The security guard was doing his usual patrol through Moorpark just after 4 a. m. when he heard what sounded like leftover fireworks popping in the distance. He drove toward the noise and found a car abandoned in the middle of the street, half up on the median, engine still running, driver’s door hanging open.
At first, he figured a drunk partier had crashed and stumbled off. Then he noticed a woman’s flip-flop lying on the asphalt, its pair wedged under the driver’s seat. That was strange enough, but peering inside, he saw red stains everywhere. He backed away and called the police.
The car belonged to a twenty-year-old woman named Megan Barroso. She had spent July 4th, 2001, at a friend’s barbecue, then a beach party, then another house. Around 2 a. m.
, a friend dropped her back at her car. She hugged Lindsay goodbye, accidentally grabbed Lindsay’s phone, turned back to return it, and headed home. Around 4 a. m.
, her car was found shot up on that street. Investigators counted bullet holes across the windshield. The driver’s side window was shattered. There was blood inside the cabin, but not a single drop on the pavement outside.
That told them the shooter had likely pulled her from the car and taken her. They found a purse splattered with blood, no ID inside, and a phone smeared with blood tucked under the seat. Shell casings nearby came from an AK-47. They ran the plates.
The car was a rental, registered to Megan. No hospitals had admitted her. There were no witnesses, no cameras, no fingerprints. Her friends and family were shattered and clueless.
Megan had no exes, no enemies, no drama. She was just a college student heading home for work. One detail stuck out. At the beach party, a guy named John had kept pushing Lindsay to introduce him to Megan.
Lindsay refused, saying he was only after a fling. Police questioned him, but witnesses swore he never left the party. He was cleared. Forensic data from the car’s black box and ballistic analysis pieced together the attack: someone sideswiped her car, she sped off, stopped at a red light, the attacker opened fire, missed, she tried to drive past him, and a bullet struck her in the stomach.
She lost control and hit the median. Then her attacker walked up to the car. An anonymous caller reported seeing a man stuffing what looked like a body into the trunk of a burgundy sedan near some notorious mountains, but that lead went nowhere. Search teams with dogs and helicopters found nothing.
Her scent vanished a few yards from the car. Days turned into weeks. Police offered a $25,000 reward. They brought in a profiler named Sharon Hagen, who studied every detail and believed the attacker had a sexual motive, that he had done this before.
The detectives thought it was road rage. Sharon pushed harder, pointing to two prior attacks: a masked man claiming to be a cop broke into Joanna’s home, drove her to a park, and assaulted her. Just days before Megan vanished, another woman, Donna, was grabbed at knifepoint from the street, assaulted in a car, then driven to a house where the man kept assaulting her, before calmly returning her to where he found her. Donna gave police a clear description, but they never caught him.
The case stalled until July 26th, when a man reported a burglary at his neighbor’s house. Police arrested thirty-one-year-old Vincent Sanchez. He shared a house with two roommates, one of whom owned an AK-47 Sanchez could easily access. The local cops didn’t know anything about Megan’s case, so that detail barely registered.
They booked Sanchez, and he made a call from jail, asking a roommate to get rid of a bag he’d tossed into a dumpster. The roommate fished out the bag. Inside were videotapes, women’s underwear, and explicit photos of women. He popped a tape in.
It showed a man in a ski mask assaulting bound women. The roommate recognized Sanchez’s voice instantly. Some videos were filmed right in that very house. One photo showed Sanchez’s own girlfriend.
He called the police. Officers searched Sanchez’s room and found more photos, more underwear, women’s belongings, knives, a shotgun, handcuffs, and a video camera. The profiler, Sharon Hagen, was called in. She had been tracking a serial predator who had assaulted women across the city for years.
She recognized over ten victims on those tapes. Sanchez wore a mask in every video, which complicated the case. But Sharon noticed he knew details about his victims’ lives, their schools, jobs, relationships. He had been stalking them.
She brought Donna in for a lineup. Without hesitation, Donna pointed at Sanchez and identified him as the man who grabbed her. Then Sharon learned about Sanchez’s access to an AK-47. She connected that to Megan’s case.
Detectives examined the rifle and noticed it was missing the cleaning rod. A matching cleaning rod had been found near Megan’s car. That was enough for a closer look at his room. On the floor, they found a woman’s jacket, identical to the one Megan wore the night she vanished.
Lab tests later found tiny specks of Megan’s blood on it. In Sanchez’s van, Luminol revealed massive blood stains he had scrubbed so thoroughly no DNA could be recovered. Sanchez’s roommates told police he had been cleaning his pickup truck at four in the morning on July 5th, scrubbing the seats, looking strange. His truck had a fresh, long scratch.
He said he’d been bumped in traffic. On the night of the Fourth, Sanchez had been drinking heavily, calling his girlfriend over and over. She wouldn’t answer. Her sister’s house, where a party had been held, was a stone’s throw from where Megan had been visiting.
Detectives believed Sanchez went there to confront his girlfriend, found everyone asleep, spotted Megan leaving, and followed her. Cornered, Sanchez confessed to assaulting multiple women, describing how he stalked them and studied their homes. But he refused to admit any involvement in Megan’s disappearance. His best friend mentioned Sanchez once pointed out a canyon and said it would be a great place to hide bodies.
Police organized a massive search. Around three thousand volunteers joined. Search dogs eventually zeroed in on a small ravine. At the bottom, officers found human remains, decomposed beyond recognition, but a ring on the hand matched one Megan wore.
Medical examiners confirmed it was her. She had been hit by a single bullet that missed vital organs. Due to decomposition, they couldn’t determine if she’d been assaulted, but they found one chilling detail: she was wearing someone else’s underwear. Forensic analysis of Sanchez’s pickup found specks of glitter.
Identical glitter was found in Megan’s hair and on her jacket. It was a rare hexagonal shape, and an identical piece was found on the AK-47. On August 10th, Sanchez was charged with sixty-two counts, including assaults on thirteen other women. He tried to plead guilty to Megan’s murder in October, but the judge rejected it because Sanchez wouldn’t admit to a specific degree of murder or acknowledge aggravating factors.
His lawyers argued the death penalty wasn’t warranted because the prosecution couldn’t prove Megan was alive during any assault. The trial began in 2003. The defense didn’t argue innocence, just that Sanchez didn’t plan to kill her. The jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death.
Three years later, California imposed a moratorium on executions, so he was sent to prison to serve a life sentence instead. He’s now fifty-five. Investigators still haven’t ruled out more victims.
Megan was likely the only one he killed, but when it comes to the assaults, that question still hangs in the air to this day.
