Found Deceased WA - Samantha Jacobs Rios, Missing 1988/founnd 2016, *Suspect died suddenly*

[Gardener1850]

Summary:
Samantha went missing in 1988, was officially reported missing in 1992. Her remains were just recently found.
Her husband has long been a suspect in her disappearance/death but on the day he was supposed to talk to LE he died in a head on collision.
Authorities suspect the car accident was intentional but they are STILL investigating Samantha's case.

"Back on May the 18th, the Sheriff's Office was called out to a site in the Gleed area, where some people that were involved had uncovered some bones that they believed to be human," said Mike Russell, PIO for the Yakima County Sheriff's Office.

And those bones belonged to Samantha Rios, the woman who had been missing for almost three decades.

For years, Samantha's husband, Jose Maciel, was considered a suspect."Investigators received information throughout the years that Jose was telling people things, including confessing to some people that he had killed Samantha," explained Russell.

But the Yakima Sheriff's Office say that the people who heard these things from Jose were either unavailable or unwilling to talk, so there was never enough evidence to book him, until they found Samantha's body. They were finally planning to question Jose Maciel last Thursday.

"In the afternoon on Thursday, just before the person was supposed to have met with the detective, he died in a head-on car crash with a semi in the Benton County area," Russell informed us.

And though the Sheriff's Office cannot confirm that this car crash was intentional, they say that's what the evidence seems to point to, leaving justice for Samantha unserved.

http://www.nbcrightnow.com/story/33...n-body-is-found-ends-in-suspects-sudden-death

*I couldn't find a thread for Samantha and wasn't sure where to post this, so move as necessary, thanks.

 

[2Hope4]

Well way to mess up yet another person! That trucker will have that death to deal with, and he sure didn't set out that morning on his JOB with the thoughts someone would commit suicide by running into him! Prayers for his recovery!

I'm sorry Samantha wasn't reported earlier, nor found earlier. I hope that monster has had an awful existence thinking about murder all these years. I hope he hadn't remarried, or had kids and ruined even more lives!

 

[eucalyptuz]

What a mess.
It seems he actually lived an exemplary life in the time since Samantha's death, put two kids through college after losing his (2nd?) wife to cancer in 2013. (and to be fair, although this may look like a suicidal death because of related guilt, he has not had the benefit of a trial and I think we should go a little easy out of respect for his children)
http://www.yakimaherald.com/special...cle_3bf286f8-f373-11e4-a149-83e0daf59869.html

 

[Gardener1850]

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts/post. I didn't know WHAT to think when I read this and I could not find much about Samantha's cold case online. I know the sleuths here will dig up more info.

 

[imstilla.grandma]

In 2016, skeletal remains were uncovered by a heavy-equipment operator moving dirt in the Gleed area and were identified as belonging to Rios. She had been stabbed to death. Detective Chad Michael of the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office took a new look at the missing person case that had gone cold years before.

“The case had not been taken to the end. Finding her remains in that location led us to the suspect,” said Yakima County Sheriff Robert Udell. “These missing persons cases are like homicides for us. They never go away.”

As the issue of missing and murdered Native women and girls gets more attention in Washington state and throughout the U.S., advances in DNA technology are spurring investigators to take another look at cold cases in hopes of bringing resolution — and, potentially, justice — to family and friends.

Udell plans to create a cold case task force in an effort to do that in Yakima County.

“It’s a direction we want to go. We have dozens of cold cases back there,” he said.

Reservations throughout the United States have long struggled with violence that disproportionately affects Native women and girls. At the 1.3 million-acre Yakama reservation, no one knows exactly how many Native girls and women have gone missing within or near its boundaries.
Cold cases heating up again as Yakima County sheriff plans task force