Part 2: She Was Just Minutes From Home - What Happened to Alyssa Otremba?

He enjoys giving a tell-all, and that's why it wasn't hard to get a full confession. As soon as he sat down with detectives, he was ready to walk them through every detail of Alyssa's killing. He was so cold and so casual about it, starting with how he was just sitting around, bored at home, as usual, his words, and wanted to make some quick money like everyone always tries to do. Hmm. Okay. At which point, he calls himself a piece of shit. Well, he's right about that. He's scum. He's less valuable than a piece of shit, actually. Javier admitted that he had never met Alyssa before the day of her murder, and he didn't target her personally or even know her name at the time of his attack. Instead, he had gone out to grab her. And saw Alyssa walk by. He made it sound like it was her iPhone that piqued his interest, as in he wanted to steal it. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now, Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. You get free nights every night, all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first-of-its-kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights in Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Energy for everything. Visit TXU.com for more information. Rep number 10004. But then he admitted, as soon as he saw her, he knew he wanted to have his way with her. He so simply and yet so callously told them how he followed her, grabbed her, raped her, and killed her, and then took her phone. When asked how old he thought she was. He said, probably really young. And when they said, how many times do you think you stabbed her? He said, probably 10. Detective Long asked him, could it have been more than that? And Javier said, probably a little bit more. That's why the knife is all bent. But there is much more to this. Because he said that he had fantasized about this kind of thing. And not only that, he admitted he had done this before. Six times in total. And here's the thing. He was a serial predator. He had been feeling these urges since he was little, since he was a kid. The police didn't have to take his word for it either. Because once they dug deeper, a whole history was revealed. And it wasn't a scatter of random, unrelated incidents. It was like a staircase. Every step a little higher than the last. And here's the evil minds part that make these videos different. We have the research. And we can analyze it. It started young. By Javier's own account. His first violation came when he was only 12 years old. Then in 2009, when he was a teenager himself, there was a girl at Centennial High School. She was 16. Javier went into the restroom, into the stall, put his hands on her throat. And he might not have stopped. Except another girl walked into the bathroom. That interruption was the only reason he let go. He backed off. And that 16-year-old girl was the only one who was able to get out of the bathroom. And that's when he was able to walk out that door. And at one point in his youth, the system actually had him. He was sent to the Nevada Youth Training Center in Elko. This is a juvenile facility. And this was for him taking a girl with the intentions that we have been talking about. The ones that this platform doesn't like me to say. It was motivated by something that he had a desire for. So understand, this was not some young man who just quietly slipped through life unnoticed. He had been caught. He had been held. So remember that as we move forward. By March of 2011, that staircase had climbed higher. That's when Javier attacked the other 15-year-old in the tunnel. I'm just going to call her MK since her name has never been public. And she lived. He jumped her on the street, tried dragging her towards that same tunnel near the vacant lot. And she fought him. He also put his hands on her neck. He later described watching the vessels. Bursts in her face as he tightened his grip and that he described it as liking it. It made him feel powerful, like he was in control. And he held on until she went limp. Then he pulled her deep into the tunnel out of sight. At some point, she came to and he was on top of her, still holding her down. And we don't know for certain whether he meant to kill her that day. What we do know is why he stopped. Because he heard someone. Someone getting close. Remember? That's what Elizabeth said. Her own little brother was there. He was one of those voices. And MK, even in that moment, was sharp enough to realize she had to use this opportunity to run. And he let her go. The one thing that guaranteed she wouldn't scream and pull those people into the tunnel is him letting her go. And he ran. And she got to survive. And then there's one more. Sitting in that same pile of history, about one month before Alyssa, Javier was in trouble. Javier was in Mexico for a family gathering, and he forced himself on his own cousin while they were at the beach. Mexican authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. So at the very moment Las Vegas detectives were standing over Alyssa's remains, telling themselves their killer had no record and had never been on anyone's radar, there was already a warrant out for him in another country for a version of the same exact thing done to a family member. And this is where I want to stop the story for just a moment. Because there's a pattern in all of this. And it's worth seeing clearly. What you're looking at across all those years is escalation. We've heard that word many times. But it is the word that criminologists use as a grimly predictable feature of repeat offenders. The behavior tends to climb higher and higher, more often more violent, each one pushing past the line the last one stopped at. And part of what drives that climb is reinforcement. Every time Javier got the sensation that he was chasing, that rush of power, that feeling of total control. It didn't satisfy him. It fed him. It raised the floor for what he needed next time. But here's what I can't stop thinking about. Look at every one of those earlier attacks. How they actually ended. The 16-year-old in the bathroom, a girl opened the door. MK in the tunnel, voices got closer. Every single time. The thing that stopped Javier was not Javier. It wasn't a limit inside him. It wasn't his conscious kicking in at the last minute. Some flicker of, what am I doing? It was always something on the outside. A door, a witness, a sound. The interruption did the work that his conscious never could. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, 3 cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. He knows teamwork. And BJ's knows savings. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's dot com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer. New members only. BJ's. Home of the save. So remember that empty database? When his DNA came back from CODIS with no match? The detectives read it as a blank slate. No record. No priors. A first timer. But the blank wasn't the truth. The truth was a kid who had already been locked up in Elko. A line of victims who happened to survive. And an activist. And an active warrant in Mexico. The system hadn't come up empty because Javier was careful or clever. It had simply failed to connect the things it already knew. So now picture September 2nd through all of that. Every other time, something had gotten in Javier's way. But on Grand Teton Drive, as the sun went down, there was no door. There were no other voices. There was a girl walking home on her phone on a long stretch of empty desert lots. Through a tunnel. Through a tunnel where no one could see. For the first time, there was nothing and no one. In that very moment, standing between Javier and the thing he'd been climbing towards all those years. So when he saw Alyssa walk by, he knew exactly what he wanted. And this time, he was going to go all the way to the end of it. Javier fell into step behind Alyssa, tailing her as she walked back towards home. He didn't attack her right away either. He took his time. He drew out the cat and mouse game. And along the way, he kept telling himself that he had to attack her because if he chickened out and let her go, he wasn't a real man. He wasn't tough or strong or any of the things he wanted to be. Except while Javier was following Alyssa, she sped up. She wasn't running away. It was just a slight change. She was walking a little faster than before. Javier wasn't sure if she had noticed him. Maybe she was trying to get away or perhaps she was just speeding up because she was almost home and eager to get back. inside. Whatever her reason, her stride became a bit longer and her pace picked up. And Javier had to walk a little quicker to keep up with her. But she didn't run. She just kept walking. It was a fast pace, but it wasn't so fast that either one of them drew any attention. He ended up following her for about a half a mile. There was a spot he'd been counting on in that tunnel that ran underneath the freeway, the same place he had attacked a girl months before. He meant to attack Alyssa there, but she was walking too fast. He couldn't close the distance in time. She got through it before he could make his move, which left him following her close to her own neighborhood. All the way towards the gate to where she lived. Javier could see she was almost to that gate, just a few feet away from it. She was close enough that she could reach out and open the door. And in a few seconds, she would be through that gate. And Javier wouldn't be able to follow her because it was too risky. Too many homes, too many people. A handful of moments, a couple of feet, and Alyssa would have been safe. And rather than let her slip out of his grasp, he jumped Alyssa. He knocked her over, pushing her away from the gate, pulled out his knife, and threatened her. Forced her towards the wash that cut through the vacant lot. But Javier hadn't anticipated that Alyssa would be a fighter. She struggled the entire time, the whole way back. At one point, she actually grabbed the knife. And tried to pull it away from Javier. He had both of his hands on the handle while her palm was against the blade. And during the struggle, her hand got cut. She bled on the ground the rest of the way. That was the trail that investigators had later found on the sidewalk. From the gate to the lot where her body was found. Once they reached the wash, Javier began pulling at her clothing. Violated her, and she was still struggling. And according to Javier, he also couldn't stop thinking about how it felt when her hand was cut. Even though that hadn't technically hurt her. Even though that hadn't technically been on purpose. It was an accident, and he hadn't planned on cutting her. When she grabbed the knife, he admitted it thrilled him. He liked the way it felt to hurt someone. And he wanted to recreate that rush. He's a true sicko. So even though he said he hadn't originally planned to murder her. Just to have his way with her, and scare her, and take her phone. He began those shallow thrusts to her body, and watched her expression. And he did it again. And again. And when he didn't feel like it could go anymore at one point. And he did it again. And again. he actually took his hand, balled it into a fist, and acted like his fist was a hammer. I can't even fathom the kind of monster that could even admit to doing this. It was like it was a game to him. After he yanked the knife out, he continued. He didn't stop until Alyssa stopped struggling and was totally still. Javier also admitted that he used the weapon to create the letters L and V on her body, initials for Las Vegas. Yeah. And wait till you hear why he said he did this, because I thought this was just so telling and also just so immature and callous. He said he did it, and these are his words, because it made him feel gangster. And I was thinking, real gangster? You're carving that into a person? The word that he reached for to explain it was gangster. And I really think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. As hollow and as stupid as it is, it's actually a doorway into understanding what we're really looking at. Because I want to be careful and precise about something. It's easy to get this wrong. When most of us hear what has been done in this kind of case, the wounds, how many there were, the way it was driven in, all that stuff, we could easily think rage. That word, right? We picture someone who snapped, who lost control, an explosion of fury that once it started, it couldn't be stopped. I've said it before, like, why did that person keep going? We've seen these cases before. And I understand why we go there, because rage is something that most of us have felt, like even the edge of it. It's the closest tool we have for a thing this far out of our own experience. But that's not what this was. Rage, what psychologists call reactive or effective aggression, it's hot, and it's fast, and it floods in, and it discharges, and then it's spent. It's almost like a firecracker. You know, it goes off, there's this big production, and then it's over. The person who acts out of rage is usually, in some sense, out of control in that moment. But what Javier did was the opposite of out of control. It was slow, it was methodical, it was deliberate. He had control the entire time. And control was the whole point. Look at the tell. The single most revealing detail in the whole confession, when she grabbed at the blade. It was an accident. He didn't plan it, but it gave him a rush. And then he made a choice to do it again on purpose, to recreate that sensation, that feeling. And right there is a line between rage and something entirely different. Rage doesn't pause. It can't. It doesn't stop to notice a feeling and then chase it. This was a monster who stumbled upon this sensation, and then went hunting for it. The accident became an appetite. And he fed it over and over. That watching as well is another tell. He describes studying her fear, her pain. In rage, a victim's suffering is almost incidental. The rage is about the person erupting, not about what they're actually doing in the moment. Here, it was a reward to him. It's sadism. It's when fear and helplessness and the suffering of another person, it's gratification. It is the end. The gratification is the controlled self. And once you understand it this way, the rest of Javier's behavior stops looking random, and it starts looking like a signature. Investigators draw a line between two things. An offender's M.O., their modus operandi, that's the practical stuff. The M.O., the things he does to actually pull off the crime and then get away with it. But a signature is the stuff that he does to actually pull off the crime and then get away with it. That these monsters do for no practical reason at all. Purely because they want to, or they need to. Stalking Alyssa for half a mile when he could have grabbed her in an instant, that wasn't efficient. It was savoring. The L.V., that had nothing to do with ending her life. It was a performance. The signature is the part where the mask slips, and you see what they're actually there for. And it's the same pattern running back, through every page of his history. Remember what he said about the girl in the tunnel that march, how it made him feel powerful? Same currency, every single time. The thing he was buying was control. Alyssa was to him, just the most complete version of that transaction that he had been making for years. But here's what I never want to lose underneath all this analysis, because it's easy. When you start naming the patterns and the psychology, to let the person at the center of it dissolve into some kind of case study, and that is not what I want. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Open soon. Say it so plainly that Alyssa was not a passive figure in this. She fought him and she didn't stop fighting. The reason we can sit here and map out the psychology in all this is because he confessed to everything. And the reason we know how hard she fought is the same. Her resistance is written into the evidence right alongside his cruelty. So this is not a man who snapped. It's a monster who knew exactly what he was doing. And when he was done, he was calm enough to start thinking about cleanup. Because he was scared of getting caught. That's the only time he ever got emotional during this entire interview. And whether he felt gangster or not, the investigators now had a full confession. It had taken him a full hour to get all of these details out. But now everything was on record, video and audio. And that wasn't all the investigators had. He also admitted that he had a duffel bag in his house hidden above the ceiling in an attic so no one could accidentally stumble upon it. And Javier explained, that after what he did, he was covered in blood, it was soaked into his shoes, his shirt, his jeans, so he hopped over a fence on the way home and jumped into a swimming pool to wash off. But afterward, instead of just throwing away all of his clothing, he stuffed them in the duffel bag and put them in the attic. And Alyssa's phone was in the slats of his bedroom window. After he explained where all this was, they went to his home, they found the duffel bag exactly where he said it would be, and sure enough, it was full of his clothing, still bloody, and the gas can, which had his fingerprints pulled from them later. And there was the knife, a broken knife, bent a little bit at an angle, with blood on it. But the most telling was the tip, broken off. Forensic teams were able to confirm it was the same knife used in the murder. The missing piece matched what was taken from her skull. This confirmed for the investigators that Javier was telling the truth. Not that they had any doubt, but the evidence was strong enough for them to charge him with murder. And when Alyssa's mom Jennifer was informed that they had someone under arrest, she was stunned. but she wanted to make sure it was really him, that they really had her daughter's killer. And then she felt like she could breathe a sigh of relief because he wouldn't be able to hurt someone else. Alyssa's loved ones were also told about Elizabeth Morales and her part in bringing Javier to justice. Her bravery did not go unnoticed. Megan even said that she thought Elizabeth was absolutely amazing for what she did. And you might be wondering about Daniel, the friend who helped Javier buy matches and gasoline and then drove him to the crime scene. Well, he was in charge with anything. And that may or may not surprise you. Investigators did believe everything he told them about how he never saw the body, he didn't actually help Javier dispose of the remains, and yes, he was in the wrong when he chose to help Javier and keep his secret. He had the option of calling 911 right away and reporting it that night, but he didn't. Daniel was young, he was scared, and he considered Javier one of his very best friends. He even told the investigators that he wanted to believe the best about his friend. He was trying to hold on to that tiny shred of doubt in his mind, which told him that maybe Javier hadn't done anything wrong. And if that instinct sounds familiar, it should because we have a name for these two things that were pulling at Daniel that night. And we've talked about both of them, whether it was an Evil Minds video here, or actually I remember one of my Dark Liberty videos recently, the Ann Hester case. It's called "The Motivated Reasoning and the Bystander Effect." There's a part of Daniel that kept choosing the comfortable story over the obvious one. Javier is probably just, "Hi, he probably didn't really do this. Probably isn't what it looks like." That's Motivated Reasoning. It's believing a thing because the alternative is unbearable, not because the evidence isn't supporting it. And there is the part of him that drove away from that lot and assumed the situation would somehow resolve itself without him. That him as a bystander doesn't have a reason to act because someone else, somewhere, somewhere out there, would handle it. And we've seen that too. Knowing the terms doesn't excuse what Daniel did, but it does explain how an ordinary frightened kid talks himself into helping buy matches and then drives home telling himself, "You know, I wasn't really part of anything." By the time all of this reached a courtroom, Javier had already confessed everything. There was no whodunit. So you might assume the legal part was just a formality, that he would just plead guilty and we'll skip ahead to sentencing. And that's what almost happened. But I need to tell you this is a little bit different. It went sideways in a way that was pretty fascinating. It tells you something about how the law actually works. In February 2016, Javier did something his own defense attorney called extraordinarily unusual. Javier announced he wanted to plead guilty to all ten counts against him, with no deal, no negotiation, no promise from prosecutors that they'd take the death penalty off the table in exchange. He wanted to admit everything and go straight to the penalty phase, which is what I just said, we'll just skip there and get it done. Why would anyone want to do that? Why would you plead guilty if you're not going to get anything and you're going to potentially lose your life? It wasn't a breakdown of conscience. It was a strategy. Of course it was. By pleading guilty, the defense could stand in front of the jury and say, look, he took responsibility. He didn't drag a grieving family through a trial. He's remorseful. Give him life instead of death. And pleading guilty also preserves certain rights to appeal down the road. So in a cold, tactical sense, it was logical. Except Javier tried to get cute about all of it. And here's where you need one piece of legal background that I thought was very interesting in this state of Nevada, first degree murder isn't a single thing. The state can prove it three different ways. Three separate theories, any of which gets you there. One is that the killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated, meaning he thought about it and he decided to do it. The second is that it was committed by means of torture. And the third is felony murder. That's a killing that happens in the course of another serious felony like kidnapping or essay. Prosecutors charged him under all three. And when Javier entered his plea, he admitted to two of them, torture and felony murder. But he refused to admit to the third. He would not say the murder was premeditated. He maintained, as he always did, that he never planned to kill Alyssa, that he only decided to do it in the moment her hand was cut. So why fight so hard over that one word premeditated? When he was pleading guilty to the two other theories anyway, when admitting either one alone already made him a first degree murderer, like what's the point? It's because premeditation isn't just about the conviction, it's about the penalty. Admitting the killing was deliberate hands the prosecutors more ammunition at sentencing, more aggravating factors to put in front of a jury when they're deciding whether a man lives or whether he dies. By taking the premeditation off the plea, Javier was trying to plead guilty to a crime while quietly limiting how bad the state could make it look when they came for his life. So he could dish it out, but he can't take it. Not really a gangster. I would call you a coward, but the court wouldn't allow it. And I actually liked that the judge was a female. It just added something to it. The judge ruled he should not be able to be permitted to plead guilty and carve out a theory in order to limit the state at the penalty phase. The plea on the murder count was thrown out. His attorneys, of course, appealed it all the way up to the Nevada Supreme Court. In February of 2017, the justices shut the door. It was unanimous. Justice Christina Pickering said it in a way that I had to share. She said a defendant has the right to plead guilty, but he does not have the right to plead guilty a la carte in order to dodge the state's charging decisions. You don't get to order off of a menu, admit parts you like, decline the parts you don't and limit the prosecution in the process. End quote. I had to share. I had to share because she really handed it to him. His attorneys also tried to argue double jeopardy. It did not apply in this case. I'm not going to go into all that, but they tried. The math ended up like this. Nine of his ten guilty pleas stood, but the murder count, the one that mattered the most, the one that his life was depending on, that one went to trial. And that created one last kind of strange wrinkle in all this. The judge decided the jury at the trial should not be told any of this happened. They wouldn't hear that. Javier had already confessed, already tried to plead guilty, already admitted the murder under two separate theories. The defense was put in an almost impossible position of contesting a murder their client had confessed to in detail, going through the motions of a defense for a man who already told everyone in his own words over the course of an hour exactly what he did. So it was like, why are we even having this trial? I'm sure that's what you were thinking when you already knew he confessed. In March of 2017, more than five years after Alyssa died, a jury that didn't know about any of this sat down to decide whether Javier had murdered Alyssa and if he had, whether he should die for it. It was definitely a weird hearing. Javier stood by his confession. He still freely admitted what he had done, and he was only going through the motions of pretending to defend himself in court because of that weird legal loophole. It required him to. On the stand, he was acting self pitting and at one point even said, I should just die. That mask fell off because when he finally addressed the court during the penalty phase, he apologized. He said he was truly sorry for the entire tragedy. It was a tragedy, right? No, it wasn't a tragedy. It wasn't just a tragedy. You created it. He asked the jury for mercy, not for himself. He said it was for his family and said that whatever they decided, he would respect it. There was no room for resentment. No reasonable doubt. The jury deliberated for about three hours and they found him guilty of first degree murder. Now, when it came time to decide whether Javier would live or whether he would die, the trial split into two stories. Now it's not arguing about what he did anymore. That was already settled. They were arguing about how a person becomes someone who does what he did. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. He knows teamwork and BJ's knows savings. Home of the Save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com/Mosquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer. New members only. BJ's. Home of the Save. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime, summer savings. It's called Free Nights and Cool Summer. You get free nights every night all year long, plus a 25% bonus toward your daytime use all summer. It's a first of its kind plan created for how Texans actually use energy. Discover how much more you could save with Free Nights and Cool Summer. TXU Energy. Rep number 1-0-0-0-4. Which is when you take everything away, the oldest question we have. Are you born with it or are you made? Is it nurture nature. The defense is going to tell the maid story, and I wanna give it a fair hearing so you can look at it closely. His attorneys argued that Javier suffered from a brain disease, something that caused intellectual deficiencies or impulse control, bad decision-making, and they told the jury his father mistreated him physically, that his father's side carried a history of violence, and that mental illness ran through his mother's family too. The picture they were painting was of a kid who got dealt a catastrophic hand from both directions, his mother's and his father's side, that he never got a fair shot at becoming anything else than what he ultimately became, a killer. But here's the part that people don't wanna hear. Some of this could be true. It's not all BS. Childhood mistreatment genuinely does rewire a developing brain. Early exposure to things like this, neglect of father's fists, those things leave real marks on how a person handles impulse, fear, empathy. And there are some differences in brain function that show up in some chronically violent people. None of that is invented. If you followed this channel for some time, you would know that I never pretend the science isn't real just because the person attached to it is a monster. But here's where I have to be honest in the other direction as well. Explanation is not the same as excuse. And the gap between those two words is everything because for every single risk factor that the defense named, there are millions of people walking around who check that same box and have never hurt a soul. To be transparent and vulnerable, I am one of those people. And I sadly know that many of you can relate, especially to this next part. Someone who was mistreated in adolescence, the overwhelming majority of them grow up to be careful, gentle, loving parents, precisely because they know what it feels like. And they fear physical mistreatment and they respect other people's boundaries, impulse problems, learning deficits. None of those are a one-way road to a tunnel and a knife and killing someone. Plenty of people carry that exact weight and they spend their entire lives making sure no one else ever has to feel it. A bad hand explains why you have a hard life. It does not hand you a knife. And at some point, a person is still the one who chooses. And the prosecution had something that spoke to that choice directly. Because remember the question that had been hanging over this whole case? He insisted from the very beginning that he never planned it. Remember that? It wasn't premeditated, it was in the moment. The defense leaned hard into that. The eye lost control because it fits neatly with a story about a broken brain that couldn't stop itself. But then the homicide detective Dan Long took the stand and told the jury when investigators had pulled off of Javier's electronics. Shortly before Alyssa ever walked past him, Javier had been online searching for CSAM. And if you don't know what it is, it's an acronym. It's got the letters S-A in there. It's material depicting non-adults, and I think you get the picture. He was looking at images of that plus harm. And later, while his victim Alyssa laid dead in a lot, before he comes back with the gasoline, he returned his computer and he searched for how to dispose of a body. Think about what those two searches do to the "I couldn't help it" story. Javier wanted the jury to believe that he couldn't stop himself, like he was on autopilot. The first search before means the appetite wasn't something Alyssa triggered. It was already loaded that night. He was feeding the exact fantasy that he would later act out. That was hours before she was ever in frame. This wasn't a man ambushed by an urge that he had never seen before in himself. He had been rehearsing it on screen. And the second search, the after, is maybe the more damning one of the two because of how calm it is. A man that's supposed to be drowning in uncontrollable impulse. A brain that can't manage itself. That's not the kind of person that walks to their computer and methodically researches cleanup. That's not impulse. That's actually problem solving. That shows your brain is working. That shows you're coming up with a plan. That's a person assessing his situation, identifying a logistical hurdle, and looking for that solution. The same deliberate, in-control quality we saw. In the killing itself. It was right there in the aftermath. He wasn't out of his mind. He was managing a project. So when you set those two stories side by side now, the broken brain that couldn't stop against the search history that shows a man priming his appetite beforehand and then solving problems after, the second story is the one the evidence keeps backing up. The things that happened in his childhood are real. But it didn't reach into that tunnel, move his hand more than 80 times. He did that. Deliberate, awake, and present, for every second. The jury heard both of the stories. And in the end, they chose death. A judge formally handed down the sentence weeks later on May 9th of 2017, which happened to be Javier's 25th birthday. It's a nice present to get. On top of the death sentence, he was given an additional 116 years for all the other charges that this platform will not let me say. I'm already on thin ice. But he had been 19 years old. 19 when the crime occurred. And 24 when the jury chose his sentence. Making him the youngest person on death row at the time. The ruling filled Alyssa's loved ones with mixed feelings. Her mother gave a statement. She said, quote, "We're grateful that justice has finally been done. "In all honesty, this is not a win for anybody. "Two families have been destroyed. "And this journey has been hard. "And it's just beginning for us as well." End quote. And she was right. Alyssa's family, was still devastated by her loss. And Javier's family also had to deal with what was happening to him. He would eventually die for what he had done. He was paying the highest price for his crime. But if you think he mellowed out after sitting on death row and recognizing that he was going to die, think again. Even while behind bars, Javier was violent. In August of 2020, at Eli's State Prison, Javier attacked another inmate. He pulled out a shiv. Then none of the guards knew he had and he stabbed another man before anyone could step in. And his victim was no ordinary inmate either. It was Amar Harris, another death row prisoner convicted of the notorious 2013 shooting on the Las Vegas Strip that happened after he was racing his Range Rover against Kenneth Cherry's Maserati. He opened fire and ended up killing three people. And in a really strange twist, Harris and Javier had the same defense attorney. Harris was rushed to the hospital in critical condition. He was on life support, but he survived. And Javier's punishment was solitary confinement. But still, his legal journey wasn't over. There was a death penalty bill. I'm not going to get all legally into it, but Alyssa's family did not want this to pass. The Nevada lawmakers had tried to repeal capital punishment in so many years, 2001, 2003, 2017, 2019. And not one of those bills had ever cleared a committee. But then. The first one did. In April of 2021, it went further than any of them. And the assembly actually passed it 26 to 16. And this wasn't only about abolishing the death penalty for future cases, it was about all the other ones. They would be converted to life sentences. All 70 people at the time that were on death row, including Javier. If this bill passed, the death sentence that they fought five years to win would simply be gone. So Alyssa's family fought the only way they knew how, in public. They gave interviews. They testified. And through all of it, they made sure, and they had to, over and over again, to talk about exactly what this man had done. Jennifer put it bluntly. She said he didn't consider Alyssa's life, so why should his be considered? And in the end, the bill died. It did not pass. So the death penalty is still law in Nevada. - Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. - I coach football. - Now, Coach Hank, he saves up to 25% off grocery store prices. 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. - And that's just pre-game. - He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach, home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com/mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon, limited time offer, new members only. - This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free, free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's a first of its kind plan, created for how Texans actually use energy. TXU Energy, energy for everything. Visit txu.com for more information, rep number 10004. - But I want to be honest about what this does and doesn't mean for Javier, because, it's its own kind of strange limbo. The last person that was actually executed in that state was back in 2006. Between the legal challenges, procedural hurdles, and all the machinery involved, the state has a death penalty that it almost never carries out. Only time will tell how everything turns out. But in the meanwhile, Alyssa's family is still trying to deal with their grief. They've been fighting for Alyssa nonstop since the hour she went missing. Along the way, the people who love her find ways to make sure she is never forgotten. started almost immediately in the days right after she was found. They built their own memorial, a makeshift one, right at the edge of the vacant lot. Flowers, candles, handwritten letters. Alyssa's marching band instructor, Francisco Servin, came and stood among them all to pay his respects. And then on the evening of Wednesday, September 7th, hundreds of people gathered in the parking lot at Arbor View High School for a candlelight vigil. Alyssa had only been a student there for a matter of days, but you would have never thought that from the turnout. The marching band, the one she had joined as a percussionist in the very first week of school, organized the whole thing. Its members wore green ribbons in her honor, and they decided that future concerts would be a dedication to her. A lot of the other students came simply dressed in white, and one by one, kids, their parents, they took turns talking about Alyssa. How it was hard not to love her, that she had an infectious laugh and smile, and the family made something lasting out of her name. The Alyssa Otremba Scholarship, given to a student in Arbor View Marching Band. And in the years that followed, a quiet place took shape for her near where she was lost. The same ground, remade into something peaceful. There's a shade tree now, planted at the center of a small paved circle, with flowers blooming at its base. There's a bench with a plaque that carries her name, so people have somewhere to simply sit with her. And there's a large stone set off to the side with a poem on it, and people still come. And they still come. And they still leave flowers and balloons in the colors green and white, especially as her birthday in May comes back around. The poem on that plaque is entitled The Garden of Promise by author Sherry Bradley Neal. And I wanted to read a portion of this poem, because it so perfectly strikes a balance between sadness and hope. It says, quote, There is a place I've been told beyond an open gate. All have been invited, where friends and loved ones wait. It holds eternal promise, of everlasting peace. No pain or sorrow ever comes, and teardrops there have ceased, end quote. When it comes to murder cases, the trauma never really ends. There is always someone who remembers the victim, who's still grieving, who's still in pain. And the only comfort they have is the hope that somehow, sometime, things might get better, even if they have to die to achieve that peace. Cases like this are heartbreaking, because every time someone loses their life violently, that ripple effect goes outward. So many other people are hurt by their loss. And I'm so sorry to Alyssa and her family. And one of those ripples happened in Megan's life. And I want you to hear what she said about her sister and her loss. It is hard to describe her, but we, um, for this, we were going through a bunch of pictures, and she had written something online. It was like a paragraph of autobiography, if you will. And she had a quote that I really, I really, really loved. And it said, I always wanted to fit in, but realized that I was born to stand out, so I no longer strive to be like everyone else. And that made my heart soar, because that's what she did. It's, it's really hard to sum up, because she was my world. We were, um, we were, we were inseparable. And, excuse me. So it's, it's something that, um, that we battle with a lot. When she died, I, I quit marching band, because I didn't go to practice. I couldn't, um, I, I, I didn't really go to school very much. My grades slipped, um, thanks to my teachers. I passed. But, um, I, I, I didn't really have a whole lot of friends, because she was my friend. You know, she was, um, she was my best friend. So it was hard to, um, make other friends. And she, um, at, at Arborview, when she died, I was known as the, the, the dead girl's sister. After she died, we, we would have to move, um, because we were, we were so close to where she was found, and we just couldn't do that. Um, but it's hard, because she, she's just not there. You know, she, she, she would make us laugh, and she, she just had this cackle that, that can make anybody laugh. And I think we can't hear that anymore. I can hardly stop myself from tearing up listening to that. And we can't undo the trauma or give closure to anyone. But we can remember those who have lost their lives and tell their stories, which is why I chose to honor Alyssa today. Thank you so much for being here for her story. I will see you in my next video. Bye.