Nadia Palacios and her boyfriend murdered an innocent man that she thought had sexually assaulted her.
By the time she was 21 years old, Nadia had dropped out of school and regularly smoked dope with a gang. She started taking harder drugs.
In July 2011, her house was a den for drugs because of Roberto Guzman, a 23 year old drug dealer. On July 2, 2011, while Nadia, Roberto and a friend were in an S.U.V. outside his house. Three masked black men with guns took them out of the car and tied them up. They demanded Roberto's money and drugs, who refused to give in.
In an attempt to break him, the gunmen violated Nadia with a butter knife. Roberto finally gives in. She reported the sexual assault. But within 24 hours, she stopped cooperating with the police. She didn't want police-style justice, she wanted street-style revenge.
Roberto thinks the person responsible was 27-year old Daavid Campbell, whom he knew. Nadia thought Daavid, or "Da", was the man responsible for the assault because both the perpetrator and Daavid called her "baby girl". She also though the voice and smell matched and he wore the same sneakers as the rapist.
On July 5, 2011, the two lured Campbell to an autoshop with the promise of drugs, bringing a friend along the way. Nadia locked the door and told the two men to go to the office inside the body shop. Inside the office was Roberto. His friends, Eric Castillo, 23, and Jose Horta, 18, were there as muscle and backup. The three men manhandled Daavid and Nadia demanded a confession. But Daavid denied responsibility. Castillo took a hammer and hit him in the face, saying "Now do you remember?"
Nadia put a plastic bag on his head and further interrogated him. But when he wouldn't confess to the crime he didn't commit, Nadia retrieved a blowtorch and burned him three times on the thigh, the penis and the other thigh three times. Daavid died of his injuries and his body was dumped in a pond. A passerby discovered the body the next day.
There was little forensics for the police to investigate. Campbell's death looked like a fatality of a drug war for a year.
In 2012, Nadia arrested for shooting a garden gnome with a shotgun. To get out of trouble, she turned into a dirty rat and informed about the murder. Nadia told the police that Roberto told her about the murder, but the police thought she was involved. Nadia told police he deserved it because he raped her. But an investigation discovered Daavid was innocent.
The real rapist has never been identified.
In 2014, all were convicted of first-degree murder. Palacois was sentenced to 40 years in prison.