, that secure van had had some kind of breakdown. So they worked out a deal to get a rental van, a non-secure rental van. At some point, they pulled over near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. During that brief time that they stopped at the gas station, one of the guards went inside to go to the bathroom, grab something to drink. The other guard was asleep. Menjivar-Herrera worked his way out of his handcuffs, out of his leg irons, we think maybe with like a paper clip, or something like that, and ran out the van.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Around 2:00 a.m., Saturday morning, Oscar Antonio Menjivar-Herrera fled from a prison transport van while it was fueling up at Spencer's Fuel Mart.

DEBRA: How can this man escape? Somebody explain this to me because I really want to understand it.

KESSLER: Like that can't happen.

WALSH: He was lucky that van broke down. He was lucky that they put him in a van that they should have never been transporting criminals in. And he was lucky he had whatever he had, a safety pin, to get out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Members of law enforcement from five agencies are involved in this search. Authorities believe the man is hunkered down in this corn field or moving slowly in the heat.

KNOPP: We started getting some tips from people who said, I think I met this guy. I think I gave him a glass of water and let him use my phone. We started saying, OK, where is he going to go next?

SPIZZIRRI: This 12-year-old boy, he knew what he was doing.

KRISTI, SOPHIE'S MOTHER, OMAHA, NE: I wanted him to be held accountable.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:24:00] KNOPP: They started a media blitz in the wake of all that to alert everybody in the area, hey, there's a guy on the run.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE REPORTER: Around 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning, Oscar Antonio Menjivar-Herrera fled from a prison transport van.

SOPHIE: One day, I was watching the news and they had said that this guy, he had escaped from the cops, and I recognized that it was him.

SPIZZIRRI: After Oscar Menjivar-Herrera escaped, we had a third victim come forward, this 12-year-old girl. She was friends with the 12-year-old boy that was this connection between these girls and our suspect.

SOPHIE: I met Oscar through one of my really close friends. He used to tell me to sneak out with him.

KRISTI: My daughter at first said no, but my daughter had a puppy love with this 12-year-old boy. He pretty much peer pressured her into sneaking out. [21:25:02] SOPHIE: He would meet me at my window and we would go to the alley. The first time I met Oscar, we were just sitting in the alley. We just sat there and we were talking. He told me that he was 15. He was like kind of cool. The second time we were hanging out, we started going to his house.

He tried to flirt with me. He would like grab on me. I wasn't comfortable with doing that.

SPIZZIRRI: She tried to tell him no. That she didn't want him to touch her. And the 12-year-old boy was insisting that it was OK, and trying to get this 12-year-old girl to allow Oscar to touch her.

SOPHIE: The guy told me to move closer. And I was getting scared. And I was yelling. And then the boy grabbed me. And then the other guy had like pulled down my pants and like, started to, like, yes.

Can we stop?

SPIZZIRRI: The 12-year-old girl is still trying to get him away from her, and so she's struggling with him. He actually yells out to the 12-year-old boy and asks him to help.

KRISTI: The boy held my daughter's hands down so the older man can sexually assault my daughter.

SOPHIE: I was screaming. And I was thinking in my head, why can't nobody hear me?

KRISTI: knowing that I wasn't there to protect her really bothers me. She trusted that 12-year-old boy. She loved him. That was her first love. And to have him participate in such an evil act, they took something from her that she will never get back.

SPIZZIRRI: This 12-year-old boy is street smart. He's worldly. He's been around, and he's been involved in other things. Although he was manipulated by Oscar, he knew what he was doing.

KRISTI: I think at 12 years old, you know right from wrong. Or at least you should have some idea of right from wrong. I wanted him to be held accountable for his actions and his participation.

WALSH: It's one thing to take drugs and alcohol and gifts and clothes, to be the procurer. It's another thing to hold a little girl down while a guy, 32 years old, is raping her while she's screaming and crying and begging for mercy. That's a kid who's gone off the rails.

SPIZZIRRI: I did arrest this 12-year-old boy for first-degree sexual assault, specifically with the sexual assault of the third victim.

Unfortunately, we just didn't have everything we needed to continue with the core process.

I absolutely think it's likely that Menjivar-Herrera will offend again. We could have more victims in Omaha that just never came forward.

WALSH: So hard to overcome the belief of victims that they somehow had something to do with it. That they have guilt about it. Absolutely not. There is no equal power base. There is one bad person in this scenario, and that's Oscar Menjivar-Herrera. He's a dirty bastard.

KNOPP: We got a call, and it was very short and sweet. It was he's here right now.

Let's go ahead and try to grab him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:33:48] KNOPP: We learned about the two new charges on Menjivar- Herrera, and sort of added to the investigation. He's done this multiple times, you know. And now we're dealing with someone who might try to relocate and do it again.

Some of the research we did on Menjivar-Herrera, he's going to come back to Omaha, possibly because there's people here that can get him out of the country.

We interviewed everybody we could that might have had contact with him. There's a gentleman named Teo. We talked to Teo on Saturday night. Talked to his sons. He said, hey, if I hear anything about him, if I see him, I will call you.

Not 24 hours later, we got a call from one of Teo's tons. It was pretty short and sweet. He's here right now.

It was very late at night on a Sunday. We alerted as many people as we could. Grab your gear, get in your car and get here right now. Let's go ahead and start moving in on the house and try to grab him. Things happened very quickly. We missed him.

[21:35:00] WALSH: He slipped through the cracks so many times. He is like the really evil bad guy that has nine lives. But one of these days, those nine lives are going to run out.

KNOPP: Later into 2012, in the fall, we learned he had re-entered El Salvador, had updated his identification card. It's very tough to say exactly where he might be right now. I tend to think he's in El Salvador. I also think given enough time, he might try to come back to the U.S. with a new identity and try to start a life over.

SOPHIE: My biggest fear is that he's going to come back and try to do it again.

WALSH: Can you imagine how terrified that girl is? Wouldn't you be terrified? Wouldn't you be afraid? I can't say enough about her courage.

DEBRA, LUCY'S MOTHER, BELLEVUE, NE: He's over there in El Salvador or wherever, living the life he wants to live. While my daughter was going through therapy, having to deal with that, all the medications, all that.

Life goes on for him, though. That's real fair, isn't it? He shouldn't have a right to have a life.

KRISTI, SOPHIE'S MOTHER, OMAHA, NE: My daughter sees a psychiatrist that specializes in people who were victims of a sexual assault. And she has to take medication. To help her sleep. And for anxiety. And for PTSD.

SOPHIE: It still haunts me, like I'm scared. I'm scared to go places. I'm scared to be in a car with a male. When I go to my bus stop, I'm always watching, making sure nobody's behind me. I feel like he could come any time, that he's still here and he's still watching me. And so I get really scared.

When I'm in the shower, I can't even keep my eyes shut for longer than a couple seconds.

WALSH: You have to be a really horrible person to get close to the top of my personal most wanted list, and Oscar is right up there at the top. He knows how to manipulate other children to help him exploit children. He's never going to stop until he gets caught.

Oscar Menjivar-Herrera has a small tattoo on his left bicep. He has frequently use social media such as Facebook under various aliases such as Tony Menjivar, Tony Montana and Montana Neque.

If you have seen Oscar Menjivar-Herrera or have any information as to his whereabouts, please call 1-866-THE-HUNT, or go online at CNN.com/TheHunt. We'll pass your tip on to the proper authorities and if requested, we will not reveal your name.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN GUNDERSON, RYAN'S COUSIN, GREENVILLE, NC: It replays in my head over and over again. I actually dialled his number and talked to him for three seconds. If that three seconds would have changed where he was standing, if it would have changed what he was doing, would I have been able to prevent this? I thought about that forever. Just, what if I dialled? What if I dialled?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:43:15] BRENDA ROOS, RYAN'S MOTHER, GREENVILLE, NC: I always thought that Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a very good place to raise a family.

GENEVIEVE POLLOK, RYAN'S SISTER, GRAND RAPIDS, MI: We were a typical family.

GUNDERSON: We did everything together. I've known him my whole life, since I can remember walking. I mean, I can remember Ryan.

G. POLLOK: He was a good brother. Happy all the time. Pulling jokes and trying to make people laugh and kind-hearted.

ROOS: He was not a perfect child. But he turned into a pretty decent human being.

DOUG POLLOK, RYAN'S FATHER, GRAND RAPIDS, MI: My son had attention deficit, and when you go through something like that, you get labeled. He was conscious of other people's feelings. He stuck up for the people that couldn't stand up for themselves.

G. POLLOK: He was engaged to be married. Had a great job. Great family. Everything ahead of him.

LES SMITH, DETECTIVE, GRAND RAPIDS PD: The crime here in Grand Rapids is kind of like an off shoot from Chicago and Detroit. We do have a little bit of gang activity.

ADAM VAN DEUREK, SPECIAL AGENT FBI: Most of our gang problem has to do with youth and our lower socioeconomic part of the city.

SMITH: Majority of kids getting into gangs are probably from single- parent homes. There is not a sense of community there.

[21:45:00] Juan Reyes and Eric Santiago were brothers. Eric also goes by Eric Reyes. Eric was 23 years old. Juan was 19 years old.

PATRICK HARIG, OFFICER, GRAND RAPIDS, MI: As far as we know, they came to Grand Rapids from L.A., and they lived with their mother, Maria.

Angel Delucas was a friend of theirs, and they formed a small gang and they named themselves the L.A. Boyz.

DEUREK: Juan and Eric, as they grew older, they became to have more and more troubled youths. More and more arrests.

HARIG: There was a felonious assault. There are some alcohol violations, some driving violation. After a while, Angel split from the L.A. Boyz. He doesn't want to be with them anymore. Didn't want to hang out with them for some reason.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: Things started escalating from that point.

WALSH: It's a scenario that's played out all over the world. It's that young disenfranchised, testosterone driven male that doesn't have a life and thinks he's going to take out his anger, frustration on the world by being a tough guy.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

911 OPERATOR: 911 emergency.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CALLER: We just had a drive by shooting at my gas station.

911 OPERATOR: Is everybody OK there? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CALLER: Yes.

911 OPERATOR: Yes? Did it hit the window?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE CALLER: Yes. It came right by the window by my cash register.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: Angel, he had been at a party with his girlfriend and the girlfriend's brother. They had left to go purchase some more alcohol.

HARIG: He was in the store. He came out and noticed the Cadillac, which is Eric Reyes' car. From the Cadillac, somebody said we're going to get you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: As Angel Delucas passed in his red minivan, he observed a gold-colored Cadillac turn around and start to follow him.

HARIG: He proceeded into the BB gas station from the north drive. Four shots were fired from there. He went around the pumps and came next to the building with the Cadillac directly in back of him.

WALSH: He tried to shoot a guy while he's at a gas station in front of 50 witnesses is the stupidest thing, even the dumbest gangs don't do that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: Angel drove around the pumps. The Cadillac then proceeds out to Clyde Park. Angel drives all the way around the BB gas station. Turns east on Cutler.

SMITH: The brothers had lost Mr. Delucas for a second, and then they ended up going down on Cutler to try to find him. They end up seeing a group of people that appear at this house at 751 Cutler.

HARIG: There was a party going on there. 20-year-olds, almost the same age as what the Reyes brothers were. The people at the party had no association whatsoever with Juan or Eric.

D. POLLOK: Ryan was not even supposed to go to that party. It wasn't part of the plan.

GUNDERSON: Ryan went to the party that night because his best friend broke up with his girlfriend, and Ryan wanted to make sure that he was OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: The brothers, they stopped in front of this party. Asked where did the red van go. Nobody knew what it was about.

The owner of the house didn't know what was going on. And he came out and told the brothers to turn the music down because there were blaring music.

Then the verbal exchange escalated.

ROOS: Ryan leaned around his buddy to see what was going on. Mr. Inquisitive Ryan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: Juan Reyes steps out, points a Tech-9 type weapon.

ROOS: And one of the bullets went through the sweatshirt of the guy that he was leaning on, and into Ryan.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

911 OPERATOR: 911.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 751 Cutler. Please come quick.

911 OPERATOR: 9OK, stay on the line.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's on the ground, dying.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GUNDERSON: It breaks you. It totally breaks you.

D. POLLOK: But he still had color, you know. That was still my son laying there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[21:53:53] D. POLLACK: At about 2:00 in the morning, I got a call from the hospital. They wanted to know if Ryan Pollack was my son. And they asked me to come down to the hospital. And they let me go in. And he was still on the gurney. But he still had color, you know? That was still my son laying there.

GUNDERSON: My Uncle Doug, he said, I'm sorry, I can't fix this one. Give him a hug while he's still warm. And I lost it. Just, it breaks you. It totally breaks you.

ROOS: And he said, he's dead. And I remember thinking, no, he's not. I, I couldn't, I couldn't even get my arms around that.

[21:55:10] G. POLLOK: It was such a shock to hear somebody was shot. We don't live in a city where that happens. You know, we live in Grand Rapids.

Gang-related? That's absurd. I've never seen that in all of my years here.

ROOS: Why did they shoot Ryan? Ryan had nothing to do with gangs. He would have no use for gangs.

WALSH: The only thing he ever did wrong in his life was go to a party and stand next to his friend so that a couple of wannabe gang bangers could shoot him down in cold blood. And it just goes to show you that violence can affect anybody in America at anytime. Somebody can step up to the plate with an automatic weapon and take your life in two seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE POLICE OFFICER: Juan and Eric were identified as the shooters in this case by eyewitness statements and also by the intended victim of the shooting, Angel Delucas.

HARIG: The Cadillac was found 50 minutes after the incident started.

SMITH: The car had already been abandoned. The engine was hot. It was smoking. You could tell that it had been revved up and driven fast.

They were able to tie that vehicle to the house that the brothers lived in with their mother. Inside the house, we'd found items that appeared as if they'd left in the middle of the night. Went to the close, put their arms around a rack, and gathered clothes and left.

VAN DEUREN: It suggests they're frantic, desperate, know that there are severe repercussions to the crime they committed. We received a lot of silent observer tips that suggested that both of the brothers fled down to Guadalajara Mexico where we believe they have an extensive family network.

Guadalajara was considered to be right in the middle of the drug cartel, so it's particularly difficult to investigate even for the Mexican authorities in that area, because it's such a high-crime area.

D. POLLAK: Having been in the military, you know what can happen. You know that your child could be killed. But I was never prepared for the thought that my son could just be murdered for no reason. None.

ROOS: For me personally, they took way part of me. But for society as a whole, they took away a good influence.

G. POLLAK: It tore our family apart. It's like having a four-legged table with one leg cut off.

WALSH: I have walked in the shoes of Ryan's Family. You ask till the day you die, why my son? There is no answer. It's the stupidity and violence that permeates our society. And I don't know why as a country we accept this culture and let it continue.

GUNDERSON: When he first died, I turned to drinking, and I drank as much as possible, every single day. I dreamed of Ryan all the time. But I had one dream in particular where him and I were driving in a car. He said hey, and I was like, you're here. And I said you know you're dead, right? And he said, I know. And I said, man, I miss you, with everything I got. And he said, he said I'm OK. I miss you too. Bye.

I really believe, I believe that was him in my dream, telling me he was OK. And that's what got me straight. That's what straightened me back out to know that he was OK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)