Every landfill load at the Lubbock, Texas landfill is screened for hazardous material. That’s how 29 year old Summer Baldwin’s remains were found. A landfill worker found a black rolling suitcase with her body inside. On her ankle was a tattoo “Summer”. She suffered a serious beating, rape, and torture.
The time of death is determined to be 48 hours earlier placing her murder on September 13, 2005. Her fingerprints are taken and entered into AFIS. She is Summer Baldwin from Roswell, New Mexico, recently moved to Lubbock, Texas to be close to her Aunt Teri.
Police question the landfill truck drivers and one of them remembers a suitcase. They check for CCTV footage in the area of that dumpster. They reveal nothing.
Her autopsy reveals she was 5 weeks pregnant. When police question her best friend Margie Estrada, she tells them the father is Summer’s ex-boyfriend, Laquincy Freeman, and he’s violent and abusive. Police bring him in for questioning. He is apathetic and cold. But he passes the polygraph.
Margie comes to the police a second time and tells them she saw Summer at 7/11 Sunday evening at 11 pm with a new man in a red pickup. He was a light-skinned Hispanic male. Summer told Margie she just met him and they were going out. The last Margie saw of Summer she was in the passenger seat of that man’s red pickup as he drove away.
Police look at 7/11’s CCTV footage. At 11:38 pm, a red pickup pulled into the parking lot. A pudgy short Hispanic male in a yellow shirt and baseball cap came into the store.
Police discover the suitcase Summer’s body was found in is new and has a UPC code. This particular UPC product is only sold in Walmart stores. So they go to the nearest Walmart in Lubbock and view CCTV footage of the two people who bought that suitcase in the 48 hours surrounding Summer’s murder. At 3:00 am, the same Hispanic male is buying that suitcase along with a box of latex gloves. He gets into his bright red Dodge pickup and leaves. Fortunately, he used his debit card which belongs to Rosendo Rodriguez. He’s a 25 year old solder based in Lubbock originally from San Antonio,Texas.
Police search Rodriguez’s debit card purchases and match up the Walmart purchase of the suitcase and box of latex gloves. They also find the 7/11 purchase he made of $18 the night he and Summer were there. The 7/11 staff say they recognize him. He lives at the Holiday Inn across the street from the 7/11. He comes there all the time.
Police search his hotel room 609 and find blood. A Walmart bag with a receipt and disposable gloves is in the garbage. He’s arrested in San Antonio and immediately concocts a story in which he is claiming self defense. He claims all the blood in the hotel room was from a bloody nose she had. Another lie.
After Rodriguez is convicted, he confesses to killing Joanna Rogers the same way in 2004. He claims that was self defense too.
Rosendo Rodriguez is sentenced to death. The jury didn’t buy either of his stories of self defense. He was a cold blooded killer.
Bibliography
See No Evil, S3E6: Last Look of Summer, air date: Mar 21, 2017.
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