"We have no answers": Podcast renews focus on Yuba County unsolved murder of Chairo Garibay
YUBA COUNTY — A local cold case and unsolved murder has caught the attention of a popular true crime podcast, The Fall Line. Host Laurah Norton hopes to shed light on a mystery left in the dark for more than a decade.
Chairo Garibay Ferreyra of Olivehurst, Calif., was found murdered in January 2006, just weeks after she vanished in December 2005. To this day, more than 17 years later, no one has ever been arrested for her brutal murder.
A new episode of The Fall Line's 3-part series diving into the case was released Wednesday. The final episode will be published in one week.
The family hopes this national spotlight will finally help them get justice for Chairo.
"We have no answers, we don't know what happened," Chairo's sister Marisol Villaseñor told CBS13 in an interview.
On December 11, 2005, while the rest of her relatives were at church, Chairo disappeared from her parents' home. She was supposed to join them there. She never arrived.
"There were too many possibilities and no answers in sight," Norton says in episode two of the series.
After Chairo vanished from Olivehurst at the age of 20, the family's Toyota Camry was found the same day submerged in a nearby river. It was uncommon for Chairo to have even taken the car, as she had her own vehicle. It's one of the many things that doesn't add up in her disappearance.
She also left her phone and wallet at home, which was out of character.
"That just wasn't right. We knew something was wrong," Villaseñor told CBS13.
Five weeks later came the news of a discovery the entire family was dreading. Chairo's body had been found.
"I remember I was pulled out of school. When I got home, everyone was crying. The detective, he knelt down to me because I was a child. He kneeled down to my height and told me that she was dead," said Villaseñor, remembering what she recalls as the saddest moment of her life. "In my heart, I kind of already knew she was gone. But I just needed those words of confirmation, I guess."
She and her mother Magdalena say this podcast could finally bring them answers on who killed Chairo and why.
"Somebody did this to someone you loved. It's just the worst pain ever. You can't believe someone could do that to another person," said Villaseñor.
Chairo's body was found washed away in a ditch in 2006, not far from that submerged car. She didn't die by drowning, but rather blunt force trauma to the head. Her body had been wrapped in plastic.
Loved ones choose to remember her as she was: full of life.
"A happy, smiling person, and I just want her to be remembered as that kind of person," said Villaseñor. "She had a contagious laugh. She always wanted to make people feel happy. Even if you were having a bad day, she would be the person to light up your day."
They refuse to let Chairo be forgotten. A case cold is not a case closed. Someone knows something.
Chairo's family hopes by sharing her story with anyone who will listen, that someone finally speaks up.
"At the end of the day, we lost a daughter, a sister, a friend. We are never going to get her back, but it would bring closure finding the person who did it and a little bit of relief to our family," she said.
All these years later, a $50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to an arrest in Chairo's case.
"We're honored to work with Chairo's family in increasing awareness of Chairo's case, and I want to stress: Chairo's homicide is very solvable," Norton told CBS13 in a statement. "All it will take is the right tip. If you have any information, no matter how unimportant you might think it is, please contact the sheriff's office. Your tip might be the key to resolving Chairo's case. Her family has worked hard to keep her name in the community's memory—but they need the community's help now to solve her murder."
Tips can be submitted anonymously to the Yuba County Sheriff's Office.
Listen to Norton's in-depth reporting in The Fall Line series at this link.
