[Faith] Julie Gonzalez is a young mother
determined to give her daughter the best life possible.
- She loved that baby, oh my goodness.
- Julie was very much a tiger mother.
She would make sure Layla had everything she needed.
[Faith] But in an instant.
- We tried calling her, sending her text messages,
no response.
[Faith] She's gone.
- I ran up and down the aisles, nothing.
She wasn't there.
[Faith] Until a series of bizarre texts appeared.
- I met a man named James,
and I'm going to live with him in Colorado.
[Faith] A family's desperate search
captures national attention.
- Do you know anything about Julie's disappearance?
[Faith] And question swirl around the man in her life.
- She was supposed to go to George's that morning.
- I asked Julie, "Are you seeing Aaron?"
[Faith] Did Julie run away
or was she caught?
- Julie would never leave Layla like that.
[Faith] In a killer relationship.
- Where is she?
Oh my God.
[dramatic music]
[gentle music]
- Have you ever lost a child
in a crowd, in a store,
somewhere in a busy area?
You lose them for a minute and you get that panic...
that anxiety, that- that heart attack feeling.
In our family,
that's been the feeling for the past 13 years.
- I'm living with a broken heart.
Part of me is missing.
And...
people have died of broken hearts.
[ominous music]
- It's a scenario none of us wanna think about.
What happens when a member of your family,
a piece of your heart and soul,
suddenly goes missing?
What do you do?
What can you do?
For the family of 21-year-old Julie Ann Gonzalez
of Central Texas,
it's more than just a hypothetical situation,
it's a reality.
And when one part of their tight-knit clan disappears,
the Gonzalez family comes together
and never waivers in their quest for answers,
and eventually,
justice.
[dramatic music]
- Julie was born in 1988
in Dripping Springs, Texas.
I was 19 years old, just out of high school.
To be a young mom, I loved it.
I loved it.
[upbeat music]
I was about 15 at the time.
And I was still in high school,
so I became Julie's babysitter after school
because Sandra would go to work at night.
- I was a single parent.
Julie's dad was not in the picture.
- He was absent all her life,
so she grew up in our family,
with my parents, with my brothers and sisters.
We were all very close.
- Hi.
[Family Member] How are you?
Fine.
[Family Member] What's your name?
- Julie.
[Family Member] And how old are you?
- Five.
[Family Member] Five?
- Mm-hmm.
[upbeat music]
- In '91, my parents started a general store.
It's called Bert n' Ernie's General Store.
- Between all of us, we ran that little place.
We were very, very busy.
- Julie worked there on the weekends
alongside everyone else.
- And the community saw her growing up there.
[upbeat music]
- At Bert n' Ernie's, one of my father's employees,
his name was Aaron.
- Aaron was a go-getter.
He liked to work.
And he knew that if he wanted something,
he had to work for it.
- Aaron was 23 at the time, Julie was 16.
I started to notice Aaron and Julie giggling
and eyeing each other.
Then I found notes that she would write to him.
So I asked Julie,
"Are you seeing Aaron?"
And she answered me, "Yes."
[ominous music]
Of course it's not right that Aaron date a 16-year-old.
And I let him know
it has to stop.
[ominous music]
- I mean, I loved them both,
but I had to let Aaron go.
- Aaron was her sweetheart,
her first love.
She was hurt.
She was really hurt.
Julie hated me for that.
- First love versus tough love,
it's a powder keg of emotion for a 16-year-old.
We can only guess at how truly heartbroken Julie is.
But time, as some say, heals all wounds.
And one year later, now happily single
and determined to live life her way,
the spirited teenager makes a huge decision.
- The way she said it was,
"Mom, I want to move out."
She said, "I wanna live in Austin
and I wanna go live with my Aunt Dora."
It was very hard.
But it wasn't about me.
It was about her.
She wanted to grow up.
[melancholy music]
- So it was decided that Julie would come to Austin
to live with me.
[upbeat music]
- When she moved from the country to the city,
it was two different worlds.
[Faith] Julie moves 20 miles away
to attend Crockett High School in Austin.
She hits the ground running, excelling academically
and making friends everywhere she goes.
And in the fall of 2006, romance blossoms.
- I found out that she was going out
with a fellow by the name of George De La Cruz.
- When I met George, he was shy.
He kind of hid behind Julie.
But Julie said, "Don't let him fool you.
He might not look like a lot,
but he is a very intelligent person."
I don't think George ever had a girlfriend before Julie.
But by the time Julie and George graduated from high school,
they were boyfriend and girlfriend.
It was official.
[Faith] After graduating in 2007,
Julie receives a scholarship
from St. Edwards University in South Austin.
And George and Julie move together
to an apartment near the university.
- Things were kind of rushed in their relationship.
It was just like boom, prom, boom, graduation,
boom, moving out.
It was just one step right after the other.
There was no, like, "Oh, let's think about it.
Let's, you know, let's weigh it out."
- She was in her first year at St. Edwards,
and she had to take a break
because something was about to change her life.
- George and Julie came to me.
And Julie looked at me and said, "Mom, I'm pregnant."
And I started crying.
She's 18 years old.
She's a college student, and she's pregnant.
And she thought I would be mad.
And I said, "No, I'm not mad at you.
I'm happy,
because my daughter is going to have a baby."
[upbeat music]
On September 27th of 2007, Layla was born.
She was gorgeous, she was beautiful,
beautiful.
- Julie was very much a tiger mother.
She would make sure Layla had everything she needed.
- She loved that baby, oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness, she loved that baby.
- She stopped going to St. Edwards
because she knew she was another mouth feed,
that her and George were gonna have someone else to support.
So she became a pharmacy technician.
- But at the time, George had lost his job.
[ominous music]
- Julie would come home and find the house a mess,
find Layla with a dirty diaper,
you know, hungry.
George was playing video games all day long.
And so Julie slowly found out
that she couldn't depend on him.
But Julie turned a blind eye at George's behavior.
[Faith] In the spring of 2009, with Layla nearly two,
Julie and George secretly tied the knot.
- They just went down to the courthouse and got married.
Both of our families found out after the fact.
Nobody knew.
- I was in shock.
I didn't understand the need to
and I didn't understand the why.
But her explanation was that she wanted Layla
to grow up with two parents because she did not.
I would always hope that George would step up as a man,
as a father,
as a husband.
[ominous music]
He never did.
Julie and George were only married six months
when Julie came to me and said,
"I don't wanna be married anymore, I wanna get a divorce."
[baby crying]
She saw that he wasn't going to change.
So why be in this marriage that is going nowhere?
[dramatic music]
At this point, Julie went to go live with her grandparents.
[dramatic music]
- We all know how hard a breakup can be,
especially if one half of the relationship
isn't ready to let go.
For months on end,
George refuses to sign the divorce papers
despite Julie's wishes.
And since they share custody of Layla,
Julie has to delicately balance co-parenting with George
while trying to move on.
- And then at one of her lowest points in her life,
she sees a familiar face.
Julie came home, and she says, "I ran into Aaron."
She says, "I forgot what I was buying
'cause we were talking for about an hour,
and I didn't walk out of there with anything." [laughs]
- Julie and Aaron started to see each other again
in November of 2009.
And she was finally 21.
He was 28,
so there was no reason
why they shouldn't be together.
And the only thing that was keeping them apart
was her marriage to George.
And then March 25th of 2010, was a Thursday night,
I spoke to Julie.
She was with Aaron at Aaron's apartment.
She was spending the night there
because the next morning,
she was going to pick up Layla from George.
[melancholy music]
- Fridays were her days off.
So she would call me on Fridays
to tell me about her day or what was going on.
But this Friday, there was no call,
no text, no nothing
from Julie.
[ominous music]
- It was unlike Julie to not speak to any family members.
We are constantly communicating.
[phone ringing]
So I tried calling her all Friday.
[phone ringing]
There was no answer.
[suspenseful music]
For me not to hear from my daughter
is scary.
By the next morning,
we still hadn't heard from her.
So I knew something was wrong.
[ominous music]
- I was like, okay, look, let's go all hit
all the places Julie would frequently visit.
- I reached out to anybody that could help us find Julie,
anybody, and we didn't give up.
But George never lifted a finger to help us find Julie.
[ominous music]
- It's now been over 24 hours
since anyone saw or spoke to 21-year-old Julie Ann Gonzalez.
And for a family that speaks every day,
multiple times a day,
that length of time is more than abnormal.
It's reason to panic.
Her family reaches out to the last person
who supposedly saw her, her new boyfriend, Aaron.
[phone ringing]
- We tried calling her,
sending her text messages,
and there was no response.
[phone ringing]
- So I called Aaron, and then he said,
"She broke up with me."
What?
What are you talking about, Aaron?
He goes, "Julie broke up with me yesterday."
She sent me a text
saying that she had to get away.
- And Samantha, Julie's younger sister,
is getting text messages from Julie's phone
saying that she was okay.
The text messages were misspelled words
or short words
or slang,
and Julie never sent text messages like that.
[ominous music]
- And then there's the MySpace post.
I met a man named James
and I'm going to live with him in Colorado.
We were puzzled, we were stunned, we didn't understand.
But we also knew that she would never leave Layla like that.
She would never walk away from her.
[ominous music]
Aaron shows up.
He walks up with these papers, and he says,
"I'm super lost now."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "When I got home from work on Friday,
I found this letter on my pillow from Julie.
She's just talking about how much she loves me,
she's ready to get married."
He said, "And then I get those texts
that she breaks up with me."
Julie would not do that to Aaron, would not.
- They were in love.
There was no reason for Julie to break up with him.
- One of the texts that supposedly Julie sent says,
"I [bleep] up really bad.
I'm leaving."
Julie using foul language?
No, no, no.
No, it wasn't Julie.
- I was like, okay, look, let's go all hit all the places
Julie would frequently visit.
So we all split up.
Nothing.
[phone beeping]
- We're having a full blown panic attack.
[sirens blaring]
- Roughly 48 hours after she was last heard from,
officers from the Austin Police Department
arrive at Dora's home.
And what happens next surprises everyone in the room.
[knocking]
[ominous music]
- When they show up, they ask, "Who are we looking for?"
I tell him, "Julie Gonzalez."
And as we're talking to them, another patrolman states,
"Yes, I got a report on her earlier."
We told him George's name.
He said, "Wait a minute.
A gentleman by the name of George De La Cruz
just reported his wife as abandoning their child."
An abandonment report.
And we said, "What are you talking about?"
And now we're in freak mode, now we're freaking out.
- APD's response was, "Well, she's an adult.
She can leave.
She can go wherever she wants to."
- The police said the only thing that we can do
is wait to see if Julie shows up.
[dramatic music]
- I just didn't know who to look at
or where to turn at this point.
Sandra's a mess.
Everybody's a mess.
I had to go to work early in the morning,
but I didn't.
Instead, I drove the route that she would've driven.
And as I'm driving by a Walgreens that we live by
but not the one she worked at,
I turned to look into the parking lot
because there were no cars there but one.
[ominous music]
So it kind of caught my eye.
And it was Julie's car.
So I run inside.
And I ran up and down the aisles,
hoping to catch her,
hoping to catch her looking at some snacks
or something. [sobs]
And nothing.
She wasn't there.
So I go to the clerk and ask the clerk,
"Have you seen this girl?" [sobs]
[melancholy music]
He said, "No."
I called Sandra.
She said, "I'll be right there."
- Julie would never leave her car abandoned at that store.
Something's really wrong.
So we called the police.
[suspenseful music]
[police radio chatter]
- Around nine o'clock in the morning,
I saw the call come in.
When I first met the family,
I could tell that they were panicked to find Julie.
- I asked the police, "Please go talk to George
because he was the last person that saw her."
If he reported Julie as abandoning Layla,
then he must know something.
- George lived right around the corner.
So we went over to George's house to speak with him.
- George said Julie was acting weird
and asked him to keep their daughter Layla for the weekend
because she had something to do.
And he didn't know what that was.
[ominous music]
George invited me to search his house.
We went inside.
He's leading me from room to room,
and just, I don't see anything that stands out as suspicious.
- So at this point, we don't have evidence of a crime at all.
There was nothing more to do.
[Faith] APD is in a difficult position.
Julie is one of several people
reported missing that weekend.
Their challenge is working with limited information to go on
while being responsive
to Julie's increasingly worried family.
- The police said, well, maybe she'll show up
and pick up her vehicle.
So Sandra parked on one side and I parked on the other,
and we slept there
till the next morning.
And still nothing.
Julie didn't show up to get her car.
We're all worried and we're all afraid.
- If one of us hurts, we all hurt.
And to us, one of us was missing,
and we needed to find her.
[ominous music]
- By Sunday afternoon, March 28th,
no one has seen or spoken to Julie Ann Gonzalez
for more than 48 hours,
but all eyes are on the men in her life.
Her estranged husband, George De La Cruz,
filed a police report stating that Julie
abandoned their two-year-old daughter Layla.
Her current boyfriend, Aaron Breaux,
claims he received a breakup text from Julie
on the day she went missing.
And there's also a third man, James, with no last name.
On the day she disappeared, Julie wrote a cryptic message
on one of her social media accounts
stating she had run away to Colorado to be with James.
Well, law enforcement believes she did just that.
[ominous music]
- At this point, the police are still not believing
my family that there's something wrong, that she's missing.
- And we're all worried, and we're all afraid,
and what do we do?
[sharp exhale]
- We start thinking, how can we get her story out?
How can we get her face out?
[ominous music]
- So I said, "We need to plaster her face
throughout the city."
- My brother takes out his laptop, and he says,
"I'm gonna make a poster."
- I started sending emails
to all the news networks here in Austin.
Hey, my niece is missing.
We don't know what to do.
The police aren't helping us out.
We're like, hey, you know, let's put some heat
up to Austin PD, like, why aren't they doing anything?
- Twenty-one-year-old Julie Ann Gonzalez was last seen
here on Friday.
Her car, as you can see, is still parked
in the South Austin Walgreens parking lot.
- It really started off by Fox 7
and it got the ball rolling.
- We had hundreds of people come out and help us out,
passing out posters.
- I reached out to anybody that could help us find Julie,
anybody,
and we didn't give up.
[Faith] With growing community support in the search for Julie,
her family continues to focus
on the two known men in Julie's life.
- Aaron, oh yeah, he was a potential suspect,
but he was wanting to be there.
He was there trying to help find Julie.
- But George never lifted a finger to help us find Julie.
Never.
- Pardon my French, but I said,
"Where's that mother [bleep] George.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] The family's persistence pays off.
On April 6th, 11 days after Julie's disappearance,
George De La Cruz is finally brought in to Austin PD
for questioning.
- George was interviewed by a missing persons detective,
Jim Scott.
- George's reaction to it was a little nervous,
I gotta admit,
but I think I would be nervous too
if Detective Scott hit me
with that question all of a sudden.
It didn't raise any red flags for me.
[Faith] Austin's Missing Persons Unit investigates
but makes little progress.
[dramatic music]
Days turn into weeks without any sign of Julie.
For the Soto family, it's excruciating.
And with a case like this,
I try to put myself in their shoes.
I ask questions that any mother would ask
about their missing daughter.
Is she safe?
Is she hungry?
Is she calling out for help?
And worst of all,
is she alive?
[gentle music]
- It's a lot of hurt were in our hearts
because we would get up in the morning,
and we knew, and she's missing, she's not there.
- Layla was surrounded by family, always by family.
She didn't have to go to daycare.
She was always taken care of by a family member,
be it our family or George's family.
[Faith] In early May, a little over a month
after Julie was last seen,
the family's media campaign
catches the attention of someone big.
[phone ringing]
- One day I get a phone call from the "Dr. Phil" show.
And they tell me that they saw me on TV.
- They said Dr. Phil offered for George
to take a lie detector test,
and George accepted.
- He said that he had nothing to hide.
[Faith] This could be the break
they have been waiting for.
[Announcer] Today on "Dr. Phil."
- When I found out that Dr. Phil
wanted to cover her story,
I knew that everyone's gonna know.
The whole world's gonna know.
- George, do you know anything about Julie's disappearance?
- No, I don't.
- Are you willing to take a polygraph?
- Yeah.
- It was like, okay, this is it.
[suspenseful music]
- What we're gonna test you on today, George,
is whether you're telling the truth
about not being involved in Julie's disappearance.
- He went backstage to take a polygraph.
And then they asked us,
"Can you guys come back tomorrow?"
And we're like, what?
So me and Sandra had to go back to the hotel room
and then to come back the following day
and to find the results.
[sighs]
I don't think I slept that night.
I'm pretty sure Sandra didn't sleep.
- All I wanted to know was if Julie was alive.
That's all I wanted to know.
[suspenseful music]
- It's been over aon
since 21-year-old mother Julie Ann Gonzalez
was last seen by her estranged husband George De La Cruz.
And Julie's family is on a mission
to publicize her disappearance.
Now they're back on the "Dr. Phil" show,
anxiously waiting for the results of a lie detector test
George was given the day before.
- When we came on the next day,
it was very awkward because it's just me, and Sandra,
and Dr. Phil,
and then the guy who administered the test.
George and his mom weren't there.
- And I'm gonna tell you what the results are right now.
He was asked, "Are you responsible for
Julie's disappearance?"
He answered, "No."
He was asked, "Did you cause Julie's disappearance
during the month of March?"
He answered "No."
Those were not truthful answers.
He failed the polygraph test.
And, um.
- We knew it.
[Margarita] We knew it.
[Dr. Phil] This was not a close call.
- This was not a close call at all.
- He failed it, and his mother was in disbelief.
She couldn't believe it.
- What you did?
- I didn't do nothing.
I didn't do anything.
I just felt that I should've stopped her.
- Do you know where is she?
- No.
- Where is she?
- I don't know.
- Please tell the truth, mijo.
[speaking Spanish]
- Forty-nine days after Julie disappeared,
the Runaway Mom episode of "Dr. Phil" aired,
and Julie's story was on there.
I think that definitely gave the investigation a kickstart.
- After the "Dr. Phil" show, there was a big meeting
with Missing Persons, and the upper chain of command
decided that since there was no word from Julie,
there was just nothing to show that she was anywhere.
That's when the case transitioned
from missing person to potential homicide.
[dramatic music]
[Faith] George is looking more and more like a suspect,
and detectives definitely wanna speak to him.
But George lawyers up and refuses to talk.
With no evidence to detain him,
investigators remain undeterred.
There are plenty of other avenues to go down
in the quest to find out what happened to Julie.
- You have to start systematically
eliminating people
before we can focus in one direction around one person.
We consider that this person, James, did exist.
And although no one knew him,
he was certainly someone that she may have left with.
- Detective Sanchez and APD's Digital Forensics Unit
serve up a warrant for Julie and George's phone records
and also look into her social media accounts.
They need to determine if this mysterious man named James
actually exists.
In the meantime,
there's the other obvious person of interest,
Julie's current boyfriend, Aaron.
- We knew that she had spent the night with Aaron
and that she had left his apartment that morning
on her way to George's house to pick up Layla.
And we needed to follow up on his whereabouts.
[suspenseful music]
Aaron absolutely had to be ruled out.
[dramatic music]
- Aaron's response to the text messages was surprise,
it was anger,
confusion
because she left.
- That just didn't make sense.
That's kind of something you wanna save for later.
You know, obviously that was a red flag for me.
- Aaron already lost Julie once
when she was just 16 years old
and working at the family market.
Could it be that he was so afraid to lose her again
that he took matters into his own hands?
- He just left her.
And then a few hours later,
she's sending these text messages to his phone
saying that she's leaving
and the relationship was a mistake.
Could Aaron have been involved?
Absolutely.
- They found someone had used Julie's debit card
at a local Walmart store.
- That's something very important
that he left out in his initial interview.
- We proved he was sending text messages
from Julie's phone.
- After Julie Ann Gonzalez
her new boyfriend Aaron claims he received several texts
from her phone ending their relationship.
But he tells detectives he deleted the supposed text.
It's a setback for sure,
but investigators also wanna know
about the morning Julie was last seen.
She woke up in Aaron's apartment.
Did something happen there
that investigators don't know about?
[Faith] It was later that day when Aaron
found that love letter,
supposedly from Julie,
on his bed.
- The letter that Julie wrote clearly showed
that they were deeply in love,
but he could have written it himself too.
You know, how do we know?
You know, we're always skeptical,
so we need to prove it.
What other writing samples of Julie
can we compare this to- to determine that?
So we acquired other writing samples from her family
to make sure that the handwriting was similar,
and everything checked out.
[Faith] With Aaron removed from the suspect list,
the detective gets a call
from APD's Digital Forensics Unit.
They've been trying to track down
the mysterious James in Colorado
who Julie supposedly posted about.
- That information never led anywhere.
It was not credible information.
[ominous music]
- Detective Sanchez and his team put their focus
back on George and decide to revisit
the missing person's case file
to see if anything was overlooked.
- He'd found that someone had used Julie's debit card
at a local Walmart store.
- So detectives went to the local Walmart
to see if they could get video
of the purchase being conducted by Julie
with her debit card.
- Detectives discovered that it was in fact George
using Julie's debit card.
Soon thereafter, detectives applied for a search warrant
to search George's residence and cell phone.
Detectives found receipts.
They found the items that George had purchased
at the Walmart with Julie's debit card.
They also collected George's Xbox.
- George's explanation about the debit card
was that Julie returned and left the debit card
in the mailbox for him to use
to purchase Layla what she needed.
That's something very important
that he left out in his initial interviews.
[dramatic music]
- George using Julie's debit card
right after she went missing seems damning.
But is it enough evidence to prove he killed her?
As of now, there's no body and no proof
that a crime has even been committed.
APD knows they need more evidence to build their case.
And in June,
after waiting months
for both Julie and Georgia's cell phone records,
Sanchez finally gets them.
They're not necessarily a smoking gun,
but they offer critical data.
[dramatic music]
- Collecting all the digital data from George's phone
was going to require expert analysis.
The Xbox was also important because it's a digital device
and it also has data that can be analyzed.
- An Xbox is a computer.
Not only is it used for games,
but we can place phone calls, we can send texts,
we can search the internet.
Doing the forensics on the Xbox, that is exhaustive,
it's very time consuming.
[Faith] Months pass,
and then sadly, years.
Julie's daughter Layla grows up
without knowing the warm embrace of her beloved mother.
And Julie's family agonizes over the lack of answers,
the lack of closure,
and the struggle to hold on to hope.
- The posters, they would slowly disappear,
but then we would replace them.
[sobbing]
[Faith] In 2013, the detectives analyzing
the digital data from George's Xbox
finally feel they've uncovered a distinct pattern,
an incriminating pattern.
- George was an excessive gamer.
Oftentimes he would be gaming up to almost 18 hours a day.
The day Julie goes missing,
there's over 20 hours in between gaming sessions...
which never occurred on any other day
prior to that.
[ominous music]
One of the other things that really stood out
is after Julie goes missing,
he takes his Xbox to North Austin,
to his friend's house.
But at the same time,
Julie's phone connects to a tower covering the vicinity
of that apartment complex.
- That information became important
because when it appeared that Julie was posting comments
on her MySpace account,
the IP address that was being used was the exact same one.
- Therefore, on the weekend that the family
was frantically looking for Julie,
Julie's phone
and George's Xbox
are in North Austin.
[Faith] And there's something else.
Investigators have always wondered
who sent Aaron the alleged breakup text from Julie Ann.
Now, they have their answer.
- If you look at Julie's call activity
on the call detail records,
her device is at the Walmart,
and George is on video at the Walmart,
and you can see the cellular activity
connecting to that antenna that covers that Walmart
exactly during the text activity
between Julie's device and Aaron.
[dramatic music]
- So, at that point in time,
we proved it was George in fact
who was sending text messages from Julie's phone.
[suspenseful music]
- Three long years after the disappearance
and presumed murder of Julie Ann Gonzalez,
the Austin Police Department is ready to announce
a huge break in the case.
Though they haven't found Julie's body,
their forensic analysis of bank records,
surveillance footage,
and a well-used Xbox all point to one person,
George De La Cruz.
- At the same time as APD arrest George,
Detective Sanchez makes a difficult call
to a family still holding on to the last threads of hope.
- Detective Sanchez told the whole family there,
and says, "Your granddaughter is dead."
[somber music]
And there's no words to describe the feeling
that you get after they tell you your granddaughter's dead.
And there isn't,
I mean, that's-that's...
devastating.
It's devastating.
- We can't give in to this pain.
I can't give in to
this broken heart
that could just destroy me.
I can't do that.
[somber music]
[Faith] In the fall of 2013, prosecutors in Travis County
prepared to try George De La Cruz
for the murder of Julie Ann Gonzalez.
But they fear that getting him convicted
will be as challenging as getting him arrested.
- The fact that we did not have a body
was going to be something incredibly difficult for us
to be able to show that Julie was in fact dead.
- You have to understand that all the evidence we had,
it was all circumstantial.
[Faith] It takes two years to prepare their case.
But in the spring of 2015,
with George in jail awaiting trial,
the prosecution feels they finally established
a clear motive for murder.
- Detectives found a digital image of Julie and Aaron
at the Austin Zoo on George's cell phone.
[ominous music]
We believe that once George found out
that Julie was slipping away from his fingers,
that she was leaving him for good,
that she was moving on with another man,
that he couldn't take it.
And I think at that point in time,
he was not gonna let Julie move on without him.
The trial lasted about a week.
And once the state rested its case,
the jury went back to deliberate,
and they deliberated for about six hours
before returning a verdict of guilty.
[ominous music]
[Faith] Though George De La Cruz
is sentenced to life in prison,
it's his daughter Layla
who will endure the greatest consequences,
a lifetime without her mother.
- What kind of life is Layla gonna have now?
Her mom's not here,
and now her father's gonna be taken away.
This poor little girl.
[Faith] A civil suit is filed after the trial
and resolves the status of young Layla's living situation.
Julie and George's family will split custody 50/50.
- We lost a bright light out of our family.
This situation just brought darkness to us,
and she was the light.
- To this day, George De La Cruz
still won't admit to playing a role in Julie's murder
or sharing what he may know about the location of her body.
And while George will spend the rest of his days in prison,
it's Julie's family who find themselves
in emotional purgatory.
Without a body to lay to rest,
they are unable to chart a path to healing
through this cruel tragedy.
- The Lord took an angel home, that's what it was, you know?
Took a beautiful person.
Beautiful.
There's not many like her in this world.
[somber music]
- When Julie was born,
I looked into her little eyes
and I knew that she was going
to leave her mark in this world.
When I talk to God, I say, "Is this it?
Is this it?
Is this her legacy,
to help others,
that her story will help other families
to not give up?"
- Julie Gonzalez worked tirelessly to provide
her daughter with the same kind of tender,
supportive upbringing she herself was blessed to have.
Sadly, the family Julie tried to build with George
was dismantled in one cruel act.
And the life she so fearlessly lived
was cut short by a killer relationship.