Dioneth Lopez – Olympic National Park WA – Feb 9 2020

On Feb 9, 2020, 21 year old Dioneth Lopez packed and boarded a flight to Seattle, Washington from her home in San Pablo, California.  She told friends she was going to “do a little hiking”, but really she was going to see her lover, a married man with kids.

On Feb 14, 2020, salal pickers found a body in the Buckhorn Wilderness section of Olympic National Park.  This area is extremely isolated in a massive park surrounded by the Puget Sound, canals, and islands.  Buckhorn Wilderness is on a mountain.  The woman suffered significant trauma to her face and skull.  Her throat was slit from ear to ear.  There is no ID, no purse, no wallet, no personal items.  She’s wearing a dark jacket with a fur collar and pink Guess shoes.  She has freshly painted nails and glitter in her hair like she was on a date.  The leaves around her are splattered with blood, so this is the murder site, not a dump site.  Police begin searching the surrounding area and find items lower on the trail including a brand new broken Tequila bottle with blood on it and a blue knife with blood and hair on it.

The only buildings within miles of Buckhorn Wilderness are the 7 Cedars Casino and neighboring Longhouse Market and Deli which has a gas station.  Police go there hoping the victim will be on their CCTV footage.  Casino staff saw her at the gas station three days earlier, on Feb 11.  So police look through CCTV footage and see her in the gas station alone for thirty minutes.  She buys some food then goes to the parking lot and gets in a red pickup truck.  They rewind the CCTV footage for the parking lot to before and after and see her arrive in the red pickup with someone, get out, go inside the gas station for the food, come out, get back in the pickup, and drive away.

The coroner tells the police that Dioneth had defensive wounds to her forearms.  She fought back after that initial blow to her head.

Police continue scanning CCTV footage and see the driver get out at the gas pumps to throw away two small bags.  He’s wearing a distinctive graphic hoodie and workmen’s pants.  His vehicle is a red Chevy Silverado pickup with tinted windows.  The license plate is registered to a man in Seattle who sold the vehicle.  The new owner never registered the vehicle in his name.

At 5:45 pm, the CCTV footage shows the driver entering the gas station deli.  This is their first good look at his face.  He’s a Hispanic male 25-35 years old.

Police still don’t know who the victim is.  Then they come across a social media post about a young woman named Dioneth Lopez who is missing.  They search her social media and see a photo of her with the same jacket, same shoes.  So they contact the friend who filed her missing persons report and show him the video footage.  He confirms it’s Dioneth Lopez.

Another friend tells the police that Dioneth had a secret illicit love affair with a married man who she was constantly breaking up with then getting back together with.  His name is Alejandro (Alex) Rojas.  They search his social media and find a photo of Alex in exactly the same clothes he was wearing at the gas station.

Police get a search warrant for Alex and Dioneth’s cell phones.  From the gps on the two phones they know exactly what happened.  Alex picked Dioneth up at the Sea Tac airport in Seattle and took her straight to the Longhouse Market and Deli gas station where they remained for seven hours.  Then he drove them up a tiny road to Buckhorn Wilderness where both of the phones went off for three hours.  When the phones went back on, they were both with Alex back at the gas station, but she was not with him.  She was already dead.

Police interview Alex telling him that Dioneth is missing (not dead).  He tells them everything, confirming the phone gps, up to the mountain.  He claims he dropped her off where she waited for some friends and he left immediately.  His and her phones say otherwise.  They finally confront him with the crime scene map where Dioneth was found dead and the gps data.  They ask him if the death was accidental.  Alex claims she attacked him and threatened to kill his wife and kid, so he defended himself and hit her over the head with the tequila bottle.  Even though he doesn’t have a single defense wound.

Alejandro Rojas is arrested and pleas guilty.  He’s sentenced to 16 years.

This was extremely disheartening.  For such a brutal murder, 16 years is nothing.

Bibliography

See No Evil, Season 12, Episode 2: Nowhere Girl.

Olympic National Park

Few people understand the massive size of Olympic National Park.  It’s 1,442 square miles or 922,650 acres.  On the west side it’s bordered by the Pacific Ocean.  On the east side, it’s bordered by the Puget Sound and several tiny islands and canals.  You have to island hop to get from one island to the next to the next to get back to Seattle.  It is far off the beaten path.  Most of the park is mountainous wilderness within a huge forest.  With bears.  In fact, a bear was spotted in a tree across the street from a local police station in the summer of 2024.