Hair DNA Key In Missing Woman Case

Three weeks ago, 53-year-old Mario Flavio Garcia was seen on tape leaving a California casino with 27-year-old Christie Wilson. He is the last person known to have been with her.

Wilson has been missing ever since, and police now say a hair found in Garcia's car ties him to her disappearance,

"We've had now 20 days of being torn apart, and still no end in sight," says Wilson's stepfather, Pat Boyd. "There's no chance to get better because every day is like another brick on your shoulder or your back."

Wilson disappeared after a night of gambling at the Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, Calif., near Sacramento.

Video cameras caught images of her at the blackjack table alongside Garcia.

One image shows them leaving the building together.

"It was very clear. You could see her car very clearly," says Lt. George Malim of the Placer County Sheriff's Department. "That's how we know she never came back to the car."

"To me," Wilson's mother, Debbie Boyd, told Kauffman, "in seeing the surveillance tape, it was apparent that she didn't have all of her faculties about her as she walked out. She was very wobbly.

"And I think that what he did, they walked out, and he probably said, 'I'm going right by ABC Road; you really shouldn't be driving; let me give you a lift.' … She could have willingly gotten into his vehicle, not realizing that she was falling into the hands of a vicious, vicious character."

Garcia lives with his wife and two children. But 20 years ago, he was in trouble with the law.

Says Malim, "It involved charges of rape, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and possession of stolen property."

Despite that list, Kauffman says, Garcia was sentenced to just one year's probation.

Now, Kauffman says, preliminary DNA tests on a hair found inside Garcia's car suggest Wilson was in the vehicle.

Asked by Kauffman if police told her and her husband that the DNA matches and the hair was Christie's, Debbie Boyd answered, "Absolutely."

"It's pretty hard to think," Pat Boyd says, "somebody was in a part of the car they shouldn't be in, and that it'd be anything but a bad situation, that she may have been killed."

Garcia has not been charged but sheriffs say the man who has been a person of interest in the Wilson case has been officially named a suspect. His attorney was unavailable for comment.

The search continues, but the Boyds admit that hope of finding Wilson alive has faded.

"They searched primary areas they thought a crime would occur," Pat says. "If I'm going to drive somebody away from the casino, where would I park? Where would I try to commit a rape? Where would something happen, and where's the likely place that you place somebody if you had a problem, killed somebody? Where would you have to dump the body?"

"I actually have personally gone back to that casino," Debbie says, "exactly in that parking aisle that Mr. Garcia had parked his car, just at the same time in the evening that Christie and Mr. Garcia walked out of the casino.

"I was actually stunned at how many people go to Thunder Valley and walk in and out of that casino at the wee hours of the morning, midweek."

Wilson's mother hopes one of those people may have seen something, and will still come forward.

Garcia is being held on unrelated weapons charges. His bail has been set at $1 million, and forensic tests on his car continue.

You can learn much more about this case on an upcoming broadcast of 48 Hours Mystery.