A Mother's Love- Episode 1 in the Gabriel Fernandez Case

[Music] hello and welcome everyone to the true crime librarian i am your librarian and host ashley i want to thank you all for joining me today as we tackle one of the fastest rising to fame cases that we've seen in some time today i will introduce to you or for some this is merely your journey in the gabriel fernandez case how this flew under the radar for some time is beyond me it's one of those cases where the details stick with you long after you put it down and it will forever change the way you

look at child abuse in the future with so many details that are involved in this case today's episode will be one in a multi-part look at the brutal torture and murder of a young eight-year-old boy who wanted nothing more than a mother's love but instead fell victim to the evil torture that she and her boyfriend created [Music] warning this episode contains graphic depictions of child abuse torture and strong language that some may find disturbing if you feel this may be too much for you please skip this podcast or maybe have someone listen with you or

for you i don't i've when i sit down and i look at this case and i'm looking like where do i need to start with this i can't seem to pick one place to begin i mean i'm pulled in research from one end of the spectrum to the other i look at everything from the details that happen in the beginning that should have been flags and to the details that happened in the end that shouldn't have happened in the end um let me introduce you to gabriel fernandez he was born february 20th 2005 to his

mother pearl fernandez um pearl would later be reported that she did not want gabriel in the beginning of this pregnancy but her great uncle or her uncle michael karanza and his partner david martinez talked with pearl and asked her to go ahead and have gabriel that they would take him and that they would raise him and that she would not have to be a part of his life if she chose not to be um later we find out that her mother her parents robert and sandra they had custody of gabriel even though the first few

years of life gabriel lived with michael and david and then that home he knew love he he was raised to love his you know michael and david uh they loved him to me he it was a happy life this was the best that he could be a few years into his life around the age of three robert and sandra decided that they would go ahead and have gabriel move home with them there are various reasons why they chose this that are out there i'm not gonna give you one reason or the other because nothing i

have found has really stood out and been like yes that's it um and i don't think it's fair to michael or david um to try and portray any of those rumors is what i'm going to call them because like i said i can't confirm them so i have to go with their them being rumors of why sandra and robert decided to have gabriel come stay and live with them so around the age of three robert and sandra moved gabriel back into their home where they were the ones that were awarded with custody now here's the

getcha here's the thing here's the thing that just blew me away um at any time pearl never completed the termination of her rights as a parent to gabriel she never legally gave him up for adoption she never the judges never fully awarded her parents soul custody meaning that you know pearl was unable to come in and to take her rights back as mother it was never completed and for whatever reason um that left the custody kind of up in the air really throwing things for gabriel's early life around um october 2012 pearl fernandez and that

hurt at this time her boyfriend is sorry gary um they move in with robert and sandra and and pearl has custody of one of gabriel's older brother and his older sister um i guess that that would be one because i found another child so one of his older brothers and one of his older sisters they moved in with robert and sandra to help get up get them on their feet so they could get out and get their own place and it's it's hard to say when this happened but at some point pearl and asario find

a place for them to live with the other two children and and during that time they decide if she takes back custody of gabriel then they can get more in their welfare assistance that they're getting and so sometime in october it is reported by pearl's parents that they came to pick gabriel up to take him to a barbecue and there's a picture of isario and pearl at a barbecue that isro's family was having and i can't confirm nor deny if that's the barbecue that they all went to but at whatever case they went to a

barbecue they took gabriel and that would be the last time that gabriel would ever live with his grandparents um it was at that time that pearl went ahead and took back custody of gabriel he uh they she decided i i'm going to raise the kids and of course the the grandparents they called the authorities and they said that pearl had kidnapped gabriel only to learn that in the papers because paperwork never fully went through pearl could could resume her custodial rights at any time and so this this is going to be the beginning of a

very long eight months for this young boy um and it it only gets worse from here i i wish i could say that there was some good times early on but there isn't as we don't know the date that the barbecue occurred um so we're just going to assume sometime in the month of october our very first report of child abuse comes october 30th from jennifer garcia she's gabriel's teacher and what led to her go ahead and filing a report with dcfs is gabriel came to her and asked her he said is it normal for

your mom to spank you with the metal end of the belt and i you know there's different claims about what her response was and honestly i'm not going to i'm not going to go there i'm not going to put that out there if you want to look into it feel free please do it's your knowledge but i don't feel that any response was needed i mean i hearing just that just that part of it makes my face just twist and confusion because i'm like how could anybody think that's normal but gabriel asked he asked if

it was normal he also asked if it was normal to bleed after being spanked with the metal end of the belt um and it was at that time that that miss garcia decided that she was going to make her file with dcfs the next day garcia was contacted from by stephanie rodriguez she is the dcf worker that was assigned to her case or assigned to this case and the investigation into the allegation that gabriel is being abused at home this visit would be one of the only times that social workers would follow their protocol and

document on what's called a body chart and what they what it is is just you would document hey there's there's a cut on his hand or there's a bruise on his leg or whatever this is required this is required with every home visit from a dcf work dcfs worker you're supposed to go in you're supposed to talk to the parent you're supposed to talk to the child you're supposed to report what you see uh another part that was really overlooked and missed is this i mean because this bruce was documented it was a is a

bruise on the inside of his left thigh i believe it was um and maybe a little abrasion i'm not clear on what all that injury was entailed it wasn't fully filled out so this is the only time but as we go through this timeline here you're going to see if they had been keeping up with a body chart there's no way no way that dcfs wouldn't have had grounds to remove him from the home in november of 2012 garcia noticed gabriel with several new injuries including chunks of missing hair bloody scabs on his head gabriel

would tell garcia that his mother was hitting him and punching him in the face um i can't imagine having my hair ripped from my scalp and then and then going into public looking like this i don't know what other people do but to me as a parent even if my child had fallen and caused an injury similar to this i would be terrified of people thinking i was capable of doing that um and and for her to willingly send gabriel to school looking like this show just how untouchable pearl felt she didn't think that anybody

would come in and do anything they couldn't stop her this was her home her child um and it just gets worse there is a parent-teacher conference between garcia and pearl where garcia begins to tell her how gabriel is doing in the class only to be cut off and be told i do not hit my children i make them exercise later we're gonna learn just what that exercise entails um i encourage you to go look on the internet and and if you haven't if you haven't seen her and look at pearl fernandez the intimidation that is

just simply there as she stands there with a blank expression could could only mean that you know everybody was intimidated by her and this includes jennifer she was she was noted in saying that the first time that they met she met gay uh pearl and asario at the meet the teacher event at their school she was she didn't want to get on their bad side i mean it was it was readily apparent they said they're um emotionless they had no questions there was no concern with what or how gabriel would be doing in the new

school year in january of 2013 further reports were being made to dcfs by garcia as she was noticing more and more injuries on one occasion gabriel came to school with a swollen face covered in little round bruises when asked about them garcia asked gabriel gabriel told her that he fell later he would admit to mrs garcia that his mother pearl had shot him in the face with a bb gun as he exercised and this goes back to when she told uh when pearl told garcia i don't hit my kids they i make them exercise i

don't know what kind of exercises that she's done but i don't think i've ever had somebody just stand and peg me with a bb gun or a pellet gun or even a nerf dart gun to try and elect me to con you know continue said exercises this seems beyond humane at this point and oh gosh i can't imagine what that would feel like to have that being said to me it's almost unreal there would be two other occasions where gabriel asked if she could quote call that lady this would later prove unhelpful as each time

that lady referencing to stephanie would come to gabriel's home he would come to school with more injuries with each call by garcia the social worker would begin to distance herself by not returning the phone calls garcia then turns to services offered by the school she's going to try and help gabriel in any way she can um i though the injuries are just getting worse as he comes to school he's starting to come to school in girl's clothing and if he's caught changing into his own clothing that means further abuse when he gets home by his

mother he's coming to school with new marks on him and they're not marks that are easily hidden i mean they're right there on his face they're on his arms they're on his legs she doesn't even try to hide the abuse so she turned garcia turns to the school to see what they can do and she was told by administration there were no services we could offer at this time however they did give her a pamphlet to send home with gabriel but garcia feared that if she sent that home to pearl it would only cause more

abuse to gabriel in the end so she threw it in the trash and i can't blame her i would too i mean if that you think that's gonna help what's going on here i mean i can imagine what she is telling these administrations and telling them on you know this is what this child looks like this is what he is telling me that is going on at home and and then he simply sit back and say there's nothing we can do this is beyond what we can do garcia would later admit darren asario's trial that

she had dcfs on speeds now that's how many times this woman had picked up the phone and called that hotline and was like hey i have a student in my class that i mean it is just readily apparent he is being abused it's just beyond me how how could you ignore the cries for help from her and you know teachers are underpaid and they're you know they're pushed to their max they're they're using their own money to buy school supplies and to furnish their classrooms they already have a lot on their plate and then to

turn around and say well no you can't really help here this is this beyond your scope our children when we send them to school these children become these teachers other children you know what i mean like they they feel when your kids feel sad and they're excited when your kids get you know excited about learning or excited that they did well and something your teachers for your children they they feel those emotions with your child and so for her to watch gabriel just deteriorate in front of her had to be just the hardest and most

emotionally stressful time in her life and i mean we're not even to the worst we're not even there um in april the last report by garcia would be filed this time uh the findings would be documented by dcfs that quote no safety threats at this time based on currently available information there are no children likely to be in immediate or serious harm end quote i don't know what home they were looking into but i don't think it was pearl's home i i mean you read you read that gabriel you know he didn't have any toys

the only clothes that were in his closet were two dresses you could see that gabriel just was not a part of this home i mean the other children there was clothes and there was toys and they had friends and they lived to be seemingly normal i mean yeah they were watching what was going on to gabriel at home but if they spoke out would it would the abuse turn to them i could only imagine that fear of you know do i say something it what if i say something and she shoots me in the face

with a bb gun it didn't look like it felt good for gabriel i sure as heck don't want to go through it and i can't blame them because they're children us adults are supposed to be there we're supposed to we're supposed to take care of them and i mean i hear this a lot in podcasts that i've seen about gabriel fernandez and a lot of documentaries and it's see something say something but we live in a generation where we see something we tend to you know avert our eyes and look away but you know i

would like to think many of you listening and myself included would see gabriel's condition and want to do something but then you have to look at pearl and just the intimidation that rolled off of her i think that would cause more people to shy away including her own children it just you know it's hard to say what you would do in a situation like this it's hard to go about or you know materialize this is what i would do this i mean there's no doubt in my mind this is what i had done and you

know knowing what i know now if i had ran across them there was no way gabriel would ever go home with them again they would they would have to literally kill me or put me in jail and at that point i would expect my husband and my family to stand up for what i could no longer stand up for there's no way but you know in a different time not knowing what i know because hindsight's always 20 20. you can't guarantee that you can't say this is what i do because you don't know you just

don't and i wish we felt more comfortable when you see a mother yank a child uh in the store to be like i hey wait a minute you know you're you're an adult and you know this is a child you outweigh him or her significantly you're taller you're bigger built you have better muscles they're frail they're still growing i mean most children when they suffer a break it's called a green fracture and the reason it's called that is because imagine taking a tree limb off a very healthy living tree and you try to break it

it doesn't snap in half it splinters and and just kind of lifts in different areas kids bones work the same way because they are so malleable or flexible they don't break in a snap like an adult's bones would they they splinter and that makes it very hard to to get them to heal correctly in the long run because you know you just don't think about these things so the injuries that you could cause just by just by grabbing the arm and pulling are more than you could ever fathom you would in an adult april 26

2013 arturo martinez a security guard at the dpss also known as the department of public social services gaines office in palmdale california he would recognize well i guess not recognize but he would see pearl come in and she had these kids with her and gabriel is one of them and arturo i mean his interview is just interesting to watch um you know everybody knows that netflix has a docu-series out called the trials of gabriel fernandez and if you've been following this case at all you've probably turned to this docu-series and watched it at least once

or you're at least working on it arturo is interviewed during this podca during this docu-series and you know you just to watch him you're like i wish i could be as strong as he was because he didn't know pearl he didn't know um a gary he didn't know gabriel he didn't know this family this was a he was working his job like he did every other day of the week and then comes this lady who's intimidating with her children and then he gets to looking at the little kid the youngest i would say and he

sees just the abuse the amount this is not him playing roughly with his brothers this isn't he got beat up by some big kids in the neighborhood this is a this is something somebody is doing to him that is a lot bigger than him he says that when pearl showed up to file public assistance paperwork with gabriel and two other boys and a girl arturo noticed the back left side of gabriel's head and in this position there were 17 to 23 cigarette burns purple greenish bruises surrounded his eyes when gabriel walked past arturo's desk that

is when gabriel would kind of rub his wrist with the other hand and kind of be like hey look at this look look at what's going on and he would see literature marks he could this kid was being tied up and and he goes on to quote say on a scale of one to ten he was a twenty quote his body was was talking yelling he didn't really have to say anything it was all over his body screaming for help end quote arturo with the help of the receptionist there was a receptionist that wasn't typically

the receptionist in the in the lobby during that time she was filling in this is a person who had worked that um job title before but just filling in because they had someone you know given a day off which we all do we all need it um i look forward to mine i know most of you look forward to yours as well we it just happens so you know after gabriel and pearl they walk out of the lobby and go into their interview or what i'm assuming is the interview and arturo and this lady they

get to talking and she's like man you know that kid looks looks dirty and arturo looks at her kind of like are you are you crazy and he's like no this kid's beat up this kid's being abused and she didn't want to admit what she thought she saw um she would later go to her supervisor on how to handle this situation with gabriel coming in looking like this and they uh basically told her we're not gonna pay you overtime so don't touch it we're not gonna do anything and when you when you work in something

like that you work with the hipaa um laws you're not allowed to give away somebody's personal information that's against the law i mean hipaa states that very plainly you know so arturo wanted to do something that as a security guard you're just sitting there you don't have access to these people's person personal information but she did and um with her help arturo got got their home address and he called 9-1-1 the dispatcher would tell him later that this is not an emergency and he needed to call the non-emergent line you know most of us probably

would have been like i tried hopefully not when you see somebody this badly abused but most of us would have been like i tried uh he he wasn't satisfied with that so he found the non-emergent lumber and he called and he told the la county sheriff's office what he saw on gabriel he um he reported you know what this kid looked like when he came in through the lobby and the response by the dispatcher so this report just blows me away um and i don't know they're trained to not show emotion i get that i

get that but this is just something if somebody would have called me in my mind this would not have been my response quote we'll see what we can do end quote that just that just blows me away sometime in the beginning of may gabriel would attend his last day at school without even knowing school officials would send the la county sheriff's office out to the address that they had on file only to find out that was no longer their address garcia would finally learn through administration that they got a hold of pearl and pearl told

them that gabriel would not be coming back to school that he had moved with his grandparents to texas once this information was relayed to garcia she she almost had relief he was out of that home he was away from that situation things would get better for him only to find out within a week gabriel fernandez would be dead [Music] all right i'm going to go ahead and give out another warning here um before we get started on the second half of the podcast what is described next may be hard for some to hear there will

be graphic detail as to the abuse gabriel has suffered from the last eight months in his mother's care if you feel as though any of this may be too graphic please stop here and you can pick up next week with the rest of the story and i will go ahead and do a pre-warning for next week this whole case um involves graphic details of abuse and and it's definitely hard to hear when i first started researching this case i got to this point and i had to stop i had to i had to walk away

from it um it was too much and there's not many cases out there that i've researched that has touched me in the way that gabriel's case has and i don't typically get overly emotional when looking at the forensics but this is the exception [Music] may 22nd 2013 is the night of the fatal beating it is reported that when osario aguerry gets home from work that night pearl tells him that gabriel had asked her quote why do you stay with him if he hurts you end quote this statement enrages osario leading up to the beating pearl's

daughter was in pearl in a in osario's bedroom when they brought gabriel in and she testifies that they hit punched kicked and ridiculed the boy it is stated in in various other places that pearl and asario believed that gabriel was gay now most eight-year-old boys are very in touch with their emotional side if they they get sad they cry if they're happy they're giddy excitement you i mean think of a typical eight-year-old boy to me that doesn't necessarily mean that he's gay and even if he was gay or he was leaning towards that way of

life it's irrelevant um it doesn't matter it should not have mattered um but for pearl and osario it was a reason and to them they had to have an excuse for why they were doing what they were doing to um gabriel uh pearl's daughter testifies that agiri knocks the wind out of gabriel causing him to collapse to the floor gabriel never gets back up at this point it gets quiet and pearl comes out of the bedroom and she's scared and a little frantic telling the older brother of gabriel to make up a story because she

was going to call the paramedics um osorio picks gabriel up and puts him in the shower it is reported by the children that he throws gabriel into the shower and i don't think that really means or makes a difference other than it just causes more injuries again they yell at him to wake up or to get up and when he doesn't this point pearl calls 9-1-1 and tells them that her son is not breathing um now i've listened to this 9-1-1 call several times and to me it sounds like pearl hangs up after she tells

the dispatcher that her son isn't breathing and they need to send paramedics it sounds as if the call goes dead now whether the call goes dead or she's simply transferring the phone to oscario either way we get a recording of osario on the phone talking to dispatchers and he is telling them that his son was playing with his other son and gabriel fell and hid his head on the cabinet and now he's not breathing so the dispatcher decides to or follows protocol basically and it instructs um asario how to perform cpr now if you have

ever performed cpr or seen somebody perform cpr this takes a lot of energy this is an exhausting thing to do i mean um you're having to hold a steady beat of compressions that would mimic the beat of the heart and if the patient isn't breathing you have to give two breaths now the american heart association doesn't necessarily say that those two breaths make a difference however those two breaths adds oxygen into the blood and as you compress that blood is flowing out to other parts of the body which will go and in hopes will go

to the brain and prevent any deficits that could have happened due to lack of oxygen again i've i've listened to this 9-1-1 tape and to me it does not sound like he is a person who is actively giving cpr now he could be over there just kind of pushing down here and there it i don't know but first responders get there and it's not documented whether or not that uh osario is giving cpr to gabriel and at this point i guess it really doesn't matter now we have trained professionals in the home they um get

us they ask cesario if he can pick gabriel up and bring him into the living room because their hands are full they have all their gear with them and when they go into a home that's seeking medical attention they never know what they're gonna come into they never know what they're gonna need so they grab the major necessities and take it with them that way it's readily available right there if they need it and the first responders start resuscitating gabriel and they get him to a point where they feel comfortable transporting him in the ambulance

to the hospital and as they take him down the stairs and get him in the back of the ambulance pearl and asario are not displaying typical behaviors that a parent would display when their child is unconscious and not breathing and coding their their concern isn't if gabriel is okay their concerns are other things pearl makes it very known that she does not want her cats left in the house locked in a cage and asario made sure to point out to the first responders that quote gabriel is gay and he is a liar he lies about

everything end quote and and that's you know i don't know what his thinking was right there i don't know gabriel's not awake he's not responsive there is if there's a heartbeat it's very faint and there it's highly concerned this is an emergency this is an emergency like a no other emergency and in his mind which i don't want to be in because that is an evil dark corner that i don't want to be a part of and psychology you you tend to dive into the mind of somebody else but this is the mind that i

would rather be far away from anyhow he he he decides that information is pertinent at that point the first responders they they kind of noted in the back of their head but they i mean their attention is focused elsewhere so they transport gabriel from his home in palmdale california and they call over to the er and er nurse christine estes is the one that is working the ambulance bay and in part of her duties as being the ambulance bay nurse is to chart what other staff members are performing on patients because we want our doctors

right there doing everything they can in that moment not do something chart it do something else try it but it's gotten to the point where we have to have that paper troll we have to go back and be like okay so these meds were given this is the protocol they followed etc so they have to have somebody doing it and then and unfortunately for christine this night would forever haunt her paramedics radio in on the way to the er stating that they have an unresponsive child coming in and that this is a code three for

this hospital cold three from the paramedics means the highest level of an emergency the hospital then shifts to their protocol and on standby at the hospital waiting for the paramedics our er doctors the nurses surgeons we have a respiratory therapist standing by just in case there needs to be intubation an or is ready and on standby if there is an emergency where surgery is required they've notified the blood bank in the lab and let them know that they have a patient that is priority that way we have blood on we have some blood ready to

go if the labs are performed we need those back as soon as possible they also call over to imaging and let them know that you're going to need a ct scan possibly with mri ct is faster no matter how you look at that it's just a faster way of seeing what's going on that doesn't rule out that mris aren't good but ct is going to give us a quicker glance at what's going on in the inside paramedics were able to get gabriel's pulses back and route to the hospital and once treatment was transferred from the

first responders over to the er staff gabriel go he codes again at this point er staff pushes cardiac meds and they also notice that his core body temperature is low so they begin warming measures his hemoglobin shows to be low and blood is hung and probably rapidly transfused once he's stable enough they get him up to ct for scans and unfortunately co he codes again staff again stabilize gabriel and they begin calling out the injuries they're noting on his body to christine and in this time everything is going by so fast that they don't really

have a time a chance to sit still and actually look at the picture in this hole but christine is as she's documenting what they're calling out i mean she's seeing these injuries and she can't believe what they're saying they're finding on this child i mean this is this is an eight-year-old little boy there's not a lot of skin surface there but the injuries keep coming and coming and coming we'll start at the head and work our way down there are areas of traumatic alopecia meaning chunks of his hair were ripped from the scalp there's a

swollen area on the top of his head there's also a depressed skull fracture um with crepitus crepitus is kind of like a rice crispy type feeling very crunchy uh there's a subglial hematoma where the blood has accumulated between the scalp and the skull and usually we see this in a baby skull and sometimes in a children's skull and the reason this is is because their bones are still very they can move they can shift they have give like we're talking about earlier with the green fracture there's they're malleable and so they can once the skull

bends enough blood can get in between those two surfaces now this is this is not common um and you have to think back to like when you take your kids to the doctor and they are checking the soft spots they're they're looking to see how the skull is fusing together because by the time you're adult all those different sections of your skull have fused together and that's as big as your head is ever going to be but as you're growing those things need to be able to expand to make room they also find a large

scab from an abrasion on the top of his head there's an irregular abrasion on his upper forehead an abrasion on the right lateral cheekbone with multiple linear marks there's an abrasion to the bridge of his nose he has a swelling left eye with bruising there's abrasion and dead skin on the left cheekbone closer to that eye area there's diffused bruising on the entire left side of his face there's an abrasion near his mouth which they believe is a cigarette burn there are two partially healed bb gun wounds on the left lower cheek left to right

of his neck is the skin is missing he has dermal excoriation and it's kind of like the skin was peeled off or picked off it's also red and inflamed he has missing teeth he has jagged broken teeth and they are unable to fully view gabriel's mouth there are multiple small circular wounds some are partially healed on his chest back and mid section skin wounds scatter over his upper chest are a combination of bb wounds or bruising from bb gun and cigarette burns they find a bb bullet in his left lung there are whip marks that

look like they came from a cord there is a strange cut above his penis now i've seen where others have said that this is this cut comes from them trying to remove gabriel's penis i have not found any information that confirms that's what that cut means um you can deduce from that whatever you would like but just know they're that's not a confirmation there's a bb wound in his groin on his left forearm there's an abrasion on both of his wrists he has purple uh ligature marks his hands almost every single one of his fingers

are injured whether they are swollen abrased bruised uh possibly broken on his left palm there appears to be a burn mark there's a burn mark on his lower left leg that is kind of in the shape of a spoon i think they warmed up a spoon and suck it to his leg both of his knees are swollen they he has abrasions on the top of his feet as though he was being dragged his feet and toes are swollen and again there's dark purple ligature marks on his ankle overall the staff notes that there are multiple

cigarette marks covering his body they are all in various stages of healing some fresh and some nearly healed some scarred there's bruising covering his body also in various stages of healing um this is not everything that i mean you have 20 reports just from the teacher in this last eight months of the amount of abuse that is that comes from the home the kids report at some point that osorio puts gabriel in the bathtub and sprays him with mace and when gabriel goes back to school right there towards the end um they took they did

a mother's day gift and part of that was taking a picture holding the letter m and lo holding the letter o and then making a silly face for the last m most mothers look forward to the mother day gift that their children make at school and gabriel was so excited to to make something for his mother in hopes that she would love him and in those pictures sadly you can see his eyes swollen and is really red you can see his hands are tore up he has bruising all over his face he's got missing hair

he has abrasions and cuts just everywhere and it's in those it's in that photo or those photos that you can really kind of see gabriel's love for his mother even though this is what he looks like he is smiling and you can just feel that he's excited to make this for pearl maybe this will show her he does love her and maybe she will love him in return unfortunately christine estes had to document all of these wounds shortly after these photographs were taken and she is quoted to saying once once the er staff um was

able to take a moment and gabriel's care was transferred over to the children's hospital of la um they transferred him to their facility and the staff was able to take a step back out of the chaos and really view and process what they had just handled and this isn't this wasn't a trauma of a car accident or or you know a fall down a major ravine or i mean you couldn't even say this was a trauma due to um somebody getting mugged or robbed this was a trauma room that was just littered just littered with

supplies because when you're going through something like that you're just get the package off and throw it on the floor we'll clean it later that's how they think because i mean at that moment you have to get your patient to a point where we can slow things down and look at them but for gabriel that moment never really came once the care was transferred over to children's hospital of los angeles a brain function test was administered that night to see what kind of deficits would be due to the lack of oxygen to his brain as

he was trying to be resuscitated and it's at that point that they see that he's not breathing on his own so they hope with him being in the coma things can heal and they can re-evaluate him at a later date so on may 22nd of 2013 gabriel is in a coma in the care of the children's hospital of los angeles it's on may 23 of 2013 that isro goes under or has his first interview with detective elliott irby and in this interview osorio admits to spanking gabriel for questioning pearl being with him but he doesn't

go too much further and irby knows just by looking at that child that's not a spanking that's a beating asari will go on to admit later that he was enraged by gabriel's questioning of the relationship to the point where he hit him 10 times but he lost count after those 10 times it's never noted that he says he hit him 10 times in a specific location he just says i hit him 10 times i think i lost count um later it's reported him uh isario saying that he hit gabriel 10 times in the head and

another 20 times in the body again possibly losing count detective irby was not prepared for what asario begins to admit to um asario never intended for it to go this far however when you look at all of the evidence from the past eight months one could deduce that eventually death would be the outcome but defense says he never intended for gabriel to die on may 24th of 2013 the children's hospital of los angeles go ahead and perform gabriel's sec second brain functioning test the findings of this test lead to the family um deciding to take

him off of trial of life support at this time um there's no there's it is highly unlikely that gabriel was ever going to wake up and if he did wake up there would be severe severe deficits due to the amount of brain swelling and the blood loss that gabriel would have many functionings of his body that no longer worked but it is on may 24th of 2013 they declared gabriel dead now at this point the body is turned over to the l.a county coroner's office so that an autopsy can be performed dr james kemp ribey

of the deputy coroner of l.a county is the one who receives gabriel's body in addition to all of the external wounds that we talked about that were being called out to christine as she charted in the er dr irby is able able to come in and take a closer look at this our dr ryby um sorry excuse me he notes additional injuries which again i'm not sure if this is all of the injuries um and some of these some of those are left out and detectives do things like that to prevent people from being a

confessor to a crime that they weren't because there are people out there that like i did it and they were you know nowhere near the crime scene the night of the murder or whatever so you don't always get the whole story and that's more for investigative purposes you want to make sure that if somebody gives you one of those details that were never released you're like okay i'm in the presence of a person who who was at this crime scene at the very least and could possibly be the perpetrator um but as we know isro

and pearl were both a part of this investigation and there was no doubt that nobody else in that home broke in and beat gabriel to death they were taken into custody and coroner's findings um seem to give the detectives and investigators the information they needed in order to charge both osorio and pearl with first degree murder with the special circumstance of allegation of intentional murder by torture dr ravi finds multiple fractures inside of gabriel's body all at different stages of healing gabriel's thymus gland okay so this is the gland that is very important to your

body it helps you fight off um infections it sends out your t cells which are your fighter cells they're good things to help keep keep your but your body running as it normally should but in the case of gabriel um when dr ravi went to look for the thymus gland he almost overlooked it because it was so shriveled that it was nowhere close to what it should the size it should have been and with this being shriveled and small dr reivy was able to give investigators the reason that the the re it does this under

stress think about it okay so let's let's think about this for a second when you're going through either physical or emotional stress in your life and we go back to that adage when it rains it pours and you catch a cold and you're like well this is all i need i'm dealing with this and now i have a cold that's because the stress has lowered your immune system which allowed whatever virus or bacteria in to just take over and for gabriel he had no immune system at this point because the amount of stress had shriveled

it so small that i'm not even sure he would have ever been able to recuperate had he lived um there were cuts found along his liver along with a hematoma which is kind of like a blood clot kind of bruised kind of thing um gabriel had lung disease as well he's eight years old what eight-year-old do you know has lung disease and it's not it's not reported as to why he has lung disease but this goes in hand with the rib fractures at the various stages of healing the lungs are encased in the sac along

with your heart and inside that sack or along the outer edges of that sack are nerve endings and so when you breathe that exact expands with your lungs and when you let it out it shrivels back up with your lungs it's it's it goes in and out well when you have a broken rib and it's grinding and those two points that don't normally hit a nerve ending site start hitting that it hurts it hurts to breathe it hurts to cough it hurts to laugh it hurts to sneeze gabriel was in pain every time he took

a breath and then you add in lung disease on top of that not only does it hurt to take a breath but it's hard you're not getting good breaths in with those two combinations gabriel was four foot one 59 pounds asario stood six foot two 270 pounds that is nearly what four times five times gabriel's weight he's five times bigger than gabriel and the amount of muscle in a person that large puts how much force comes behind an enraged beating they also opened up gabriel's stomach and inside dr robbie found this like gritty sand-like material

and so when forensics would later evaluate this material and compare it to the cat litter from the um i'm not sure if it was cat litter from the house or just cat litter in general but they couldn't tell the two apart which confirmed that that sand-like gritty material found in gabriel's stomach was cat litter pearl had seven cats in the house obviously there was cat litter but what you don't know until the children testify not only was gabriel forced to eat the cat litter he was forced to eat cat feces this would have licked vomiting

from gabriel and gabriel's other older brother would testify that if he vomited he had to eat the vomit it it's almost like they were angry that his body responded in that way and for gabriel that's not a conscious thing that happens you know i'm sure he after the first time he vomited and had to eat it he was like i don't want to ever vomit again but his body naturally is like no this is not get this out this is not good for us and he would vomit dr robbie would go on to report that

there was no fat stores um gabriel we all have back i mean just think about you have fat you don't want to have um gabriel i had none this this is proof that there's malnutrition and this is a topic that's always on debate you know and families that come from a low socioeconomic area they their children tend to rely on school to give them a hot meal during the day and in my state all kids get free breakfast and then they have to pay for lunch unless you qualify qualify part of the reduced free lunches

and for many many children this is a meal that they highly depend on and in gabriel's case eating kitty litter is not giving him the protein or the vitamins or the carbohydrates or the sugars he needs for his body to grow and we were talking back at the end at the beginning of may that was one of the last times that gabriel went to school so he went two weeks without um a hot meal i don't we don't know what pearl was feeding him but i mean it was reported that he ate kitty litter and

she made him eat old and expired food it was it was just they robbed him every which way they could dr ryby would go on to testify quote i have never seen this many skin injuries on one child the autopsy took him two days that is highly unusual but in order to document each and every injury found on gabriel it took dr rightly two days to go over this child's body [Music] two [Music] wrapping up today's podcast i want to thank you all for joining me today and i wish i could say that we've made

it through the hardest part of this case but those of you have been following know that's simply not true the more you look the more you find and the more shocking this case becomes i want to invite you to join me next week for part two of the gabriel fernandes case if you're new to my channel please be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an upload in the future you can follow me on facebook and instagram at the true crime librarian or subscribe to my youtube channel and i'll put the link in the

description if you have any cases that you want to hear me talk about or research feel free to email me at thetruecrimelibrarian gmail.com i have a little one-liner to leave you with today curiosity may have killed the cat but it's the satisfaction that brought it back until next time you