what is he doing what is he taking off he's taking off he has gloves he has gloves in his hands he has gloves gloves and what else a a blank the blanket my God that is my blanket when 19-year-old Mia Marano goes missing it isn't the police who uncover the biggest clues about what happened to her but her family in fact it was through their own investigation that they would not only uncover a suspect but it was Mia's family who through their own determination eventually caught the culprit on camera in 2021 19-year-old Mia had just
started her second year at Valencia College where she was pursuing an associate in arts degree she was balancing her education and employment at the Arden Villa's Apartments in Orlando some 200 miles away from her close-knit family in Broward County Florida she also lived at the same Apartments where she worked though they didn't know to be concerned at the time Mia had recently asked several of her family members if they could come to Orlando for the weekend to see her when no one could she instead decided to fly home to Fort Lauderdale for a visit though
her family was excited to have her back home there was a chilling reason Mia felt like she needed to get away not knowing what was about to unfold her aunt Simone later recalled this I felt like she was a call for help when she asked us all to come this weekend and no one couldn't make it I feel like it there was a call for help and I wasn't there for her I wasn't there for her at 5:06 p.m. Friday September 24th 2021 Mia sent a text to say she was waiting for the Uber to
take her to the airport before she would fly home after this she suddenly stopped responding all calls to her phone went straight to voicemail and all text messages said that they weren't delivered given that Mia was incredibly close with her family and kept in near Constant Contact act with most of them they likely noticed something was wrong within mere moments of it happening however it wasn't until a few hours later that her family became certain something was a miss her grandmother and grandfather later spoke to a police officer and tried to explain her sense of
urgency at the time I say about 6 or 6:15 my husband and I left her husand to go out to dinner I said strange me has called me I called and the phone just said calling m so I forget if it was in the area we were in I call again St thing my stomach started to I'm not psychic but I can always tell when something is wrong because I I wouldn't call M more than twice and she' not answer even if she has say m I'm doing something MMA can I call you right back
so I went to the air and I waited and waited and waited and there was your when Mia never got off the plane it confirmed her family's worst fears little did they know things were only going to get more Twisted from here they reported her missing soon after and one of her family members called 911 I'm calling to find out if I can have a wellness check please the address correct I just wanted to know if an over picked her up or not and then from then her phone has been completely shot off or dead
we're not sure we had um a friend go but um they're not going to Door nobody's I just want to make sure that she's not there okay I mean I can get a call sign up for a deputy to go out there but a deputy gonna do the same thing he's GNA knock on the door and if no one answerers the door he can't break down the door this call and lackluster response from police would set the tone for the investigation an officer eventually did go to m as apartment at Arden Villas but there was
no answer when they knocked on Mia's bedroom door when they tried to open the door they found it locked from the inside they then headed to the window from outside please note that the police department made redactions to the video blacking out what the officer saw inside Mia's room when they went around the front of the apartment the officer was met by Mia's cousin Kaye who after realizing that Mia's location was turned off on her phone decided to take matters into her own hands and start looking for her um no she's definitely not in there
no um did you see like any like you couldn't see inside I yeah no I saw inside did you see like any bags I saw two suitcases under her oh under her bed I'm not sure if that's I think it was always there yeah but other than that did you see like a teddy bear on the bed uh I can't remember now it if she was yeah the room it looked clean does anything look out place the window yeah window yeah open ultimately the officer left law enforcement would fail to recognize the urgency of Mia's
case until later perhaps only when it was already too late with this less than helpful response from police Mia's cousin Kaylee looked Elsewhere for help and the security guard Jay was here and he we approached him asked him if you knew anything and he said yes that he was here when the police were there and we said okay like if you could please just accompany us so you could tell us about what happened when they were there because they knew Mia's door was locked Kaylee and Jay headed to the window that the officer had looked
through once we heard that the window was unlocked we automatically knew that that was off because my cousin had installed the window locks on all of their Windows to prevent anyone from opening it from the outside especially with them being on the first floor right when we went up to the back he showed us the the window um and we of course tried to avoid touching anything because we didn't want to interfere with anything he did mention that he saw fingerprints and that he took some himself with some tape because when he asked the police
officers to take some that were there earlier they said that they were not going to um because it wasn't that type of um case I guess later the security guard would alleged that when he tried to hand over the fingerprints the deputy actually laughed and said this isn't a high priority case however this allegation has never been proven Jay's immediate frustration for how the scene and Mia case was handled was palpable and now I'm getting mad one of Y deputies came out here did not do the job that he was supposed to do me being
a security guard I should not have had to De the stuff that I did to have a officer come out here and look me in my face and tell me to keep the evidence that was lifted off the window seal oh couple weeks from now maybe we'll need it no you're supposed to take that nap as strange as it was that the locks had been removed from Mia's window it was even stranger that through the window Kaye could see that Mia's bedroom door had actually been barricaded From the Inside by a small bookcase then she
noticed something else that would later become integral while we were back there I was looking at the parking lot um the Woody Woody area behind with the fence we were like why is there a chair behind the fence he said oh that's been there for a long time and I was like it's kind of weird though cuz the placement of it looks directly into their windows it's kind of at a slight angle so that was a little bit concerning um but he was like no that chair has been there for a long time so I
was like okay no problem while we were back there he mentioned um another thing that was odd to him was that most people in the guest parking lot don't park like parallel park in this one corner which made sense to me because there are parking spots that go straight there so if you're parallel parked back there they can't get out so he said what was weird to him is that there was a large tire track this all seemed to hint that some awful fate had befallen Mia but what exactly remained to be seen into the
apartment we all put on gloves and again asked Jay to come with us just to he I guess with the name security he made us feel more secure having him there um we went in we went into her room avoided touching anything and we immediately noticed that her room was in a disarray very out of character from Mia however even more shocking was the sight of something still in her room she has her decorative pillows her sleeping pillows and then of course the king of the world her Teddy so Teddy usually sits right on the
bed if he's not going with her wherever it is that she's going if she's going to work there's times that Teddy goes to work every trip Teddy goes Teddy's been on vacation with other people Teddy has lived his life with this in mind her family knew she wouldn't simply have left the bear behind and yet Teddy was still in her room this meant one thing Mia hadn't left she wasn't not answering her phone and her phone wasn't simply dead she had been taken but the teddy bear wasn't the most concerning thing discovered in Mia's room
as Kaylee explains when we walked in the cubby that was blocking the door was in the walkway and there was um her chain was busted she usually wears two chains one that says her name and then a second one that has a heart pendant so I know the chain is the heart pendant one because the pendant was missing um and the Mia one would have two separate pieces so we saw that saw that her Bengals she has a lot of Bangals and they were given to her as gifts from a like old family friend so
they're very sentimental for her so to see them on the floor was a lot to see them bent that way I was like okay there's definitely something wrong here then we also noticed the blood on the pillow and we were thinking like of course you look at it and you're like thinking well maybe could be old and then but then we're like but she would have tried to get that out or she would have at least put a pillowcase on to cover it up cuz you're not going to be sleeping on a naked bloody pillow
so um that was a little bit concerning as well after that we continued to look around the room and found little bits and pieces um that just kind of indicated that there was some type of struggle the bed was moved we could see the grooves in the the um carpet were different they were PL they were here and then the legs were pushed off the Bed Head was kind of crooked um and then while examining underneath the bed someone flipped over the rug she has a blue furry rug and found a box cutter when we
saw that we were like okay that definitely can't be M as the box cutter would turn out to be an important clue as would the item they found in the trash a single rose already feeling like Mia's disappearance wasn't receiving the kind of urgent attention they knew it needed the rest of her family traveled the same day she was reported missing to gather at the Arden Villa's Apartments to continue the search knowing that this was the last place she'd been seen they would soon have a shocking and disturbing interaction it's unclear exactly what happened in
the moments prior but one of Mia's family members began recording When someone else showed up claiming to also be looking for Mia the person recording kept their phone either in their pocket or their hand covered the camera as we can't yet see what was happening until later we can however hear the mysterious person talking with various members of Mia's family including her father I'm too old friend taji taji knows our relationship I promise you nothing likei woke me up out of my sleep to come here to see if I saw anything because we didn't know
you guys were here yes I was have text messages uh me and her haven't talked for like I told you I try to fall back I'm older than I don't I don't even have her number now the man speaking is 27-year-old Armando Manuel cavero Armando worked as a maintenance man at Arden Villas and he met Mia when the two became co-workers in fact he'd started at Arden Villas right after Mia around 2 months prior to her disappearance now around 3:45 a.m. appr proximately 10 hours after Mia was last seen and though he lived at a
different apartment complex Armando was unexpectedly back at Arden Villas this obviously struck M as family as odd but the entire interaction would only become more concerning where's the roommate I heard you had recent conversation her though it isn't shown in the footage Simone M's Aunt witnessed something fall out of Armando's pocket when he first got out of his car something that looked like a key fob this would turn out to be crucial later her wall and I dropped off the back other than that it's just work never in the apartment to fix anything before I
have yes we had to do all the apartments CU I know there a lot of because I I set up the apartment myself I know I set up certain I seen you I seen you move I seen I seen you already too I seen not seen you trust me bro I got all Good Vibes I'm not like that I would even came out here yeah but from what I'm hearing I didn't hear nothing good about you really I promise you what Armando didn't know was that because Mia was so close to her family they immediately
recognized him as someone she told them about and because of what she told them they were likely suspicious when he showed up at ardan Villas sending her like that like trying to tell her express your feelings for her as a regular thing when the property how is it a regular thing if if if you just said that you're older than her why is it a regular thing if you're expressing your feelings to her why is that cash why'd you cash app for that amount of money she said she had to help you she had to
help me my daughter would never tell you that on my soul she told me that she would never tell you that on my soul she said that her brother but you just you you just you just told me that you haven't spoken to her for so long yeah because that was a while ago was this week was AO I'm in her cash app that was this week you see Mia had complained about Armando though he told her family he didn't have her number and claimed to have last spoken to Mia a few weeks ago it
would soon be revealed that that wasn't even remotely true Mia often took screenshots of the things Armando was texting her and sent it either to her family members or to her friends this included when in the week before she went missing Armando sent her a random cash app payment for the amount of $600 though me and had declined the money she sent a screenshot of the message Armando included with the payment to a group text with other Arden Villa's employees titled off the casa Armando wrote to M uh Mama good morning I don't want you
to feel any way about me giving you this like I said from before you grew on me and I feel I didn't have too much of a reason to be in your face unless I was making a difference because I'm just a man and that's how I see it from hearing you vent about your fam situation and hearing about how you not able to live your life fully because of the difference in responsibility and from the first few times I heard that I've been planning and wanted to bless you but it's not much but it's
yours enjoy it however you like I don't want it back don't send it back that was money I was putting up from turn to spend on dates or gifts for you but I'd rather just give you the money so you could do what you actually need or want with it her friend responded to the screenshot it just sucks that he works with you because I would keep it but if you don't do what wants he going to act crazy Mia's friend likely had no idea how true that was Armando had an interesting explanation for the
cash app payment you because her mother didn't pay her rent no more and when we were doing we been friends already since June I know rashed rashed seen me hurt and rashed chill there's nothing there I never came never would I be willing to do a stat did you did they take a statement from you ear on I just found out she was missing you saw her today not found just found out but I found out a few hours Ag and you saw her today at work yes did you did have you done any work
inside that apartment not recing for when who so who's the maintenance person that was in the apartment yesterday or two days ago somebody said you have to be there you you told me that you bought the fan there you was recently this is an integral question as armanda was in maintenance at Arden Villas he had an assigned key fob which could access every single apartment and that worked during business hours for after hours maintenance and on call key fob was shared among the maintenance staff with the device in the possession of whomever was on call
at the time 3 days earlier on Tuesday September 21st Armondo had delivered some fans to Mia's apartment as there had been flooding the main request had been legitimate but the troubling issue of Armando's access to her apartment hadn't escaped me as family members you Tuesday so that was that was you were in this apartment on Tuesday I didn't do work I just dropped the vacuum off bro she had a leak from her living room to her room coincidentally like that and that just that just happened you know what I'm saying that just happened that leak
just all of a sudden just happened just out of the blue only in her room I cannot there nothing I canally do to do that all right and the person who went in today too went through the window too you know what I'm saying right but you got access to that place still right or wrong right or wrong right or wrong you have access to you have access to the apartments right as a maintenance worker you have access to the apartments and what is your protocol when you're going into the apartments you guys just knock
and go in we knock two or three times we wait nobody answers we open the door as police would soon find out Armondo isn't telling the truth here Mia's family member who has been recording this strange encounter finally raises their phone and captures Armand in the footage he can be seen standing next to an officer as of right now you have text to Mia we have all seen the text you talked about giving her your life savings you cash out her money and you claimed that you w in touch Never As a matter of fact
we're going to get a police report to pull your phone records if that's the case as it would turn out because Mia had sent so many of the texts from Armando to her friends and family the police didn't need to pull Armando's phone records to see that something was off there's evidence of of obsession of something you're fascinated with me it's not only from my side so don't try to make this no one's saying that it takes def obiously she's missing so we're talking to you who've been going back understand that is your family right
but until we figure out what's going on just don't beat me up nobody be up I'm guilty you put yourself in the middle right here you bought yourself over here the entire interaction with Armando out front of Arden Villas was odd but what Armando said next did nothing but rais suspicions against him I have never done nothing bad to me where the videos capturing this incident end abruptly after this but Mia asan describes what happened next Armond got in his car the officer never searched a vehicle I don't know if there's procedure he never looked
in the vehicle or touched anything told him to wind on with nothing the vehicle took off they went to the maintenance room they came back Armando then left after driving away from the officer and Mia's family members Armando was seen again driving around the buildings with lights off one of Mia's family members noticed something else that was incredibly concerning about Armando I noticed so it almost looked like like like he had bronzer on because this area was like it was puffed up and slightly bruised like reddish but how it was dark in the night when
the light you could see you know when skin is stretched to a point that it shines because you know of the swelling knowing what they did of his fixation with Mia his return to the Arden Villa's Apartments the same day that Mia went missing raised red flags for for her family little did they know Armondo was hiding another even more disturbing secret the next day there was still no sign of Mia anywhere and it was only now that the police would begin to take the case seriously though slowly someone from the Harris County Sheriff's Office
even reached out to the Orange County Sheriff's Office about Mia's case and there appeared to be a distinct lack of urgency okay I mean it hasn't been turned over to a detective yet because it takes up to side bu St oh to to consider someone Ling no I mean there is a case number already attached to this and there is there is the case I'm just saying that um they don't have it assigned to somebody but that if we make contact with her and we run her name we know she'll be missing because she's in
the system as missing so who normally have so you have a missing person divion this is considered a missing persons and they're not open today they'll be open on Monday as investigators finally started to look deeper into the case they spoke with Marlin Mia's father so my theory of as to what happened is that um she was in the bathroom and or maybe she was now getting home either she was in the bathroom or she was now getting home and the person was under the bed okay person was under the bed the Box cut her
and everything and either when she came in they saddled her or when she was coming out of the bathroom understand the person who we suspect is somebody who works here I heard about okay her family also gathered again this time inside Arden Villas police officers came and they said they weren't going to do anything but VI Miss iners reports as an adult they can't do an amber alert because she's over 18 but according to that officer this is a typical College room that doesn't seem to look obstructed or tampered with he said they weren't going
to do much until a couple days pass and it becomes more if you haven't got any information if you haven't heard from her as news of Mia's disappearance spread calls flooded in as people tried to give any helpful information to Aid in the search and what do you want to report we just got like a message saying that a girl had been missing since like 5:00 p.m. yesterday and me and my roommate around I'd say maybe like 700 p.m. and we heard like a girl and a guy and they were screaming like but it didn't
sound like good screams it sounded like really bad screams um and we actually went downstairs to see if we could like find anything and there we heard like a like a woman and a man screaming at each other like arguing in an apartment on the first floor I don't know if this would be helpful information but it was something that stood out to us last night and after hearing about a girl going missing today I figured I should report it just in case it could help all of this this was helpful but Mia's family was
already sure they had a suspect Armando Mia's family had been right it did appear that Armando was obsessed with Mia in one screen recorded video it can be seen that Armando was sending her long multiple messages part of these messages say quote you drew back which I understand because you a woman and you don't know me that well so you need your boundaries I know I come off strong and crazy after screen recording the messages Mia sent the video to a group chat writing when does it stop the issue of Armando's text messages will come
up again and again as police began interviewing her friends and Jasmine can you tell me what happened in a group chat between you Mia and the other individual um yes so basically we have a group chat where we talk about like normal things that are happening um but in this chat there's just been multiple times where Mia like will send over screenshots like we do of like people that we're talking to or just things like that um sometimes complaining or just having issues with like Armando sending her long text messages out of the blue emotional
messages to her even when she was barely giving him like like real responses back um sending her long emotional messages getting upset at her for not responding to him all types of things um and yeah and from the start her making it clear that although she did find him attractive or whatever the case may be she has never necessarily wanted anything serious with him they have never dated they've never been involved in any aspect like that that detail didn't seem to deter Armando in one text to her friends Mia wrote then if I don't respond
we know he getting the paragraphs ready I always found it weird with that because I'm like she's young like she's 19 she's a freshman I always found him to be weird because I'm like this girl is like a young girl she's not trying to be tied down with you like you know and she made that very clear to him so that's just the thing for me did they have any ever have any altercations with each other or any kind of like fights yeah um they never had any fights he was very much a like messy
type of person like I never had any situations in regards to like her telling me like oh they got into like actual altercation she did tell me that recently he tried to like make a not a scene but like be Petty towards her at work he said it in a way like it was drawing attention because people were kind of like dang like why' you say it like that towards her or whatever and she was like in the chat we were talking about like that's crazy that he's trying to like show out and call you
a weirdo and stuff when he's the one that sends you long dramatic text messages every single day Mia sent a text to the group chat saying y'all I'm confused and a screenshot of a message Armando Center saying I don't got any more patience with you you honestly showed me the type of person you are like you said people fall for your looks well I seen the type of person you are I don't got the energy or the fakeness to tolerate giving myself to you even as a friend we two different kind of people Armando also
texted me a quote just leave me alone if you don't have no intent to show any significance in my life Tuesday would have been the 21st so September 21st was the last and can you tell me what that message said yes so we were talking like normal she said I saw Armando just now he had to bring me the blower and he was like I think I cleared my mind enough and I'm ready to follow you back on Instagram because like I said he would get overly emotional and obsessive over her so like if she
was posting and doing things and not talking to him he would get upset and send her messages about that so then she sent a screenshot after he left of what he said and he basically said everything else burnt out but respectfully I can't lie I would have loved to taste you or see how it was at least once and she said y'all help me what the f like asking what she should say to that and I was like um what do you say to that when it's coming from a crazy person right and she said
no for real I'm like whoo and I said I would be like let's keep a cute friend because I don't know what to say and I basically said that because I was like basically like deflecting from the talk because you guys said like we're just friends Armando replied to that text from Mia saying right whatever you out cooled me I really didn't take no l while you trying to be so cool I get it it's over I been knew it was that was you making it seem like I'm making a mistake so all the way
through I'mma to Let It Go just holler at you at work bucko but it seemed that Armando didn't take her rejection well Mia's friend Rasheed shared a similar story he started sending her like not like just like paragraphs it was I could swipe like I could swipe and read it and I like it was so much to read that I was like dang like I didn't I didn't obviously read through all of it but she would show me like some like some of the stuff she saying and some of the paragraphs and um how like
and I was telling her like she's crazy and whatever and then he who was buying her all this stuff he would give her he was giving her stuff like like every week he got her like these flowers that that were in her room the blue flowers cuz she had I guess she overheard like a conversation that she wanted or something or I saw on her phone or something and another screenshot Mia shared Armando wrote to her and you ain't showed one concern of even giving me the opportunity to gain ground with you if anything every
time I felt like I got closer to you the next day or the next hour you acting colder this ain't the grounds to the beginning of something good I haven't been nothing but frustrated and Confused the majority of the time M wrote back yo I spoke to yesterday perfectly fine then I went out like damn why do you always have to act like this like can you just chill Armando texted back if I have no reason to act like this then you tell me one situation where you did any gesture to validate me small or
big to make me feel special a bagel a lunch a real compliment at least releas a real statement of what you think about me cuz I'm really starting to think you cold-hearted Armando's obsessive Behavior wasn't just over texting as Rasheed explains one day I opened up my apartment when me was stand there and he was outside doing something and I remember cuz I opened the door to to open the door for her and I was going to lock behind her and he was there and she was like oh hey he was outside my apartment just
standing there now he was working on something but like it just progressively got weirder and weirder whatever whatever after like time start passing and and she started seeing like who he really was and stuff um she told me like she was kind of nervous that that he had the keys to her apartment and one time she mentioned that she left her house one time the was working perfectly and she came back a little while after and the AC was broke she was stuck on 79 and I know like the maintenance people like I know it's
easy to like to mess with AC you feel me and he was the on call person and so I was I'm thinking that he like messed with the AC because he would she would have to call the the emergency line which he has to respond to cuz after hours so she said that um she had went she didn't want to call him so she went to get another maintenance guy to come to come fix her AC as Rasheed shared Mia had a good reason to be worried some of my other friends have told me like
he said stuff to them like she found one of my friends one of my other female friends found her found him like in in their apartment he's like what are you doing in here and and he was like oh I'm fixing something I remember he had said something to her I I think it was like along lines I just want to like take a nap in your bed or something like that like it's weird you feel me yeah that is after speaking to another Resident at Arden Villas it seemed that there was a pattern in
Armando's Behavior I had just got another shower too and I hear knocking and maintenance I didn't want to answer it cuz I didn't put for and then I heard the door open and I heard it closed and then uh when I went out they were still out there knocking but did hear the door open and closed I got dressed opened the door asked him if you needed anything he said did you put in a report for um your dishwasher to be fixed I told him no perhaps finally realizing that Armondo needed to be investigated police
spoke to his boss lamuel aroyo how would you describe Armando I would say very very peaceful peaceful guy very easy to manage you know I was very happy with their performance um to keep eye contact sometime Avo avoid you know ICE contact now the all this going on made me think why sometime when we talking he trying not look at me I don't know although he was known at work to be private Armando had been in a bit of trouble before years ago after setting off firecrackers in his college dorm he lost his football scholarship
as a result with his job at Arden Villas he was attempting to start fresh Friday the same day that Mia went missing lamuel noticed that Armando's body language and behavior was off when he received his work uniform but then when he left he was shaking even without we knowing all all the was about to happen you know and you you've never seen that before no no Noel who worked in maintenance with Armando also saw Armando acting strange on Friday so he was more quiet you thought he was more quiet asked him yo you okay he
said yeah you said the change you notice was that he just seemed more quiet with this in mind investigators take a look at the records of who used the maintenance key fob while the officer only turns on the audio of her body cam a few seconds before the following footage begins it appears they're talking about Armando my biggest concern is he has right now a fob that can get him access to every apartment because he's on call so I was going to have one of my employees just do erase the fob but the only way
to do it is to literally go to each and every apartment door with a cancel key because unless we have the physical goob we can't just erace it you have to go to each individual lock and do what's called an interrogation report and then load that to the computer and it gives you the lock history of everything the worker from Arden Villas eventually gets the report on the lock history for Mia's apartment is is that that's my on call maintenance s at 4:34 but that's before correct yes but I don't understand why you would have
been there is it the Aranda yeah to most this would seem like particularly damning evidence but it only got worse while checking out an apartment that was set up the same as Mia's though not her actual room the officer asks a chilling question so he accessed her room at 4:30 correct there's no service supposed to be in or anything like that right and I don't remember if I saw that he left with that pH she would have been home so if he was just hanging out now I'm like worried what if he was literally waiting
for her they've got my head all sred up I cannot believe because of the record of the key fob it was clear that 30 minutes before Mia's workshift had ended Armando had entered her apartment and it also seemed that he had never left or at least there was no record of him leaving me key was then used to open the door at 506 and as the worker suspects it looks like Armondo could have been waiting for her by reviewing the security footage investigators spotted Armando driving a golf cart near Mia's apartment which coincided with the
times the maintenance key fob showed it was used on her front door they also uncovered what they believed to be the last image of Mia as she walked to her apartment just before she went missing while there was the possibility of an innocent explanation on thir Thursday September 23rd Armando had asked Mia if she would have time to talk about something mysterious on Friday the day she went missing Mia had replied what do you want to talk about Armando wrote back it's nothing big but if your day is busy it's whatever Mia replied I'll let
you know how my day goes however there was one other piece of evidence that didn't quite Fit 2 hours after Mia went into her apartment Armando called the Arden Villa's office staff and asked to be led into the front gate as he was responding to a maintenance call that was made around 700 p.m. just 5 minutes later someone used me as key fob on the exterior lock of her apartment it would be nearly impossible for Armando to have been at the Gate of Arden Villa and then 5 minutes later unlocking Mia's door the question was
was this Mia herself and was the timeline of her disappearance a few hours later than her family believed or was this evidence of her kidnapper using her key fob while the police may have still been collecting evidence Mia's distraught family members already felt certain that they knew where to look for answers about Mia's disappearance with Armando cabero himself while continuing their search for Mia some of her family members decided to begin surveillance of their own and they would soon uncover some of the most chilling evidence yet I happen to overhear our Mondo's address when he
was giving it to the officer and I said I'm going to do a pit stop put it in in the GPS and I we continued to his house he didn't see us at first I made a u-turn and I went into the parking lot across the street from him here's his apartment complex here's my vehicle facing him that's when he started touching the indentation of his car he tried leaving the complex last night with his lights off and he hit another vehicle he was touching so his vehicle is dented it became clear to them that
the police hadn't searched Armando's apartment yet it was then that they once again began recording this time catching something truly shocking on camera he has gloves he gloves he has gloves in his hands he has gloves gloves and what else a a blank the blanket my God that is my blanket as they watched Armando carried a blanket that had once belonged to one of Mia's family members and that had since been given to Mia into his apartment he knows what we look like and he's looking at he's looking to See's following him and whatever with
the police please Mia um Kaye call them back I'm videotaping that's M me videotaped I'm videotaping him that's why I can't call as unsettling as this discovery was the incident with Armando was far from over and it would only become more chilling later Mia's Aunt Simone shared with detectives what had happened after they stopped filming someone's got a pict started trembling mhm I couldn't drive anymore I just pulled in another Hispanic guy got out of another car two cars down came across the street he videotaped the truck videotaped me he took pictures of me he
took pictures of my license then he told me get out of your truck get out of your truck I didn't get out he laughed across the street he went back and he does this again this Behavior along with the discovery of Mia's blanket seemed to solidify for her family at least that Armando was behind Mia's abduction however this interaction with Armando would come back to haunt them in the most chilling way Armando then left his apartment but returned 10 minutes later when police were able to find Armando and tell him that they wanted to look
inside his apartment he surprised everyone he gave permission for Mia's family to search through his apartment while the police stood by is it like a quilt type like a quilt like blanket like thing so if you see it just letting you know they'll just give more bolster to the search warrant it appears that this frantic search was not recorded but Mia's family didn't find her blanket it seemed that when Armando left he must have disposed of the blanket either way no other evidence was found as Armando wasn't arrested or even brought in for questioning in
fact soon after he ended up leaving his apartment around 3:00 p.m. approximately an hour and a half later he was officially named as a suspect in Mia's disappearance but to her family's frustration he was already gone his apartment was then secured and at around 6:00 p.m. more than 24 hours after she was last seen or heard from the Orange County Sheriff's Office released a missing person's bulletin for Mia by now it was becoming clear to at least some that the police knew they hadn't started their investigation as soon as they should have took the report
I mean if they saw the blood and everything it doesn't take long for that was the end of it just some miscellaneous papers and stuff passport about 3030 wallets checkbook it was around this time that calls began flooding into the police department but not to Aid in the search for Mia but rather because Armando's friends were calling to complain about Mia's family and their investigation yesterday M they they pulled up to my house I don't know if they were following my like my friend arando cuz my friend supposedly he was talking to the girl that's
that's missing I had no idea like what was going on I came to my house and then some fat bald guy came to my house he was yelling at my friend oh you kidnapped my daughter you kidnapped my daughter I'm like I don't really know what the's going on I literally just came from my girlfriend's house what's going on I'm like I'm I'm confused he was oh my daughter's missing he kidnapped my daughter and I'm like I I don't understand what's going on I'm like I'm so confused and then they just came to my house
they were at my house and just like arguing I'm completely lost now but even Armando's friends had questioned him about his possible involvement in Mia's disappearance and I was trying to ask him yo yo you sure you didn't do anything and my mom was on the phone too I'm like my mom was like you sure you didn't do anything are you 100% sure and I was I was trying to like yo make sure cuz that's Someone's Child that's missing I was like yo you sure you didn't do anything he was like no I didn't do
anything I didn't do anything and my mom then my mom uh prayed for him on the phone my mom said if you didn't do anything God will protect you and if you did something you will reap what you saw along with looking for Mia law enforcement continued to search for the now missing Armando based on him using the maintenance key fob to Mia's apartment a half hour before she returned home from her shift the search escalated when an even more disturbing piece of information was revealed Jessica Decker a manager at Arden Villas had found something
strange then the other thing that concerned me was there was an on call message last night at around 7:01 and the message said this is Tristan Thompson is on the first floor it's just on the opposite side of the apartment yeah and it's at hit the was out um it's a female unit and an officer went over there this evening and knocked on the door and they didn't call emergency maintenance okay and that concerns me because of the timing of the last fob reading which was 7:16 where her fob was used but nothing was locked
so we got that on call at 7:01 mhm he called my leasing manager at 711 saying that the gate wasn't letting people in and she had to talk him through how to manually turn it off it was now clear that the fake maintenance call had actually been made by Armando and the call he made at 7:11 p.m. to the office staff to open the gate on the night of Mia's disappearance had been his attempt to establish an alibi police also suspected that since he was probably not actually at the gate he was the one to
use me as key fob just 5 minutes later a press conference was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Monday September 27th but that planned media briefing was postponed when a shocking Discovery was made Armando had finally been found but it wasn't the result anyone was hoping for his body was discovered in an apartment complex in simol County I felt so defeated like you know this was the person we wanted to talk to you know to find out like just say something you know what I mean like nothing in Armando's interactions with Mia's family had given any
suggestion of his intention to escape Justice in this way he was way too confident in how he was he did not come across as discombobulated at all he came across more like frustrated that we were bothering him yeah may be the case you understand what I'm saying despite this shocking development there was still no sign of Mia getting dark again you know what I mean it's a little girl and she's out there by herself you know what I mean we don't know we don't know where she is we don't know if he's done something to
I don't this time you we we are trying tragically just over one week after she went missing Mia's body was found on Saturday October 2nd 5 days after Armando was found dead Mia's body was discovered in a wooded area behind timers scan condos in Orange County she was found with her red purse and wallet wearing jeans a bra and a robe and a necklace with her name her body was mostly skeletonized and bound with black black tape around her wrists ankles and across her mouth due to the state of her remains a cause of death
couldn't be determined however there seemed no doubt as to Armando's guilt Mia's blood and hair was eventually found among some of Armando's belongings according to Orange County Sheriff John Mina we are not looking for any other people we believe pretty conclusively that Armondo cabero is responsible for this crime and there's not any other person or persons that were looking for in this case given the evidence including the broken jewelry found in her room along with blood stains police speculate that when Mia entered her apartment Armando attacked her and a struggle ensued investigators believe he killed
her in the room and then using her bedroom window put her body into the trunk of his car just 46 minutes after Mia entered her apartment at 50:6 p.m. Armando's vehicle was seen leaving Arden Villas he he then went to his apartment before returning again to Arden villas for the fake maintenance call phone records and GPS data show that he then went to the woods where Mia's body was later found the marono family eventually filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Arden Villas claiming negligence in Armando having unfettered access to Mia's apartment they also filed a
lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office and two officers for civil rights violations and negligence describing the department as failing miserably in its duties there has yet to be a resolution for the lawsuit Mia's law has been introduced to impose higher levels of background checks and limitations on the use of master keys limiting access to private residences and affording tenants the Safety and Security Mia deserved
