Part 2: Amber Belken’s Final Shift: Her Car Was Outside, But She Was Already Gone

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So what they did is they organized flyer campaigns across San Antonio, they covered the street corners and store windows, and anywhere that people might stop and look, and they put her flyer. Friends helped, strangers helped, people who had heard Amber's story, and felt something, did something about it. They worked with the media, they did interviews, they went on camera telling Amber's story again and again to anyone who wanted to cover it. Police supported and even encouraged that effort, because sometimes one person hearing a detail or recognizing something they hadn't thought to mention before makes the difference in a case and breaking open. The more people hear about a case, the better the odds that somewhere in that audience of people, there is going to be one person that knows something. And the reward grew as well, EB Games, the company that had employed Amber, whose policies had put her alone in that store, without cameras, contributed $95,000 towards a reward of $100,000. At the time, it was one of the largest rewards in San Antonio's history. Crime stoppers contributed portion as well, $100,000. That was big. That number was supposed to be large enough that someone out there was going to come forward. But they never did. Month after month, the flyers got weathered and faded, and they were replaced again and again. And the investigation, despite all of it, didn't move forward. And for detective Roberts, that case was something he carried differently because I told you. There is a professional necessity of keeping your distance. You don't want detectives getting too emotional. There's a balance required. The job demands a kind of compartmentalization, and that doesn't mean you don't care. But it means you manage how much you let something bother you and how much you take home. He knew that. He believed it and he tried to obey it. But he couldn't because I told you early on that Amber reminded him of his own daughter. And there was something else. Something small and specific that kept pulling him back in a way he hadn't expected. He found out that Amber's favorite book, when she was growing up, had been, if you give a mouse a cookie. It's a children's picture book that detective Roberts knew very well. He had read it out loud so many times it was carved into his memory. He had read it to his own daughter, many times over. And now here was this woman who had been reading it to somewhere across the city in a different home, in a different childhood, in a different life at the exact same time. And now she was dead. And he, this human with no extraordinary powers, was the person responsible for finding out why. And he just couldn't close that distance between himself and the case the way that he needed to. So he kept Amber's file. He kept checking it, he kept watching the walls where any cracks. And there were no cracks. The month stretched on, January became spring and summer became fall. And Amber's birthday, the first one after her death, arrived, December 6. And she would have turned 26 years old. Her parents went to her grave and they brought balloons. And they stood at her headstone at Chapel Home Memorial Park and they talked to her. The way that parents talked to their children when they no longer can actually reach them any other way. They told her how things were going, they filled her in on things, and they stayed there for a while. And they went home to a house where she didn't exist. And her parents said that somewhere beneath all of it, there was this stubbornness that they had to believe that someone was going to call, that Amber's case would be solved. It was approximately seven months after she was murdered. Middle of an ordinary day went as phone rang. He answered, and the person on the other end didn't want to give them a name. He was very careful about that from the first sentence. The way people are careful when they know something that could put them in a very difficult position. They haven't decided how far they're willing to go. He was asked for the name and the caller just said, "Call me Joe." That was all he was going to get for now. Then this Joe person said, "They knew who killed Amber Belkin." Well, of course, that peak detective Robert's in just right away. He's listening. And Robert's had no way to know in the first moments of that conversation if this was a lead or just another dead end. So he had to let the caller talk. Joe gave him a name, Giovanni Rivera. He explained the connection between them that he and Giovanni had worked for EB Games, but at different locations within the company. And at some point, after Joe had been fired from his position, Giovanni had reached out to him. And on the morning of January 29th of 2007, the same morning Amber had gone to work and not come home, Giovanni had supposedly approached Joe with a proposal. He wanted help robbing a video game store, and he had a specific store in mind. He said the one in San Pedro Avenue, that's the one he was going to hit. And the reason he gave, it was the only EB Games in San Antonio that didn't have security cameras. No one would be watching. No one would have anything to show forward afterward. Joe said, he said no. He hadn't even taken it seriously. Giovanni had been a talker, he said he was going to do a lot of things. And this again just felt like something that would stay at that talk level and wouldn't go anywhere. So Joe dismissed it, and he moved on, and he didn't give it much thought afterward. But then Amber was murdered. And Joe heard about it on the news. And through the coverage that moved through the city, and after her body was found, an EB Games store manager killed in the store on San Pedro Avenue during robbery. He couldn't dismiss what he knew. He had put that conversation aside, but suddenly, it felt different. That specific store, the detail about the cameras, it all clicked, and Joe felt sick. And he felt scared, but he was uncertain about what to do next. He didn't call the police right away, but he wanted to, but part of him had this fear that was bigger than that impulse. That fear of what would come if he did. The fear of being connected to something that he had nothing to do with, but that he technically had known about it in advance. The fear of what Giovanni might do if he found out. And the fear of what it might cost him. So Joe held it in for months. But the guilt kept building. It was impossible to fully ignore it, and eventually the guilt won. So he picked up the phone, and he called Detective Roberts. And he gave him Giovanni Rivera's name because in his words, he said that he needed to be put away. This was not about the reward money. He was about guilt, plain, and simple. And Roberts took the statement seriously from the beginning. That made sense to Roberts because it was exactly the kind of operational knowledge he'd been looking for since the very beginning of this investigation. Someone who knew which store didn't have any cameras. So Detective Roberts brings this Joe person in, their face to face, they're going through every detail. Of course, he gets his real information and name and everything, and they believe him. And when it's over, he knows the Joe is telling him the truth. And then he had no direct involvement in what happened to Amber. Joe was a witness, not a participant. He was someone who knew about the plan and hadn't reported it, but had been living with his guilt ever since. He had a statement even if it's credible, not exactly evidence. It's starting point though. You can believe someone completely and still not be able to do anything with that information until you have something to put alongside it. And Roberts knew that. What he had was a name and a story, and now he needed to find out what else that name could tell him. So he started digging into Giovanni Rivera. Who was he? What was his connection to Amber specifically? Was it his plan to kill her? The first thing Roberts confirmed was EB Games Connection with Giovanni. He had worked for the company, and that was real. It checked out. He worked at a different location, but it put him in the category of people who had the exact kind of knowledge required for this crime. He would have known how the stories operated, understood the routine, the deposit procedure, and the window before opening when a manager was alone with the previous day's cash. Robert's also found out that Giovanni had a juvenile record. That meant his fingerprints were already on file somewhere, which meant there was something concrete to work with a set of prints that could be pulled and compared against the evidence from the crime scene. Robert got those prints, sent them to the lab, but they came back without a match. The prints recovered from the store were limited to begin with. They weren't clear. The quality was bad, and they couldn't get a direct comparison to match. The lab couldn't say if they were Giovanni's, but they couldn't say they weren't either. But Robert's went ahead and brought Giovanni in for questioning. He wanted to see him face to face. He wanted to watch how he handled being asked directly about where he had been, what he had done, and what he knew about Amber Belkin. And anything about that store, in particular. Giovanni sat across from Roberts and he was calm and friendly. He talked easily, and he denied any involvement in Amber's murder. He completely dismissed Joe's account entirely, calling him a liar, and he said the whole story was ridiculous. That it was obviously for the reward money, and he acted as though the idea that he would have done anything like this was so far out of the realm of possibility that it barely warranted a response. Robert's pushed back. Yes, follow up questions. He went back at all things from different angles, and tried to find a point where the calm broke down. But Giovanni never cracked. He kept talking, he kept denying, he kept presenting himself as a person who had nothing to hide, and nothing to be concerned about. Roberts left the interview with more suspicion than he walked in with. Which is also a kind of result, I guess, but it's not an arrest, and a few days later, the witness calling himself Joe comes back in. He had more to say this time, more details, more directness than he did the first conversation. This time, he told Detective Roberts something that moved the needle in a significant way. He said that Giovanni hadn't just proposed the robbery and left it there. 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He said he sat there and tried to figure out how to respond to something that didn't have a normal response. I mean, what do you say? So after this, Robert's decide he is going to obtain warrants. He drafted an arrest warrant and a search warrant. He laid out everything that he had gathered from Joe's account, the EV Games Connection, the knowledge of the cameras, the behavioral patterns, all of it, given how much public attention the case had already generated, given how long this family had been waiting. And it happened to be Detective Robert's birthday, and he said it felt like the best birthday present that he could have asked for. And he left that courthouse with the warrants and started making phone calls. The arrest was moving forward. And then it wasn't, because before the warrant could be executed, Roberts got a word from a supervisor. He needed to pull back. Prosecutors had reviewed the case, and they said they were not comfortable moving forward. And I'm like, wow, all that red tape. The concern wasn't whether Roberts believed Joe or whether the logistical connections were right or wrong, it was the concern about what happened if this went to trial, which it would have to eventually write, a case that's built on testimony of a single witness, without any physical evidence being tied to it, we all have watched trials most of us at. If they charged Giovanni and lost, or if the case fell apart during the proceedings, because the physical evidence would not carry it to trial, the opportunity to hold him accountable would be gone. Officers were not willing to take that risk, they needed something more. So the warrants were pulled. Roberts was back where he was at square one. And it must have been frustrating. So he decided, if you couldn't arrest Giovanni, he was just going to get his DNA. So he obtained a DNA warrant. And that he could do as part of the investigation. A DNA warrant doesn't need probable cause strong enough for an arrest. It just needs enough to justify the collection of a sample. That was really smart. So after months of coming up against walls, this is something he could go forward with. He goes unannounced to Giovanni's house. Not giving any indication that he was coming over, he just showed up, which meant that whatever reaction he got at that door was going to be unmanaged. Whatever Giovanni looked like in that moment before he had time to compose himself was going to be visible. And Roberts would get to see it. So he knocks on the door, Giovanni answers, Roberts has the warrant with him, but he doesn't immediately specify what kind of warrant. He didn't say arrest warrant, but he didn't say DNA warrant either. And something happened that Roberts would remember. Giovanni turned back towards the inside of the home, towards his wife, who were somewhere behind him and he said, I'm going with them. It wasn't what you want or wait, let me see the paperwork, not even who are you. He just turned to his wife and told her he was going with the police. It was also the way he said it. It was the way he looked and everything that went along with it as someone who believed they were being arrested for something serious. Not a man who thought officers were just showing up at his door for a parking ticket or something minor. But then again, he was interviewed in the connection with a murder, but in that moment, he believed they had arrived to arrest him, but then it became clear what kind of warrant it was. It was interesting as Roberts watched the shift happen in real time. The moment Giovanni understood what this really was, that it was just to collect his DNA and not an arrest, wasn't being taken in in charge, something about everything like the way he was standing, the way he was holding himself, he loosened up. It was like there was a relief, like a man who was holding his breath, and then he could let it out. Giovanni went with investigators because he had to, and he provided the DNA sample, a swab, collected, logged, sent to a lab. When investigators tried to ask him questions beyond that DNA warrant, he refused to say anything. He refused. He had nothing to say. He submitted to the collection, kept his mouth shut, and was taken back home, and that's more than most people. Usually, they talk. They don't reserve their right to remain silent, and it backfires on them. Roberts waited for the results, and they came back without a confirmed match. He was hoping that single strand of short, dark hair that had been recovered from near Amber's body would come back as a match to Giovanni. Now, I didn't tell you about the hair because I wanted this moment. They had one hair, but this wasn't a clean elimination either. The sample, in and of itself, is limited. It's not perfect. Others are kind of that gray area where, if they don't even have a route, you can't even test it. And if they do, sometimes it's inconclusive because there's not enough DNA. But Roberts wasn't going to give up. He asked SWAT to keep an eye on Giovanni, to specifically monitor any size of him trying to prepare to run, because there was a reason to believe Giovanni understood that the walls were closing in. And that concern turned out to be well-founded. The SWAT agents watching the property contacted Detective Roberts and they told him Giovanni was loading his car, not just putting something in the trunk, loading the car, to suggest you are relocating. So Roberts moved so quickly. A traffic stop was arranged and conducted before Giovanni got very far. And agents spoke with him. Giovanni said, "Oh, I'm just moving my family from San Antonio to Laredo. We're just relocating. There's nothing going on, I'm not fleeing from the law, I'm not running away. We're just moving to Laredo near the Mexican border. For reasons he presented as ordinary." Roberts thought it was pretty obvious what this really was. It was positioning close to Mexico, so that in the event he needed to escape, he could and fast. It's an uncomfortable position for Roberts without an active warrant that justified holding this man. Investigators had no choice but to let him go. And I hate when I hear this in cases, but it is what it is. And Roberts watched Giovanni Rivera drive away towards Laredo. And then sometime later, Giovanni actually crossed the border into Mexico. He wasn't going to Laredo, Texas. He was going to Nuevo, Laredo, Mexico. Where he had family, and he settled in, and for a while, the investigation sat at a distance of several miles of international border, with a suspect who was now beyond the reach of the standard. arrested warrant. In a country where extradition came with conditions, in a case that still did not have the hard physical evidence that the prosecutors wanted, and needed. Detective Roberts kept working the case. And in late June of 2008, a full year and a half after Amber had been killed. He got another phone call. It was from the police in Mexico. It wasn't Giovanni, though, it was a woman. And she was with police and said she wanted to talk. Her name was Veronica. This was Giovanni Rivera's wife. But before we get into what Veronica told Detective Roberts and what that conversation said in motion, I really need to give you information into who Veronica was. And how she even got into the place where she was in Mexico in the summer of 2008, with a man she was now calling the cops on. Because the story of Veronica Rivera doesn't start with this call to police. It starts much earlier than that with a young woman who was still in high school with her life, got so reorganized around a man that she did not choose. Yeah, it's really deep. And as soon as I read all about this, I knew I wanted to give it its own space in the story, because Veronica was a very young when she met Giovanni. She got pregnant while she was still in high school, and she was still a teenager, still in the middle of becoming whoever she was going to be. Before any of that had a chance to fully develop. And what she said, looking back on all of it, was that she was never attracted to Giovanni in a way that should have been the foundation of what comes next. I'm not just talking about physically attracted. I'm talking she did not desire to be close to this man in an intimate romantic way. There was something about him that felt off from the beginning, but he was persistent. Kind of in that way that certain people are persistent, where they're not reading the room. He's not getting the signals. He just keeps moving forward, regardless of what she's communicating. Selfishly, and he doesn't back off. He keeps pursuing, or he keeps showing up. He keeps presenting himself as the answer to a situation that she's in, because she's pregnant with his baby. Both of their families got together. They got involved, and the pressure came from both sides, his family, and hers, both operating from the same premise, which was you're having a baby, and you need to be married. And that was simply what happened. Veronica said she went along with it. She listened to everyone around her. She set aside what she actually felt. The instinct that was telling her that something was wrong. The sense of herself that was trying to say, "Wait a minute, think about this. This is not what you want." She pushed all of that to the back of her mind, and she married Giovanni. She said later that it was the biggest mistake, and she would spend years paying for it. This marriage was not good, and that's the most neutral way to say something that was worse than neutral. Giovanni controlled the relationship. He decided what happened, when it happened, and how Veronica was allowed to respond to it. He demanded to sleep with her whenever he wanted it, and when Veronica said no, when she tried to draw a line, when she tried to have the most basic authority over her own body, he did not accept it. She described feeling sick. Her body was actually registering what her circumstances didn't give for the freedom to act on. She would tell him to stop. There were times when he would get so angry or so frustrated at being told no. He would force himself on her anyway repeatedly. Over the course of their marriage, in the bedroom of their apartment where their children were sleeping nearby, this was happening. And then at some point, the duct tape started. He would use it to restrain her, bind her wrist, bind her body, cover her mouth so she couldn't scream. He would tie her to a chair in the bedroom. And this was not an isolated incident. It was a regular part of the environment she was living inside. She would wake up every morning and go to sleep every night in the same small space where their children were, afraid to push back. She never knew exactly what would happen if she did. Maybe it's Mabelie. She was trying to survive in something that did not have a clear exit. And she stayed because leaving felt impossible or dangerous or both. She stayed because her children were there and because it was complicated. She was trapped for reasons that people in her situation stay in. And none of those reasons were simple or it can make sense with a simple explanation. And none of the mean that she was anything other than a person trying to get through something she had not chosen. But Veronica had a story to tell. She told Detective Roberts, and in late January of 2007, she and Giovanni were sitting together watching TV when the news came on. And there was a story about a young woman who had been found murdered in a video game store in San Antonio. Veronica reacted the way that anyone would react to news of a story about something so violent. She was startled and troubled of just the tragedy of it all. And she said something out loud, something like, "Look at this. Wow. Can you believe that happened?" She said that Giovanni looked at the screen and he said something back, something that matched her tone and her shock and reflected her reaction back to her. The way a mirror does, responding in the exact same way that the moment called for. He was surprised, he acted like a person hearing something terrible for the first time. Veronica said she didn't think anything of it. She had no reason to. And her husband reacted exactly the normal way a person would react about news. She turned her attention back to whatever else was in front of her at the time, and the story about Amber moved through their living room and left without her giving another thought. Until months later, at that point, she would not be able to think about that evening without it meaning something completely different. Because now it was the fall of 2007. The investigation had gone quiet by this point. Joe had now called Detective Roberts. Roberts had done the digging, the DNA warrant had been attained, and Roberts had shown up unannounced at that door of Giovanni's home with papers in his hand. Remember, that was that moment where Detective Roberts saw Giovanni look back into his house and tell his wife he was going with law enforcement. Well, we never got to know what happened when that door closed. Veronica told Detective what happened. That Giovanni said it was the police. He said they think I killed someone. Veronica heard that, and her mind immediately tried to reconcile all of it. It wasn't that she didn't understand what he was saying. It was the combination of him being connected to a murder. So she asked him directly. The question just coming out of her before she even had a chance to think about it. Did you? Did you? And he said yes. Wow. That was not what she was expecting, and her mind went somewhere else. Some version of this where she could survive. Okay, maybe it was a fight. Maybe something got out of hand. Maybe a situation escalated in a way that Giovanni didn't intend. Maybe it was someone he knew it was something that could be explained. It had a context, something that she could at least process before she had the courage to dig any further. Giovanni told her they were leaving the very next day for Mexico. That's what was happening. It wasn't even a conversation. It wasn't a discussion where both of them had a perspective of where they were going. It was information being delivered to her. This is what they were doing. So get ready. Veronica was so scared to push back. So she went. She packed what she needed to pack. She got in the car with her children and they moved. And she tried to figure out how to exist in this new version of everything. But the questions were hanging over her. At some point she asked her husband whether it had anything to do with what happened in that game store when they were watching that news together back in the living room in January. She just had this gut feeling, something she felt in that moment, what she heard, the story about the young girl, the video game store. But of course, it was because it was EP Games. Giovanni had worked for the same company. So of course, deep down, there was more than a gut feeling. Giovanni told her, yes, it was him. He killed Amber. Veronica just broke apart. Whatever version of this, she was trying to make make sense of fight a mistake, something with the explanation, it was gone. And then she asked him directly, why? She needed there to be a why, something underneath it. A reason that would give her a way to understand this. She wanted to know how he could do that. And his answer was so simple, it was chilling. He said, we needed money. They needed money. They not he, it was like he was implying she was part of this, their needs over someone's life. And that was it. That was his whole answer. we needed money. Veronica begged him to turn himself in. She said it clearly and directly. With whatever conviction she could find in that moment, go. Go to the police, tell them, tell them what happened. Let this be over. But Giovanni didn't go to the police. He went to his mother instead. And his mother, when she heard what her son told her, she made a decision. She told them, "Don't confess. Stay quiet. Keep your mouth shut. Think about your own children. And what you're going to prison would do to them. Don't give them anything." That was his mother's counsel. And Giovanni took it. Yikes. The apple doesn't fall that far from the tree, does it? But on the other hand, who knows how someone would react to that moment? I don't know. But after that, things between Veronica and Giovanni got worse than ever. The attention I'd know where to go. She was living with a man who had told her what he had done. And the mother, the told him to protect himself at all costs. Who had already demonstrated his response to pressure was not to become more reasonable. It was to become more violent. Veronica wanted no part of this she never did. It says, though, from the beginning in her gut, she knew this would happen. One evening at dinner, Veronica reached a boiling point. She told Giovanni she was done. Whatever that meant, whatever consequences were going to come. She had gotten to the end. She could not keep going. So she said it. And later that evening, Giovanni told her, "Let's go. Let's get in the car. We're going to go get some food for the kids." It sounded ordinary enough. But I kept thinking, "Don't. I mean, I can't go backwards and warn this woman." But she thought in that moment that it sounded like the kind of thing you would do in the middle of a household evening. So Veronica got in the car. But you could have guessed it. He didn't drive anywhere. That's old food. He drove to a road that she didn't know. And he kept driving. It was a dirt road away from people, away from traffic, away from any presence of the city around them. And he drove until they were somewhere in the middle of nowhere, just their car and the dark and that road and the two of them. And then he reached over and he hit the lock on the door. And that just gives me this physical feeling of fear. And I can only imagine what Veronica felt like. And then it got worse. She heard the locks engage and she understood immediately that something horrible was going to happen. The click of those locks was a thing her body registered before her mind had finished processing it. And she sat very still, trying not to show what she was feeling, trying to think. And that's when he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a gun. She told Detective Roberts on that call later that she believed in that moment that she was going to die that night. That was her genuine belief about what was going to happen to her. And she said she begged Giovanni not together. She said, please don't do it. Please don't kill me. He told her to do what he said and he forced her into the back seat. And there on that dirt road with no one anywhere nearby to hear her or to help her. He made her do things to him that she did not want to do. But she wanted to live so she complied. And when it was over, he pulled her out of the car. He put the gun in her hand and he told her to shoot him. He said his life needed to end that night. And she was the one that was going to end it. And if she chose not to be said, he would come for her. He would find her. He would find their children. He would find her family. No matter where any of them went, he would find them. And he stood there and told her this with a gun in her hand. But Veronica was in a killer. She did not shoot him. And at that moment, she had to think fast, think of words that might actually reach this man logically in some way. If she pulled that trigger, she would go to jail. And their children would have no parents, not one, not even the bad one, none. And in that moment, that survival argument, it worked. It reached him. He took the gun back. He drove her home at gunpoint. He got into bed, told her to lie down next to him. And she did as she was told. She got in bed right next to a killer. He was no longer Giovanni Rivera to her anymore. And she did not sleep. Not for a minute. She stayed awake the entire night just lying there in the dark next to a man who had just held a gun to her. Just waiting for morning to come if it even did. Thankfully, she was still alive when the sun came up. And he told her he was going to disappear. He drove Veronica and the children to her mother's house. And he told them to get out and he left. And there was Veronica alone, standing at her mom's house with her children and watching Giovanni's car pull away. She ran inside and she called the police. I can't even imagine how brave you would have to be to do that. And there she was telling Detective Roberts everything I just told you. And right after that call, he drove out there to speak with her face to face. A year and a half later, 18 months of dead ends. And now there was Veronica. Robert sat across from her and listened with the intent to take note of it officially this time on record. She told him everything we covered. She held back nothing. And what Roberts was sitting across from was not just a witness. She was a victim. She took the risk on her own life to come forward, but she did anyway. Robertson contacted the United States Marshall Service. The investigation shifted into an active coordinated manhunt for a named fugitive in a country where the ordinary tools of domestic law enforcement did not apply. Deputy U.S. Marshall Bobby Hotlin took the lead on the physical search. He coordinated his team with the help of Mexican authorities. They would be essential if this was going to end with an arrest rather than a standoff. But Giovanni hadn't just been sitting across the border. While he was there, he did something that accelerated this manhunt. He purchased a gun and it flagged law enforcement's attention. He had used that gun to threaten a woman, not Amber, not Veronica, someone else entirely, a separate victim, a separate crime, committed while he was already a fugitive. And that attack got him placed on the U.S. Marshall's 15 most wanted lists. And they worked for six weeks, tracking, building a picture of where Rivera was, who he was with, and how he was moving, coordinating with the authorities and waiting for the right moment to act. Finally, they had him on a relative's house. In that moment, everything aligned. The team moved in, they came through the door, and Giovanni was just sitting there. And guess what he was doing? The irony of this. He was playing a video game. And not just on any console either. One he had stolen from the store the morning he killed Amber Belkin. The same merchandise that had been pulled off those shelves packed up and carried out that back alley, while Amber was on the floor and that back off his dying. He brought them with him across the border and was using them and living with them. It was just, it's cold. And then Giovanni reached for a weapon and the Mexican authorities got to him before he could reach it. They physically restrained him and he was taken into custody. The date was Wednesday, August 6th of 2008. And the news was everywhere. The family had been calling detectives two or three times a day for a year and a half. And they got a call in the other direction. The detectives called Amber's parents. They said they finally felt that they were going to have some justice. And then there was the question about the death penalty, because the fact was because he was captured in Mexico and because he had to be extradited, the death penalty was off the table as a condition of bringing him back. That avenue was closed before they could even pursue it formally. Lee had an answer ready. She said that was okay. She said death would have been too easy and she meant that. She truly wanted Giovanni to sit in a cell and carry what he had done for the rest of his life. The following day in August 7th, Detective Roberts walked into a cold, loud jail in Mexico and sat down across from Giovanni for the second time. Remember the first time he was calm and friendly? Well, this time, Roberts had Veronica's account. He read Giovanni's Miranda rights, and this time he chose to speak. The first thing he said out of his mouth, the first statement to detectives who had spent a year and a half trying to find him was this. He had been carrying this for a long time. He'd been wanting to turn himself in, but he had always put the needs of others before his own. What? When Roberts heard that, he had to wait a moment to think about what he had just heard. Giovanni putting the needs of others before his own, the words echoed in Roberts' head. And what he didn't say out loud, but I think every person who heard those words is thinking with something like needs of others. What did a cold blooded killer know about the needs of others? What others? Amber Belk's parents, whose lives were dismantled because of his decision, those others, those needs, of course not. Robert sweated, and Giovanni spoke even further. He said he was ready to tell them what really happened. He said he'd been planning a robbery, he needed money, and he knew about that store specifically, not even cameras. That's why he chose it. He said he went through that morning with the duct tape and the knife, with the intention of tying up whoever was inside, taking what was there and leaving. But he insisted he had no idea. It would be Amber specifically. Well, Robert's heard that claim, and he filed it where he filed things that he didn't fully believe. Giovanni had worked for EV Games. He had inside information of how the company operated the network of stores, their personnel. He knew that Amber worked morning shifts. He knew that her assistant manager was Brandon, a man who was physically larger than Amber and that he imagined setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all day comfy grip. Just clump to a hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Maybe it's Mavily. He would come in later. Giovanni had gone there in a Monday morning during the window before the store opened when only Amber would be there all alone with that cash. Giovanni said when Amber opened the door, she recognized him immediately. She even addressed him by name, asking him, Giovanni, what are you doing? How horrifying is it to know that she was looking at her killer? She actually knew who he was. And at that point, he forced his way inside. He made her open the safe, which he knew had a time delay mechanism that kind built into retail safes to prevent exactly this kind of robbery from being simple. So there was a period of waiting. A period during which Amber was in the back office with this man who had just forced his way into the store, while the safe counted down to the point where it could be opened. And during that waiting period, Amber did something. She breached for her phone and it made me really sad because she saw that she had an opening and she moved toward it, trying to get the one thing in that room that could connect her to other people on the outside, the one thing that might get someone there. She reached for it and Giovanni saw her and he tackled her to the ground and he pinned her down on the floor. He bound her wrist with a duct tape that he had brought with exactly that purpose. The duct tape, he had walked in that store carrying knowing that he was going to need it. Why do you think? And he said she panicked, she screamed. And Giovanni said he told her to be quiet. And he yelled at her, don't scream. Please don't scream. But the way he explained it to Roberts almost made it feel like he was trying to make a deal with her like there was a version of this where she would have agreed somehow. To cooperate with this man who had just broken into her store, had a knife in his hand tied her up, knocked her down. He said he felt in that moment that he had reached a point of no return. So remember when he talked about thinking of other people's needs, no, I don't think he has the capacity. This proves it because he could have just left. He could have just walked out and stopped this. It would have just been an attempted robbery and no one would have died. But instead, he said he started thinking about everything he stood to lose. His family, his life. The calculation he was running in his head while Amber was on the floor in front of him while she's terrified and fighting for his life is what he had to lose. You know what he did to her. You know how long it took. He's a monster. But wait, there was something he said he did that at some point. And when I heard this, I was like, wow, that he loosened it, that he relaxed his grip. And he asked if she was okay. Really? He knew she wasn't okay. He said she made a sound and she asked. And then she stopped breathing. Was this even true? Who knows? It honestly makes no difference. He did what he did. There's no turning back now. At that point, he said he removes a duct tape from her wrists, took it with him knowing they were going to be able to connect it to him. He took the money from the safe. He gathered up the games and the consoles and anything he could grab. And he left through the back door through the alley behind the strip mall. And no one would be watching. And he walked away from that store and everything that he had done inside. Roberts had the confession. He had Veronica's account. He had Joe. He had exactly what he needed. Giovanni Rivera was brought back to Texas and charged with capital murder. I told you the death penalty already off the table. What followed over the next year and a half was the work of prosecutors and defense attorneys navigating the reality of what this case would look like at a trial versus what it would look like to take a plea deal. And the fact is the confession was there, but confessions can be challenged. When the defense starts cross-examining witnesses, they're going to find holes in stories. Joe's testimony was credible, but Joe was a single witness who had a complicated situation of his own. Even the fact that he waited so long to come forward and the physical evidence, it was very limited. Just a strand of hair without a confirmed DNA match. Fingerprints that were not clear and couldn't be definitive in either direction. A trial carried a risk. Cases that go to trial and fall apart do happen. And when they happen, it's a really serious consequence. That was not a risk that the district attorney was willing to take. Giovanni's lawyer explained that he had apologized for what he had done. He had admitted everything I told you and it left no question that he was the killer. Now what the attorney's job is is to paint their client in a way in the best possible way to make them look less bad. So he was presenting Giovanni as a man who had gone to the store non-intending to kill one, who just needed money. He was desperate and he found himself in a situation that escalated beyond what he planned for. The way that his lawyer was framing it is that when Amber recognized Giovanni, he felt trapped. He felt cornered. That the word his attorney used was in a box. That Giovanni had been in a box and that would happen next had come from that. From the panic of a man that saw no way out of a terrible decision that he had made. That it wasn't premeditated. That was the point. This was a defensive story and regardless of whether it was fully persuasive, it did give prosecutors something to negotiate. And the negotiations went on for roughly another year and a half. They finally arrived at a plea agreement. Giovanni Rivera would plea guilty, not to capital murder, but to murder. The charge would be reduced. In exchange, he would receive a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 30 years. He would also waive his right to appeal. That last piece was important and meant there would be no subsequent proceedings in which the conviction would be challenged. That's really, really good. Serving 30 years before he was even possibly going to be free. Which was highly unlikely by the way. The DA felt like this was the best outcome for Amber's family, something that wouldn't be reversed. And they agreed. On Tuesday, April 20, 2010, Giovanni Rivera sat in that courtroom and pleaded guilty to the murder of Amber Belkin. In there in that room were all the people who loved her, her parents, her friends, the people had been grieving her loss for years now. But it also held the man who had done this to her, her killer himself, who would only not occasionally in response to what was happening around him, who mostly just sat there staring at the family, at the friends, at the room, at Randy Belkin, in a way that Randy would later describe with precision. He said, Rivera sat, tapping his foot, not visioning with anxiety, not showing any visible distress, just tapping his foot. As if this whole proceeding was a waste of his time. And then it was her parents turned to speak. And they looked at this man who had killed their daughter. And Randy said that he was a monster. That Amber had been their soul. And then he went further. He said that he hadn't just taken one life. He had taken three, not just Amber's, but Randy's two and Lisa's as well. Three and probably many more with all the lives Amber had touched while she was alive. It has ripple effects. Both Randy and Lee asked her to wear a Y. Now once been multiple times directly looking at him. Why? Waiting for him to give a reason. That question had been unanswered for so long. And he gave them nothing. He just sat there and tapped his foot. Lee stood up. She faced him. She told him that when he took Amber's life, he had destroyed theirs as well. That they missed her every second of every day. And then she told him something specific. Something that was less a statement of fact than it was a demand that she was placing on whenever was left inside that man inside that monster. She said that when he closed his eyes she hoped he saw Amber. She hoped he saw what he had done to her. She wanted him to carry that image for the rest of his life. She wanted it to be the thing that met him in the dark and still the monster did not speak. Even her best friends, they faced him. They told him what the loss had done to them and still the monster was not moved. He did not address the family. He did not apologize. He did not offer a single word in the direction of the people sitting in that courtroom who had waited so long to be there with him. Randy said later that he had hoped for something not a justification on excuse just something human. Randy just wanted this man to say I'm sorry or she didn't deserve this just anything but they never got that. The sentence was handed down. Life in prison. Roll eligibility on August 10th of 2038. 30 years from the date of his arrest and Giovanni Rivera waved his right to an appeal. He was going to prison and he was staying there. He was taken from the courtroom and he was transferred to his unit in Huntsville, Texas. And if you're wondering what came of what he did to Veronica that night in the car and the other woman that he violated, they came with their own charges. 20 years for each. Two convictions tied to his time as a fugitive. Those sentences run concurrently alongside his life sentence. He's not getting out. There's a question that has been sitting underneath this entire story. It didn't start on January 29th of 2007. It was there before that morning in every shift Amber worked alone in a store without cameras in every opening routine that she ran by herself with the previous day's cash in every conversation she had with supervisors about how uncomfortable she felt in every time she showed up anyway because she wasn't going to walk away from her responsibilities. The question is this how many people are doing exactly what Amber was doing right now this morning in a retail store somewhere out there not in 2007, but now how many people are opening a store alone before the doors unlock for the day in a building where the security infrastructure wasn't worth the line item that it would have cost them in some quarterly budget review. How many of them have raised a version of Amber's concern to a manager or a district manager or HR and they've been heard and then watched nothing change. How many of them have made informal arrangements among themselves their own version of a death pact if something were to happen. Their own version of a message they would leave for their families if something happened because the official structure wasn't providing what it should have those questions stick with me it would have been so simple to just provide the security that Amber deserved. You should not feel like you're putting your life on the line to work a retail store for someone else's gain and after Amber was killed her parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against eb games and its parent company GameStop I'm sure you've heard of both the attorney Tim Maloney argued that Amber had repeatedly and explicitly told her supervisors she felt unsafe opening the store alone. The company knew the absence of cameras the practice of the morning openings by herself the system that put this young woman alone in this building before business hours full of cash. The lawsuit was asking the same question that Amber's boyfriend Fred Campbell had put in much simpler terms the day Amber's body was found he stood outside that store and reporters found him there and he looks straight at the camera and said this all could have been prevented and he was right. The court outcome does not change what happened but it was preventable and what does remain is who Amber was not just the story of how she died but everything that came before caring loving hardworking a girl with so many dreams who was loved so much both of her best friends Monica and Ashley named their daughters after her that's his own kind of statement they wanted to carry Amber's memory forward her name will be set out loud for years to come with a meaning behind its choice and that is so special Amber I'm so very sorry I'm sorry to Amber's family and I thank all of you for being here for Amber's story I will see you in my next video bye imagine setting your makeup then forgetting it's even theirs meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip no tightness no stickiness no residue just plum do we hydrated skin that still feels like your skin try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York maybe it's Maybelline