The officer slowly unzips a purple suitcase found sitting out in the middle of an abandoned field in Wisconsin. There are no signs of a struggle, no witnesses anywhere, just a suitcase that should not be there. Inside there are bones almost. Nothing else lying nearby are two used pregnancy test strips, both of them positive.
No one knows who this is, a child or an adult, a man or a woman. But some people had already seen that suitcase before they came out here. They opened it, they looked inside, and then they said nothing for months. Hundreds of miles away, a 24-year-old woman goes missing. She stopped showing up for work and leaves most of her belongings behind.
Her phone keeps sending messages for a while saying she’s heading to Chicago to start a new life. But her family doesn’t believe those messages. Her car is found abandoned in a hotel parking lot, and there’s a strong, unbearable smell coming from it. Inside the car, there’s trash flies and a large knife. The trunk release button has been ripped out.
When investigators open the trunk, the body is already gone. All that’s left are signs that something had been pulled out of it, and one detail that changes everything, a photo from her old phone in it. You can and see her belongings in a large purple suitcase, the same one that was opened out in that field.
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A few people knew about the suitcase that had been left on an abandoned farm out in rural Wisconsin. At first, they only talked about it quietly just among themselves, and they came to the same conclusion that there was probably a child’s body inside. [snorts] It took several months before the remains were found, and it would take years before the story behind it finally came to light.
Oh, boy. Yeah, you can close that. In mid-October 2020, rumors started quietly spreading through rural Wisconsin. People were whispering about an abandoned farm, a cluster of half-collapsed buildings that were often picked over for scrap metal, and sometimes used by locals from the city for their own business.
On October 14th, detectives from the narcotics unit in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, received a tip from someone involved in one of their drug cases. But the information he shared had nothing to do with drugs. A 37-year-old man named Mai Tao, known by the nickname Russia, worked installing carpet for his girlfriend’s father, a man named Bernard, when he heard a rumor.
Is there anything that would be very unusual or something that you may want to bring up to me? Um [snorts] This one time I was at his house and [snorts] he came home and I don’t know, he just he mentioned something weird about finding a body. I wasn’t I wasn’t sure if it’s real or not, but the way his face reacted and everything, I thought it was real.
But then I didn’t He said he went to an abandoned area. Um went to this abandoned area and and then he saw the suitcase. And he opened it and uh that’s what he found and he scared to report it cuz like he he opened it and his prints are on it. So, he don’t know what to do. From the Chippewa County Jail, Russia told investigator Kallick about the suitcase.
He described a spot on an abandoned property along a rural road just outside Eau Claire. Like uh the buildings are abandoned like abandoned like some shacks that are falling down and stuff like that. I told him I don’t want to go near there. I don’t want to I don’t want to go near there.
I don’t want to have anything to do with that. I’m scared of that place. It looks scary. Okay. When he drove by and pointed it out to you, did it kind of seem real to you then? Yeah, it made it seem real. It seemed scary. It seemed abandoned. It seemed like something’s creepy about it cuz he told me like he thinks it’s a little girl cuz he said he looked at it and the size of the pelvis or whatever.
Like [snorts] he he gave me some details about I told him like I don’t know. I don’t want to I don’t want to go near there. I don’t want to anything to do with that. Like if if there’s a body there, I don’t want to go near there. Russia described the location of the farm as precisely as he could.
While investigators searched for the property, they also spoke with other people who were rumored to have seen a small body inside the suitcase. I think McKenzie knows about it, so Tell me about that. McKenzie said McKenzie told told the cops about it when they came to the rain the house.
Bernard didn’t just tell others about the suitcase he had found. He also brought at least two people out to that isolated spot so they could see it for themselves. Later, he claimed he thought he might have been mistaken and wanted others to confirm what was inside. [laughter] [gasps] One of the Eau Claire Sheriff’s deputies
checked the information provided by Russia, McKenzie, and others. The officer located the property near County Road T. After driving down a gravel road through overgrown brush and past half-collapsed sheds and barns, he came across a single purple suitcase sitting out in an open field, standing out sharply because it didn’t belong there.
Forensic teams were called in and the area was secured. There were no signs that a murder had happened nearby. Investigators slowly unzipped the suitcase. Inside, they found a body, though by that point it was mostly just bones. Yeah, you can close that. There was nothing that could help identify the victim.
It wasn’t even clear if the remains belonged to a child or an adult, a man or a woman. Still, there were a few other items inside the suitcase, a pair of shorts, a dirty box, and a small empty notebook. Those last two items suggested the body likely belonged to an adult woman. There were also two pregnancy tests, both used and both showing two lines, a positive result.
The autopsy found no defects, no injuries, and no signs of trauma on the bones. The cause of death couldn’t be determined. The remains were sent for forensic analysis, a process that took months. Investigators hoped to recover enough tissue for DNA or match dental records to confirm the identity. Meanwhile, near the suitcase at the back of the property, they found another interesting clue, a name badge that read Rosalie.
A few months before the suitcase was discovered in Eau Claire, a concerned man had walked into a police station about two hours to the southwest in Reedsburg. He said he and his wife had separated a few weeks earlier. They had kept in touch for a while, but recently her messages had stopped in the summer of 2020.
24-year-old Rosalie Cindy Chavaria Rodriguez was working multiple jobs around the Reedsburg area. She was a housekeeper at the Wilderness Resort in Lake Delton, and also worked with the team at Sprecher’s Restaurant and Pub on Wisconsin Dells Parkway, a single mother whose daughter remained in Peru.
She had immigrated in search of a better life. Rosalie wanted a career in tourism, but for now, she was juggling shifts at different jobs just to make ends meet in early July that year. Rosalie disappeared. Her husband, 22-year-old Jose Dominguez Garcia, told police he hadn’t seen her since July 4th. They had argued and she left.
He showed messages sent from her phone the next day saying she was moving to Chicago to start a new life. Messages sent to her workplaces also said she was quitting and leaving town. Her family last heard from her on July 18th. No one knew if she ever made it to Chicago. One of the first places investigators in Reedsburg checked was the room Rosalie and Jose rented in a house on Crimson Drive.
The room was clean with no chemical odors and nothing suspicious was found in the house. Jose explained that her belongings had been packed up and moved into a shed outside until she could come back for them, but she never reached out to do that. There were several bags of items, mostly clothes and accessories. Rosalie’s purse, wallet, bank cards, ID, and other important personal items were missing.
The only things left behind were prescription medications in her name, the kind she likely needed to take regularly. At that point, investigators in Reedsburg had very few leads. They spoke with Rosalie’s employers who said she hadn’t shown up for shifts since July 3rd and later received messages from her phone saying she was leaving town.
Friends said it seemed strange that she would leave so suddenly and abandon most of her belongings. Her small red Jetta, which she often used, was gone along with her wallet and phone, but they also shared one more important detail. Rosalie was 3 months pregnant. After learning that Jose had been sending money to another woman in Peru, she decided to leave him, return home to her daughter, and raise the baby there.
On August 12th, just a few weeks after Rosalie was reported missing, a man named Javier Osorio filed a claim over the ownership of a car he had sold to her husband, Jose. It was a red 2003 Jetta, the same one Rosalie had been driving. Jose had only paid part of the agreed amount and then became impossible to reach.
Javier kept going over everything he knew again and again, trying to make sense of it. He told police that Jose had been acting strange and nervous. It showed even in the small things in his reactions, in the way he spoke, and how he avoided direct answers. Rosalie disappeared, and then he vanished, too.
Most of the photos on their Facebook accounts had been deleted as if someone was deliberately erasing any trace of their life together. All of it created the feeling that the photos and set of lace couple had suddenly and intentionally disappeared, leaving nothing but a void behind Reedsburg. Police could no longer find Jose.
Not long after officers searched his place on Crimson Drive, the 22-year-old told co-workers and friends he was heading to Chicago to look for Rosalie. He claimed the last thing he heard from her was that she wanted him to come to Illinois if he wanted to finalize the divorce. It sounded like an explanation that was supposed to tie everything together, but it left too many questions after that.
No one heard from Jose again at the same time. A police report in Lake Delton showed that the red Volkswagen Jetta had been abandoned in the parking lot of the Hilton Garden Inn on August 5th. The car sat there for more than a week, untouched, with no sign that anyone was coming back until it was finally towed. Investigators were directed to the back of the lot near a wooded area, a more isolated spot where the car was easy to miss.
That’s where the Jetta was parked in one of the farthest corners away from the building, where guests or staff might park, and where it was less likely to draw attention. The ground beneath the car sloped slightly to the northeast. And there were visible traces of a dark substance that had pooled and soaked into the soil over time.
Investigators believed it could have leaked from the trunk if the car had been backed into the space, a detail that immediately raised serious concern. Hotel staff confirmed the car had been parked rear first, and everyone who got close to it mentioned the same thing. A sharp, overwhelming, and unbearable smell that forced people to step back.
The vehicle was taken to Platt’s Towing, where employees told investigators the same thing. Getting closer than about 5 ft was almost impossible because of the stench that filled the air. Inside the cabin, there was a mess trash, mostly empty food containers, drinks, and beer cans. Everything was covered in flies, adding to the sense of neglect and something much worse on the floor in front of the driver’s seat.
There was a large knife, about 14 in long, with a wooden handle, a detail that stood out immediately because it didn’t belong there on the back seat. There was a cream-colored bag next to a steering wheel cover. The trunk release button, normally located near the lower part of the driver’s door, was missing.
It appeared to have been deliberately removed, making it impossible to open the trunk the usual way. Eventually, investigators managed to access the trunk. The tension in that moment was at its peak. They were expecting the worst, but when the lid opened, Rosalie wasn’t there. Inside were only scattered items, shoes, a skateboard, a jack, a lug wrench, and more empty beer cans on the inside of the trunk.
There was a stain that matched a similar mark on the bumper, suggesting that something had been pulled out, leaving behind biological traces. A quiet but telling sign of what had happened among the items collected was a yellow T-shirt with the word Hogwarts on it, dirty and covered in dead insects. Was the same shirt Rosalie was wearing in the cover photo on her Facebook profile, a detail that suddenly connected her ordinary life to something much darker.
By the time Rosalie’s car was found, it was already late August, and no one had actually seen her since her last shift at Sprecher’s Pub on the night of July 2nd, the moment after which she vanished, leaving behind only questions and a heavy silence. Still, friends and family kept receiving messages from her for weeks after that.
They came regularly without sudden changes in tone, as if everything was normal, but with each new message, there was a strange sense of distance. Something about the words felt off, too, even too perfect from Peru, her sister. Kelly and her father, Jorge, reached out to investigators in Wisconsin and said right away they did not believe the messages they received throughout July had been written by Rosalie.
The details stood out, the tone, the word choice, the lack of emotion. What might have seemed normal to others felt unfamiliar and unnatural to those who knew her. During an emotional phone call with Kelly, Jose said he and Rosalie had separated. His voice sounded tense but controlled, as if he was carefully choosing his words, trying to stay in control even in such a personal moment.
He claimed Rosalie was pregnant, but the baby wasn’t his. According to him, she had gone to the child’s father, an unknown Turkish man living in 1790 Chicago. It sounded like a version meant to answer every question and create a logical story of her disappearance, as if Rosalie had simply started a new life suddenly and without warning, leaving everything behind.
But even in that story, there were details that didn’t fit. She hadn’t picked up her final paychecks, something that didn’t make sense for someone planning to move. Jose collected them instead before the area himself in the weeks that followed. Her bank accounts were gradually drained and eventually went into the negative.
Another troubling detail that didn’t match the idea of a fresh start. Rosalie’s phone had been off for far too long, and when investigators finally gained access to the data, there was very little left. Many traces were already gone as if they had been erased by time or by someone’s actions. However, Rosalie’s old phone, found among her belongings at the house on Crimson Drive, provided a few important clues.
It was the device she had brought with her from Peru. The photos stored on it captured her journey to the United States, boarding a train, a view from an airplane window, small moments from the trip, and among those images, there was a photo of her luggage clearly showing a large purple suitcase, an ordinary detail that would later take on a much darker meaning.
Data from Jose’s phone added to the picture, making it even more disturbing between July 6th and July 30th, he had been searching for remote locations nearby, places that looked isolated, quiet, and out of sight at the same time. He was browsing listings for cars as if he was planning to change vehicles or get rid of the one he had by mid-month.
His searches shifted, and he began looking up information about Mexico more and more, as if it was another step in preparing to disappear, another piece in a chain of actions slowly forming one unsettling picture. How to get to the border and where he could stay cheaply. On July 22nd, just 1 day before he officially reported his wife missing, Jose was actively using search, and those queries did not look random.
They appeared one after another, forming a disturbing chain of actions that would later take on a very different meaning. This was not casual browsing. It looked more like a deliberate and methodical search pointing to preparation. The fact that all of this happened right before he reported Rosalie missing made investigators pay close attention.
The timing, the circumstances, and the content of those searches came together into a picture that felt far too coordinated to be a coincidence. Each search became another piece that deepened the overall suspicion, as if even before going to the police, he already knew much more than he was letting on. How many days it takes for a human body to decompose? At the same time, his search history also included job listings at fast food chains across the United States, which felt contradictory.
On one hand, it looked like he was planning to leave for Mexico, and on the other, he was carefully reviewing employment options in different states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio. Together, it gave the impression of someone not just running away, but trying to line up multiple options for what came next inside the red Volkswagen Jetta.
Investigators found packaging and paperwork for a new phone, something that seemed minor at first but turned into an important lead. It was later confirmed that on July 23rd, Jose had purchased a prepaid Verizon phone at a Walmart in Eau Claire. The move appeared calculated, an attempt to stay off the radar and limit any digital trail, but the phone’s location data ended up mapping his movements with unsettling precision.
First, it connected to a tower in Eau Claire, then moved to Des Moines, then on to Tulsa and Kansas City, and by July 26th, it returned again to Eau Claire. The route formed a loop that did not look accidental, but carefully planned. The red Volkswagen Jetta was traced along that same path, and that is where the most disturbing possibility emerged, that Rosalie may have been in the trunk during that entire trip.
The idea sounded almost unreal, but every piece of data pointed in that direction. The last signal from that phone was recorded in late August, once again connecting to a tower in Kansas City. After that, the trail essentially went cold. Jose’s whereabouts remained unknown, as if he had vanished between cities and highways.
Weeks passed and turned into months. Time moved forward, but there were no answers. Then in October, the remains were found in the suitcase, a horrifying discovery that was immediately sent for analysis, marking a new and painful stage in the investigation. Investigator Qualic from the Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office reached out to police in Reedsburg about a missing person named Rosalie.
From there, the case expanded internationally through the Peruvian consulate. DNA samples were obtained from her relatives to be compared with evidence recovered from the trunk of the Volkswagen Jetta, as well as the remains found in the suitcase. When the results came back, they confirmed what had already been hanging in the air like a heavy, unavoidable truth.
Rosalie Cindy Chevaria Rodriguez never made it to Chicago. She was killed. Her body was transported for weeks in the trunk of the Volkswagen Jetta and later placed into her own purple suitcase and left on an abandoned property in rural Chippewa County in a place where the chances of being found seemed minimal.
An arrest warrant was issued for Jose, but efforts to locate him through the social security number he had used for work in Wisconsin led nowhere. License plate recognition cameras also failed to capture any vehicles linked to him as if he had deliberately avoided any digital trace.
Investigators learned he had used multiple aliases while working different jobs around the Reedsburg area often choosing places that did not require full documentation. Places where it was easier to blend in and go unnoticed. There were repeated reports that he had been seen in nightclubs in Mexico City, but none of them were ever confirmed.
They remained rumors that did not lead investigators any closer to him. Years passed and despite all the effort, the case remained unresolved leaving behind a sense of unfinished silence and a lingering tension that never found an answer. In late November 2023 at around 12:30 a.m. officers in Gladstone, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City, approached a red Ford Fusion parked in the 400 block of Northwest Englewood Road.
A license plate reader had flagged the vehicle as having stolen plates. So, that’s the only reason why we’re contacting you is because those plates came back stolen. Do you have any paperwork on the car? No, I don’t have no paperwork. Okay. When did you get the car? Like 2 or 3 weeks ago. No.
When did you get it? Like 2 or 3 weeks ago. Okay. And it doesn’t match the name of the ID. What’s your first and last name? Miguel Torres Beltran. Mi- Miguel? Miguel Torres Beltran. Look, Miguel. Yeah. Right. Okay. Third time to Miguel. You’re out of Georgia being under legal The man identified himself as Miguel Torres saying the name confidently without hesitation like it had long been his go-to cover.
At first everything seemed routine, but that detail immediately raised suspicion among the officers during the main B ID check. They discovered he was carrying multiple forms of identification with different names along with several social security cards. Each new document only strengthened the sense that he was deliberately trying to hide his real identity and confuse any background check.
This kind of inconsistency left little room for coincidence. The decision came quickly and without delay, he was taken into custody and the atmosphere shifted in an instant. What started as a routine stop turned into a moment of exposure making it clear that behind the false name there was something far more serious.
So, like this this name is last name is Torres, it doesn’t come back to these two. These two match, this one does not. Uh their social? Yeah. Do me a favor, man. Go and step out. I’m just going to detain you for now, okay? Huh? I’m just going to detain you for now, okay? Detain you? What does that mean? I’m going to put you in handcuffs.
You’re not under arrest yet, okay? As the officer was putting him in handcuffs, the radio crackled with information from dispatch. They had just found a suspect who had gone unlocated for years in Reedsburg. Can you go ahead and have your county or Kansas City respond as well? I believe it’s out of Wisconsin.
That name that he provided is showing as an alias I’m just detaining him for now. Do you have any weapons on you? No. for solicitation All right. I’m going to pat you down really quick, okay? sexual homicide Looks like burn unborn child hiding a corpse. All right. I’m going to put you in the car, okay? Like I said, you’re just being detained, okay? Okay.
So, I’m going to jail? No, you’re just being detained. [clears throat] So, have a seat in here, okay? He has like two different [ __ ] socials. Dude, he has like like three or four different IDs. None of those IDs come back to him. Even the Mexican one. Do you know what his background on his phone is? What? It’s a picture of a baby. A baby girl. Oh.
Piece of [ __ ] man. In the years after he left Reedsburg, Jose started a new life. He had a new partner and became the father of a young daughter. So, here’s the deal. You’re under arrest for uh you have a warrant out, all right? So, you’re under arrest for that and you’re also under arrest for the the stolen plate, too.
And also the false info because all the names that you gave us did not come back to your your actual name. Okay? So, you’re going to be going to county jail. So, you’re going to be a long time here for me now? No, my uh my brother was born last month. Gladstone police took Jose into custody and that moment became a turning point from then on.
Everything moved forward under law enforcement control. After his arrest, he was extradited to Chippewa County where he was formally charged with first-degree murder. The wording of the charge was clear and uncompromising reflecting the full gravity of what had happened. In January 2025, Jose pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter in the deaths of his wife and their unborn child.
It marked a sharp turn in the case. A confession that confirmed the facts while leaving behind an even deeper sense of bitterness because behind the legal language were shattered lives and an irreversible loss. The sentencing. Hearing carried a heavy tension that could be felt in every movement and every glance.
Rosalie’s family had traveled from Peru to be there and delivered emotional statements. Their words were filled with a kind of pain that could not be hidden or softened, the pain of a loss with no end. Rosalie’s sister, Kelly, spoke directly to Jose in the courtroom. Her voice was firm yet breaking with emotion as she called him a killer.
It was a direct and deeply personal statement that cut through the silence and left a heavy echo behind through an interpreter. Her father addressed the court trying to put into words something that no language can fully hold. He spoke about their devastating loss, about a daughter who is gone and a child who will never know her mother.
And in those words, there was not only grief but a quiet sense of hopelessness that leaves behind a void nothing can fill. My daughter was a 23-year-old young lady. She was a single mother. I want the night and I knew her inside out. I knew her very well. She was very responsible. She was providing for her daughter that stayed with us.
And she came to this country with big dreams just as many other people come here to be a student with better hopes to be a good citizen and move to a better life. Jose was given the chance to speak and a tense, almost physical silence settled over the courtroom. The kind where every sound feels too loud and every eye is fixed on a single point.
He spoke calmly without visible emotion and even in that moment, he continued to deny that Rosalie had been pregnant by him. His words were steady, but that steadiness only made them feel colder. Despite that, he admitted to the act of killing her and it landed heavily like a final confirmation of what many had already suspected. He explained that he picked her up after her shift at Sprecher’s Pub and according to him, it all started in the car in that enclosed space with no witnesses and no outside noise.
That’s where an argument broke out between them quickly escalating into a tense confrontation. Then his account became even shorter and heavier. He said he strangled her. No details, no explanation, just a flat statement of what he had done leaving the words hanging in the air and the room filled with a suffocating silence as if even that confession could not fully capture the scale of what had happened.
Yeah, I will love to speak to the court about it and I read the statements from the family. I know that words will not change anything. It doesn’t matter what I say, they will not change their opinion, but I’m here and I will accept punishment. And I really feel bad for the family. I want to tell them that I feel so sorry, so sorry.
And I think that’s all. What can I say? The judge delivered a detailed and measured account of the case carefully reconstructing the events step by step that had remained hidden for so long. There was a cold precision in his words as he described how Jose had systematically concealed Rosalie’s disappearance over an extended period creating the illusion that she was still present when she had long been gone.
The judge emphasized that he had fabricated her messages mimicking her usual way of communicating to avoid raising suspicion among family and friends at the same time. He had been collecting her paychecks using her absence for his own benefit while her loved ones were still hoping for answers. He deliberately avoided contact with law enforcement steering clear of questions and scrutiny.
It was also highlighted that despite all of this, he had begun building a new life, a new family as if trying to erase the past and separate himself from what had happened. That contrast between outward normalcy and hidden actions only deepened the sense of unease and injustice in the courtroom. In the end, the sentence was announced.
He was given 40 years, 25 years in prison followed by 15 years of extended supervision. The decision was delivered clearly and finally leaving behind a silence where everyone present could feel the weight of what had been said and the permanence of its consequences. I want to say to this criminal, Jose Dominguez Garcia, the man here in this photo that he rots.
That he rots in jail. Because he didn’t have compassion for two lives. And that’s how the tragic case of Rosalie Cindy Chavarria Rodriguez came to an end. A story that leaves behind a heavy suffocating feeling and a long unsettling trail of unanswered questions. From the very beginning it felt complicated, tangled and deeply painful for everyone who came into contact with it. The ending brought no relief.
If anything, it only highlighted the depth of the tragedy that unfolded slowly, step by step, leaving behind marks that can never be erased in the courtroom where the final words were spoken. There was a tense silence, the kind that seems to press on your chest and make it hard to breathe. This was the end of the case, but not the end of the pain.
The name Rosalie Cindy Chavarria Rodriguez will forever remain tied to this story. A story that will continue to send a chill down the spine and serve as a reminder of just how fragile life can be and how quickly it can change forever.
