Breaking Point

If the American healthcare system were a human body, nurses would be its beating art. They are the first people a patient interacts with, taking medical histories, running tests, checking vitals, administering medications, and drying tears. They usually spend more time with a patient than any other provider. The job is emotionally demanding and physically taxing. No day, no patient, no treatment plan is the same. The only constant, a nurse is expected to show up, ready to work, every day. That's what Bianca Carasco did. She loved her patients. She wasn't just there trying to do her job. Like 29 Bianca showed up for her patients. Day after day, shift after shift. She worked in oncology with patients who really needed her help. She took pride in what she did and took it very seriously. She did until May 1, 2016. And I said, "Okay, did she call? Did she call in?" She said, "No, ma'am." And she said, "It's not like her." That morning Bianca did not show up at all. From that point, I said, "Okay, something's really wrong." It has been 10 years since Bianca Carasco missed that shift at Topper Wine Medical Center, just outside of San Antonio, Texas. Her sister, Giovanna Bernie, is still searching for answers. I know there are people that have more information, and they haven't spoken up, and I just think they're just as guilty by not speaking up. I'm Josh Mancowitz, and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline. This episode is Breaking Point. Please listen closely, because you or someone you know may have information that could help Bianca Carasco's family and friends find the answers they're looking for. Bianca Carasco and her sister, Giovanna, grew up outside of Houston. Giovanna is just 18 months older. Do you fight growing up or were you thick as thieves? She said it best. She fought hard, but we loved her. Their shared childhood was not easy. Their parents divorced when they were young, and the girls were separated for a while. But when we were younger, she loved with our father and I loved their mother, and I remember always feeling this longing, and she would have said the same thing that we just missed each other when we weren't together. The sisters were eventually reunited and began living at their father's house. Being together did not mean things got easier. Giovanna describes their upbringing as "unstable." Their father was strict and unaffected. Their mother lived hundreds of miles away and was not involved in their lives. Then at 17, Bianca's life changed again. She became pregnant. My father sent Bianca away to live with a family friend, and she had to give up the baby for adoption. Not long after, Bianca moved 500 miles across Texas to the city of Odessa, hoping to reconcile with their mother and reconnect with their maternal relatives. Giovanna followed later. That's where Bianca met a man named Joe Daniel Carrasco, who went by Daniel. He was already a member of the family, her uncle by marriage. He was married to our aunt on my mother's side. We didn't grow up with my mother's side. It sounds strange, but as an uncle, we didn't know him in that way. Giovanna says that around the time Daniel and her aunt were getting divorced, Bianca and Daniel hit it off. I wasn't encouraging to it. She was 18 years old, he was 10 years older than her, and it wasn't a good situation. But there was no talking her out of it. I tried, but no. Giovanna believes Bianca was searching for something that had been missing from her life. For my sister, there was some instability, and I would say unlovingness in our home, so that desire to have that definitely played out in relationships. Not long after they started dating, Bianca became pregnant again, and Daniel was the father. Giovanna says that was a turning point for her sister. That was definitely when she tried to create a relationship, make it work. She wanted a stable loving home, and she wanted to create that for her kids. Right. Bianca and Daniel married and began raising a family. They would eventually have three children, two girls, and a boy. Daniel worked in the oil fields near Odessa, and Bianca knew that to make Anne's meat, she would have to get a job too. When she was 22, Bianca started nursing school in Odessa. That's where she met another student named Julie Stinson. At first, I was like, "I'm not so sure about her. She's very bougie." Meaning what? Like full makeup, hair done, dress to the teeth, purses matching. Always perfectly put together. Before long, those casual first impressions gave way to deep friendship. She was so fun and funny. The one thing that always comes to mind is she loved to dance and sing. Julie says Bianca was always excited for the latest dance trend. This was the early 2000s, and there were plenty of them. The Cuban shuffle, stanky leg, and of course, the Duggy. She wanted you to teach her to Duggy. She did. But the way that the song is, can you teach me how to Duggy? And so when she called, she's like, "I'm serious." And then she's like, "Can you teach me how to Duggy?" Bianca and Julie got their nurses licenses in 2009 and started working together at Odessa Regional Medical Center. A lot of times we would work opposite rotations so that she could help with my kids, I could help with her kids. Their daughters took dance class together, and they would often attend recitals as a group. Daniel would sometimes tag along. What was he like? What was their relationship like? It was good. He worshiped the ground that she walked on. He knew what color and brand of makeup she wore. When she was pregnant, he would like tie her shoes and open her door. Julie says what she saw was a happy couple. And in 2013, Bianca and Daniel made a big change. They headed southeast. Why didn't they move to San Antonio? Odessa is just. Small. It's West Texas. It's all filled in football. Like, that's basically it. She just wanted a better life for herself, for her kids. Bianca joined the nursing staff at Topper Wine Medical Center. She would go above and beyond for all of her patients. The patients that she took care of, while she was an oncology nurse, it's not just the care she gave them as a nurse, but also emotionally. Being a cancer patient and going through chemo and, you know, it's hard and she took pride in what she did and took it very seriously. A new city and a new job caring for cancer patients. Bianca was making progress in her professional life. At the same time her life at home was in retrograde. Giovanna says Daniel was still working in Odessa, and he would commute more than 300 miles and work week-long shifts, staying with relatives while there. And he'd return to San Antonio, to be with Bianca and the kids the following week. There was a lot of arguing, and it was going on for some time, and then they got to a point where they just weren't speaking at all for weeks. She says the distance deepened a growing rift in their relationship. So that gave them time to not have to deal with the situation. That was normal for them not to talk, if they were angry with each other. I just noticed that it was taking a lot longer this time. What was taking a lot longer? For them to reconcile. And this time there would be no reconciliation. Giovanna says Bianca had started making plans to leave the marriage. She had listed divorce on her Facebook. was done. Giovanna says the tension growing between Bianca and Daniel concerned her. On Sunday, May 1, 2016, Giovanna called her sister to check in. Asked her if she was okay, asked her if the kids were okay, if I needed to come get them so that they can figure these things out. You clearly recognized that this was some kind of like breaking point in your sister's marriage. Absolutely. The calmness in her voice that day, she seemed to have thought everything through that weekend. She told me that she made an appointment with the lawyer, that she would see the lawyer on that following Friday and asked if she needed anything, said she was okay and that she told me everything was going to be okay. The next day, Giovanna called again and that time, Bianca did not answer. And her phone kept going straight to voicemail. Was that unusual? Very unusual. Hours ticked by, Bianca's silence did too. And still nothing, well into three for her clock, so I tried to get a hold of her husband. I said, "Hey, have you talked to Bianca?" And he said, "No, she left last night. We got into an argument and she left the house." According to Giovanna, Daniel said that after that argument, that they're San Antonio House, Bianca walked out and he drove to Odessa. And I said, "Hold on, so she left and you left too?" And he said, "Yeah." And I said, "Where are the kids?" That was my first thing, was where are the kids. And he said, "They're at home." And I started again, he said, "You're telling me she left? Does she leave in her car? Did somebody come pick her up?" And he said, "No, she started walking from the house and I'm just so baffled." Desperate for more information, Giovanna called the receptionist at the medical center to see if Bianca had shown up for work. She said, "No, ma'am, and we're kind of worried." And I said, "Okay, did she call in?" She said, "No, ma'am." And she said, "It's not like her." And from that point, I said, "Okay, something's really wrong." Giovanna called Daniel again. I told him, she does not go into work tomorrow morning. I am calling the police and he told me to leave her be. And I said, "No, I can't do that." Why wouldn't Daniel want her to call the police? Giovanna thought that was odd. Then she remembered something Bianca had told her just days before. And suddenly, Bianca's disappearance became even more alarming. She was looking for her gun and that really scared me because in my mind, I thought, looking for the gun, what on earth? Giovanna Bernie was in Houston, Texas, holding out a hope that she might hear from her sister, Bianca, by the end of the day. 500 miles away in Odessa, Bianca's friend Julie Stinson was scrolling through social media and saw something about her friend Bianca that made her heart stop. I saw a Facebook post. She's missing and I was like, "What in the world?" So I tried to call her phone, went straight to voicemail, and then I instantly messaged Daniel on Facebook and I was like, "Hey, what's going on, Bianca's missing?" And he was like, "What? What are you talking about?" "Let me know." Yeah, that's what he acted like. I said, "There's a Facebook post that says Bianca's missing and he was like, "Man, I don't know why they did that." And I was like, "What do you mean? Is she missing or what's going on?" So he calls. He tells me that they got into an argument and that she just left, but his main concern was, "Oh, now that they've put this out there on social media, she's going to be afraid to come back because she's going to be afraid of getting in trouble." And I was like, "What?" "Huh?" "Yeah, get in trouble for what?" He's like, "Because she left the kids." Daniel seemed to believe people would say Bianca was an unfit mother for leaving the kids alone at the house. Julie says Daniel went on to explain that, "After their fight, as Bianca walked away, he loaded their youngest child into his car and drove to Odessa. That left the older two, ages 9 and 10, at home, on their own. Any of what he's talking about sound like something Bianca would do? Getting into an argument and maybe being stubborn, saying she's going to leave? That made sense to me. Leaving? No. "Jovanna agreed. She might leave her husband, but she wouldn't leave those kids." That's correct. I can give you an example. When she was in nursing school, I lived two hours away, and she didn't have anyone to watch the kids, and she brought them all the way to me so that I could watch them, and the same day she wouldn't pick them up. She didn't leave them overnight. She just wasn't that kind of mom. Daniel's story just wasn't sitting right with her. My sister had a car that was paid off. There was no reason for her to walk on foot. My sister did not like being outside. She was not going to go take a stroll, and she definitely wouldn't have done that at night. She was kind of scared of doing things like that. "Jovanna says she pressed Daniel to describe what happened that night." And I said, "You made eye contact. She knew you were leaving." And he said, "Yes." And so it scared me. My thoughts were all over the place, thinking, "So did she go back home to someone break in?" And I said, "What did she say? She was going to go anywhere?" And he said, "Oh, she probably left with one of those guys." And I said, "What guy?" One of those guys, Jovanna had no idea what he was talking about. She was about to find out. Bianca had been keeping a secret from her friends and family. You didn't know your sister was having an affair. No. I wondered, but she had not told me. The one person who did seem to know about Bianca's affair was her husband. Because Jovanna began piecing things together. She recalled something Bianca told her just days before she disappeared. The she and Daniel had just had a big fight over the phone while she was working her shift. On that Wednesday, he was threatening. And she left her work because she said she would have been embarrassed by him showing up. That day when she went home, she was worried about where he was, that he wasn't at home. She was looking for their gun in the house. And that really scared me because in my mind, I thought, looking for the gun, what on earth? She just sounded so scared. And I remember praying with her that day she was just crying, I think, him finding all those things out. It all just came out that day and she was very scared, very upset. The fight was not the only thing that raised alarm bells. He had taken all their money out of their account. Three days before Bianca vanished, she texted Jovanna, Daniel emptied the account and opened another account without my name on it. So I have no access to money except my credit card, which is almost at the limit. Jovanna was trying to figure out what to make of it all. I was trying to just process everything I had just found out about this affair. So you're hoping, look, maybe she's with him. Yes, I was hoping that. Even if she was right, Jovanna had a big problem. She had no idea who this mystery boyfriend was. And on the other hand, when you're worried something's wrong, you're probably also thinking, maybe he's got something to do with this. Yeah, I thought that too. Any possibility I was trying to figure out. I had every thought I thought, did she hurt herself? Did she get involved with the wrong person? Now it was Tuesday morning, almost 48 hours since Jovanna had heard from Bianca. She called Bianca's work again. The answer was the same. No one's heard from her. Her phone's still going straight to voicemail. And that's when I contacted San Antonio Police Department. Because I live in Houston, San Antonio said you have to call Houston PD. So I called Houston PD. They came over to my home. took a statement. They asked me why hasn't the husband called the police. I said it. That's a great question. And the police officer said, "Well, give me his number. Let me see if I can call him." Then Jovana says, the officer dialed Daniel's number and let her listen to the call. You hear Daniel's voice and no question, it is Daniel's voice. Yes, a thousand percent Daniel's voice. I know it was his number and then his voice and he said, "Oh, no, you have the wrong number." Wait one second. I mean, hearing that that's got to be one of the worst things you've ever heard. Yes, my stomach dropped. There was already these red flags and then it was boom. And Jovana later heard about another red flag. It came from a conversation her sister had at the Medical Center the week she vanished. A police avid David filed after Bianca's disappearance notes that several of her co-workers reported seeing a text from Daniel on Bianca's phone that, "Red, I hate you for doing this and I will kill you." She told her co-workers. She was showing them text messages and she said, "If I go missing, you know what happened." Unfortunately, my experience is that people who say to their friends, "If I go missing, you know what happened." They're rarely wrong about the danger they're facing or who they're facing it from. And I had no idea. Because if you had, I'm thinking you would have been there. I would have. She didn't want to tell you how much trouble she was in. She knew that I was very protective and even their marriage problems, she wasn't really telling me too much. Javana says Houston police took her statement and then transferred her to the San Antonio Police Department's Missing Persons Unit. They take the information. I was told while she's an adult, she can leave if she wants to. Why is it that when families call and say something's wrong, this person who is normally in touch with me and with whom I don't have any issues, has suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Why would their response be? Well, she's an adult. She can do what she wants. You're not the first person I've heard tell that almost exact story. It is extremely frustrating. I was even told that she was involving herself in high-risk behavior. I guess in a fair, a high-risk behavior. And so what, this is her fault? Yes, and that made me very angry. Javana told officers Bianca may have wanted to get out of her marriage, but she would never leave her three children behind. I told them everything I could regurgitate. You told them about Daniel's odd behavior about his lying saying you've got the wrong number. Him saying please don't involve the police. Everything. San Antonio Police declined date lines request for an interview, saying they cannot comment on open cases. They did provide the initial Missing Persons report and supporting documents, which confirmed they spoke with Daniel and attempted to ping Bianca's phone. Julie says police also began searching near the Carasco home. Initially they did like a search around the neighborhood. There's like some wooded areas. Unfortunately, the searches for Bianca yielded nothing. So police focused on her personal life, zeroing in on that affair Bianca had been having. And they found the mystery boyfriend. His name is Matthew Almoraz. Turns out Matthew was an elementary school teacher and coached football at a local high school. Investigators were able to speak with Matthew. He confirmed he had been involved with Bianca until he says he realized she was married. Matthew says he broke it off, telling her they couldn't be together until she was divorced. And while they were still in contact via phone, Matthew said he had not seen Bianca in more than a week. I think the police did enough to investigate the other man. Yeah, I think they did. He has cooperated through this whole time. His story doesn't change. Not long after she disappeared, NBC affiliate News 4 San Antonio started following Bianca's case. A mother of three missing since May 1st, tonight there's still no sign of 29-year-old Bianca Carrasco. A spokesperson for the San Antonio Police talked about the investigation. Our suspicion is that there's probably some foul play involved. There's something going on and somebody has the answers and we just want somebody to step up. That was not happening. Nobody was stepping up and Bianca was still nowhere to be found. I would say that week, the whole month, two months, it was just a nightmare. Julie also thought foul play was likely and she was about to launch her own remarkably detailed investigation into her friend's case. I'm going to start digging into everything that I can find and see if I can figure out maybe I can help. June 2016, local news in San Antonio continue to report on Bianca Carrasco's disappearance. In the case of a missing mother who was last seen more than a month ago, now there have been community searches and thousands of social media shares, but still nothing. Her sister, Javana, was starting to lose hope. What were the police telling you? Well, when I was finally able to sit down with missing persons and homicide, so a whole month had passed. They were very direct with me and told me that if they don't find a body that there's nothing they can do, they were very clear with me that day. Nobody, no crime. It's a familiar dilemma in law enforcement. No information, no leads, nothing. Months of no answers turned into years. Four years later and there's still no sign of Bianca Carrasco. Bianca's friend Julie was frustrated. She says she expected more from a department as big as San Antonio's. I mean, this is SAPD, like if something happened and they're going to figure it out and then as the years went by and nothing, nothing, nothing. So beginning in May of 2023, Julie did what friends of the missing so often do when the trail goes cold. She started looking for answers on her own. You've got no training as an investigator, right? No. You're a nurse. I am. But you got her phone records and started digging around. I did. One number at a time. Julie tried to put names to a mystery. I literally printed them out. And if I couldn't find it in like a record search, I would put it in Venmo cash app because that's how you register as with your phone number. You may have missed your calling. I went through and each and every phone number, I identified who they were compared the two of their phones. After all that work, she had assembled a timeline of Bianca's final night. She says Bianca was on the phone and she returned home around 8 p.m. that last Sunday. There's a time Daniel hangs up his phone, brought about the same time she hangs hers up, which is the time that she is getting there at the house where Daniel is. And then nothing. Except one short call only seconds long to Matthew. The man Bianca had been having the affair with. They're radio silence. Both phones, not a single text, not a single phone call, except for that one. Julie wanted to know more about that call. Did you pick up and nobody was there? Was this a but dial? Did you hear anything? Was there maybe some scuffle going on and it accidentally called him back? She made contact with Matthew. He offered to meet with her in person. And she considered it, briefly. Although she had been told that San Antonio police had "cleared him" unquote, Julie was not sure they had done their due diligence. I thought about it. But then I was like, as much as I think I know everything, what if I don't? This is probably not a great idea. Correct, it's not. At first I was like, oh, I can get one of those little recording devices. I can go talk to him. But then I was like, on the off chance that I'm wrong. Right. And it turns out he is the guy. I don't want to come up missing. Yeah. And so I didn't. "Good, yes, your friend Josh would have told you, "Don't do that." So Julie got him on the phone. Matthew told Julie he had spoken with Bianca earlier that day before she went missing. And he just told me that he remembered her calling one time and that she had told them, "You know, I love you, I'll call you later, don't worry about anything, I'm going to fix everything, everything's going to be okay, and I'll talk to you later." Matthew told Julie he never heard from Bianca again and did not remember that mysterious short call Julie was wondering about. After months of intense amateur sleuthing, Julie realized she had done as much as she could with those records. And you call the San Antonio Police and say, "I want to give you everything I have." Yes, and I did. I emailed it to them with description of, "Look, this is what I've found. I thought maybe if I put it all together nice and neat for them to look at and see what I was seeing, then it might make them feel like they had more to go on to follow up and continue on, but no." What was the reaction when you sent that? "Don't even think I got a reply." Sounds like you were a lot more interested in finding out what happened to Bianca than they were. "Absolutely without a doubt, it's so frustrating." For the families of the missing, that frustration is as familiar as it is painful. Laurie Whitmeier has seen it again and again. "They don't understand why the police don't give them all the information, all the facts that they have because they can't. It's like when you play poker, you don't put your hand down on the table, you have to hold your cards back. And I don't believe families truly understand that." She volunteers with search and support San Antonio, an organization that tries to bridge that golf that can form between law enforcement and the families of the missing. "We provide assistance to family members and friends of missing people, whether it be helping them with visuals, flyers, mapping, targeted search areas, going out and searching, giving them direction is how to interact with police and law enforcement." Giovanna and Julie reached out to search and support in 2023. They were invited to represent Bianca at an annual outreach event known as Hawk for the Missing. "That is an event where we go and spend hours on a street corner in San Antonio. We flood that street corner with flyers, pictures of missing people, trying to get the word out, trying to find the one person who might be able to turn the case around." They also put up a billboard with Bianca's photo and distributed flyers in her neighborhood. Along with those efforts, Laurie Wittmeier has teamed up with a former FBI agent named Abel Pena. "He made a series of YouTube videos in which he invited Mr. Crosco to come to the billboard vigil and invited him to take a polygraph." "This goes to Daniel Carrasco and meet us, meet me, so that we can give you a polygraph test, free of charge." "So he's essentially offering Daniel an opportunity to clear his name?" "Yes." "And did Daniel take him up on that?" "No, he did not." Giovanna wishes he would. "I'd like for him to prove me wrong. I wouldn't want nothing more for those kids. Knowing that their mom is no longer there, that their father not be a murderer. I wouldn't want that for them. So if he didn't, it's like just speak up, man. And respond to the police, respond to these polygraph tests that have been offered to you. Help, help, help find her." As harrowing as this has been for Giovanna and her family, her thoughts are always with Bianca's three children. They are now ages 15, 19, and 20. Giovanna says they have been living with their father. Have you spoken with them? "I spoke to the oldest around the time. I guess it would have been three years ago when a billboard was put up there in San Antonio. She was very angry with us putting up fires and having a billboard put up. And it's so sad. It's so sad because he's really instilled in them that my sister just walked away from them and left them. She wouldn't do that. No, she wouldn't. What do you think happened to your sister? I think that the night that her phone was no longer working, I think that they got into an argument and I think it set her husband off." San Antonio Police provided Dateline with an affidavit officer's file to obtain phone records in Bianca's case. According to that affidavit, when Daniel Carrasco first spoke with police, he said that on the Thursday before Bianca vanished, he had removed her access to their bank account, but gave her money to set up a new account in her own name. Daniel went on to tell police he had just learned about his wife's affair at the time, and, quoting from the affidavit now, admitted he was angry, but said he never put his hands on his wife. Carrasco maintained there was no violence, only an argument." Daniel said he left that night with their youngest child and thought Bianca would return a short time later after taking a walk to cool off. He said he did not learn Bianca was missing until the following day. Again, according to the affidavit, quote, " Carrasco said he believed his wife ran off with another man and didn't feel the need to call the police." Daniel Carrasco has never been named as a suspect or person of interest in Bianca's disappearance. And remember, we don't know what his response is to any of this, because although we at Dateline reached out to him for comment or an interview, he is not responded. We also contacted Matthew. He told us he was heartbroken after Bianca disappeared, and that she was a beautiful person with a beautiful soul. Matthew also said he hopes her family can quote, "Finally have the answers and peace they've been waiting for." Julie says she is still searching for that peace, and has had to accept that her friend is likely no longer alive. She's gone. And not only that, but she's still gone. Like not only is she not alive? Where is she? Like who? How does this happen? 10 years later. Yeah. And why does nobody care? Like this isn't even my job. And I get she's my friend. She wasn't their friend. But isn't that why detectives are detectives? Jovana wants San Antonio police to do more. Why aren't we outsourcing if we know that he left that night? That's five hours. There's nothing in West Texas. There's lots of oil, rigs, and things like that. It's like, why are you not getting help to go and look for her in these places? I do not understand it. And I thought, you know, Jovana and I started talking about it. And I was like, we're just going to have to make noise. Like so much noise that they're going to be like, okay, they're getting on our nerves. They're not going to shut up. Oh, let's go do something about it. Or at least look like we're doing something about it. No. And that's why we're here today. Yes. Somebody has to know something. There's no way that somebody doesn't know. Dateline reached out to the San Antonio police and they provided the following statement. Quote, our department is fully committed to investigating and solving this case, as well as supporting Bianca Carasco's family during this difficult time. The department continues to follow all available leads, unquote. Jovana has faced 10 years without her sister, 10 years without her nieces and nephew, and 10 years without any answers. What's this done to you? It's broken my heart. It's definitely changed how I look at things, but this may sound different or strange for some, but it's grown my faith more in God. I actually don't know how other families get through something like this without him. I would think it might reduce your faith. No, sir. When you understand that God is a just God, Um, nobody gets away with anything. So someone will pay for this someday? Absolutely. I've read me a little down. You're convinced of that? Absolutely. And that gives you some comfort. Yes, it does. It does. If you have any information about Bianca Carasco's disappearance, please come forward. Bianca is 5'1" and has shoulder-length brown hair. He has a tattoo of a letter B on her left hip and a surgical scar on her abdomen. Anyone with information regarding Bianca's case is urged to call the San Antonio Police Department at 210-207-7660 or San Antonio Crime Stoppers at 210-224-7867. To look at pictures of Bianca and to learn about other people we've covered in our Missing an America series, go to DatelineMissingAnAmerica.com. There you will also be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. We'll see you Friday's for Dateline on NBC, or you can stream any time on Peacock, YouTube, or by subscription on the NBC News app. You can also listen to full Dateline episodes and original podcast series, wherever you're listening right now. Subscribe to Dateline Premium for early access and ad-free listening for all our podcasts. Missing an America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Samantha Springer is the producer of this episode. Missing an O'Brien is the associate producer. Marshall House fell and Brian Drew are the editors. Bradley Davis is senior producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Jessica Fenton is head of Audio Production. [MUSIC]