Katie Sepich – Katie’s Law

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Katie Sepich was murdered by Gabriel Avila in 2003

After a night of partying and a fight with her boyfriend, 22-year-old Katie Sepich walks away from her friend’s house.  Friends and family are immediately concerned when they can’t reach her. The next day the search tragically ends.  Who was responsible for her murder?  Listen to how investigators caught the one person they weren’t even looking for!

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Where Is Katie?

On the morning of August 31, 2003, in Las Cruces, New Mexico Tracy Waters was awoken at a friend’s house. Joe Bischoff was asking if she knew where his girlfriend Katie was. Katie Sepich is a 22-year-old business major and she and Joe had been dating for about 8 months. Katie was very close with her family, her parents Dave and Jayann, and her younger siblings AJ and Caraline.

Tracy was Katie’s friend and roommate. The 3 of them had spent the night before bar crawling and at a house party. They were celebrating the start of grad school for Tracy and Katie at New Mexico University. It was Memorial Day weekend in a college town.

When they woke up the next morning, Katie Sepich was nowhere to be found. Tracy asked Joe what happened. While at first, he said he didn’t know where she went, he then admitted they had gotten into an argument. Katie had stormed off late the night before.  He said he didn’t know where she went and couldn’t find her anywhere. Tracy picked up her phone to call Katie, but Joe explained that when he tried to call her, her phone was there with them. 

Searching For Katie Sepich

They went out and checked her car and figured she had probably walked home. The home she and Tracy shared was only a few blocks away. Tracy went home but there was no trace of Katie Sepich. She called all of her friends that Katie could have gone to or called. No one knew where she was. Joe and a friend drove up and down the streets thinking she may be walking. Tracy called hospitals and jailhouses thinking she may have been picked up for being drunk and disorderly, but there was no trace.

After a few hours, Tracy called Katie’s mom to see if she had heard from her. Tracy explained what happened and Katie’s mom thought that she probably was just at a friend’s house. Tracy explained that she had called everyone. She asked if she could file a missing person’s report and her mom said yes immediately.

Shortly after police came to Tracy’s home and asked for a picture of Katie Sepich and to explain what happened. They left with the photo and returned within the hour, asking Tracy if she could identify someone. Tracy was elated thinking that Katie had been picked up and she just needed to verify it was her. When they arrived at the hospital, the officers led her down to the basement. They opened a body bag pulling down the flap to reveal Katie Sepich.

Katie Sepich Was Found Near A Landfill

target

That morning while Katie’s friends had been frantically searching for her, police were notified that a couple had found a body near a landfill while target shooting in the desert.

She was lying facedown, half-naked with her legs pushed apart. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The killer had also doused her with flammable liquid pouring it over her shoulders and back and lighting her on fire. It was probably an effort to hide evidence. Fortunately, the killer failed in this attempt. They left behind DNA on her body including skin beneath her fingernails, a testament to how hard she fought back.

With no belongings and no identification, police weren’t been able to easily identify the victim until they saw Katie’s photo. The area was deserted completely. If the couple hadn’t been shooting at that exact spot it could have been months before her body was found. There were tire tracks that backed up right to where her body had been left. The tracks appeared to be from a small truck. This led investigators to believe that she had been attacked and killed elsewhere and then dumped.

Katie Sepich Couldn’t Scream

Upon investigating the house they found that Katie’s shoes were sitting outside her first story window. The screen had been removed from the outside. There were also signs of a struggle. There was a difference of opinion among investigators if she had been abducted at that spot or if this was where she had been fully attacked. Some found it hard to believe that the attack could have taken place there because no one had heard or saw anything. Not even Tracy’s mother, who was visiting and sleeping inside the house. In interviewing Katie’s parents, police discovered that Katie couldn’t scream. She could speak normally, but when she would try to scream it nothing would come out.

Now that police had an idea of what had happened to Katie Sepich, they first investigated her boyfriend Joe Bischoff. Joe had attended college with Katie and they had been going out for about 8 months. Joe was moving 300 miles away to attend grad school, but he and Katie planned to stay together. They had already worked out a schedule for when they would visit each other. The day before they had gone out to buy Katie a ring with her birthstone as a symbol of their relationship. Joe was in town to get the rest of his stuff before permanently moving away.

What Happened That Night?

Katie Sepich had worked that day. That evening they got together with a group of friends and went to a bar. They went to a 2nd bar and closed it down. Then they moved to a friend’s house to end the night. Joe told Tracy and the police that there was an argument. It wasn’t until he was in the interrogation room that he admitted why Katie was so angry that she stormed off. At this house party, she walked in on Joe kissing another girl.

Joe claimed that after she stormed off a he and a friend went out to try and find her right away. They looked first at her car, then drove by her house. When they saw that there were no lights on they figured she had gone to another friend’s house. Keep in mind, everyone is drunk at this point. They went back to the house and Joe fell asleep on the couch. He woke the next morning and woke Tracy to try and find Katie Sepich.

Even though police suspected Joe, they had nothing solid to go on and had to let him go. He told them that he had to leave to get back to school, but he would be available if they needed him for anything. However, once he was out of town, when police tried to get in touch with him, he told them that he had a lawyer and everything had to go through him.

Tire Tracks and DNA

tire tracks in the sand

Police had 2 solid pieces of evidence, the tire tracks and the DNA found under Katie’s fingernails. They requested DNA from everyone that had been at the party that night. All but 1 person complied. That person was Joe Bischoff. It was at this point that police began to convince themselves that he was guilty. Rumors began to spread among friends and family. Joe was not allowed to attend Katie’s funeral. Police even set up a hidden camera at Katie’s gravesite thinking Joe may visit and confess to what he had done.

Unfortunately that camera was knocked down and police could not confirm if Joe had even visited the grave site. During the funeral, police scoured the parking lot looking for any tire marks that may match the tracks from the dump site. They found nothing.

While police could not get a warrant for Joe’s DNA they did find out that Katie and Joe had had sex on Katie’s bed the day before the murder. They used the DNA from those sheets to compare to what had been found under Katie’s fingernails. It was not a match. They contacted Joe’s lawyer to request a solid sample to confirm the results, which he did. Joe was finally off the hook.

Is Katie’s Murder Related To A Wisconsin Crime?

We are now a few months from the murder. Police obtain information about an eerily similar crime that had taken place in Wisconsin 11 weeks before Katie Sepich was killed. A young woman had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. When she was walking to her car two men abducted her. They took her to a field and sexually assaulted and strangled her. Next they poured flammable liquid on her and set her on fire. Luckily for the young woman, they thought they had left her for dead, but she was able to walk to a nearby home and get help. At first, she couldn’t give much of a description. Once she had recovered she was able to meet with a sketch artist.

Months later a local Wisconsin farmer contacted police because the sketch matched two migrant workers that had worked for him but left right after the girl was attacked. One he had not seen since, but the other had recently resurfaced and was working on the farm. The farmer took matters into his own hands, giving the worker a soda and placing the bottle in a plastic bag when he walked away securing his DNA. While they were able to match him to the WI crime, it wasn’t a match for Katie Sepich.

Police still held out hope that the 2nd migrant worker was the one responsible for Katie’s attack, but they couldn’t find him. Almost a year later, they were finally able to locate him and secure a DNA sample. Again while it was a match for the Wisconsin crime, it was no match for Katie. Police were back to square one.

Katie’s Law

It was around this time that Robert Jones, the police captain who had been working on Katie’s case, was retiring. In a conversation with Katie’s mother Jayann, they brought up that in New Mexico, only when someone is convicted of a crime, is a DNA sample taken, not at the time of the arrest. The DNA taken from Katie Sepich was being run weekly through the CODIS database. In Jayann’s eyes, the more samples there were, the higher the chance to catch this monster.

It was at this point that Katie’s mother began pushing Katie’s Law. A law in which those arrested for a felonious crime would have a DNA sample taken. In Feb 2006, the bill was passed!

There’s An Intruder In My Apartment!

CDP Life Tip #9

Fast forward to….November 2003

A 911 call comes in from two women, Annala and Leslie. They stated that there is an intruder in their apartment and they have barricaded themselves in the bathroom. One of the two women recognized the intruder as she has seen him watching them before and peeking in the windows. 

They were sleeping when Leslie suddenly awoke and ran to Annala’s bedroom. They ran into her bathroom and locked themselves in staying on the line until police arrived. Police were able to arrest the suspect, and he had a knife on him. 

CDP Life Tip #10

Gabriel Avila

Gabriel Avila was in the New Mexico prison system since November 2004. He had been convicted of aggravated burglary and intent to commit aggravated assault. While in prison he was finally tested for DNA. He was a match for Katie’s killer. Police were able to speak with Gabriel’s ex-wife. They obtained tires from the truck he had been driving at the time as well as a ring that was found in the truck. It was Katie’s ring.

According to Gabriel Avila, he saw Katie Sepich when she was walking home. He had been out trying to score coke. He said that he saw her trying to get in through her window and he stopped and got out of his truck to see if she needed help. Avila said that he then suddenly “lost it” grabbed her from behind, pinned her to the ground, and raped her. He strangled her until she stopped moving because he thought she would be able to identify him.

Gabriel pleaded guilty and was given a 69 year prison sentence.

Gabriel had been arrested for aggravated burglary with a deadly weapon and resisting an officer. Had Katie’s Law been in effect, he would have been caught within months of this horrific crime. Since then, Katie’s Law, or an equivalent, has been adopted in 28 states.

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