Strangler

Tony Shore (TS): The Diana Rebollar case, Rebollar, however you say it.

John Swaim (JS): Rebollar.

TS: Rebollar. At that point in time I was living in The Heights on East 18th Street, corner house at East 18th Street and Beverly behind the elementary school with my, she wasn’t a wife, but a live-in. Girlfriend. She had two sons and I had two daughters when we were living there.

Her car had broke down. I didn’t have transportation at that time. She had an old Dodge van. I have no idea what year it was. Sports van.

JS: What’d it look like?

TS: It was beige with white trim down the center. And it had one big door on the back and it—

JS: And whose was this?

TS: . . . Was an extended van. Yolanda Elizabeth Martin. She was a live-in. Not married.

JS: Elizabeth Martin.

TS: Elizabeth Martin.

JS: This van was . . . ?

TS: This van belonged to her. It belonged to her dad. It belonged to somebody but we were using it. It didn’t have a transmission. I put the transmission in.

JS: It was a Dodge you said?

TS: It was a Dodge sports van. It was an older model. It was an extended van. It had the long rear end.

Anyway. She and I had been on the rocks, up and down. It was a bad rollercoaster kind of relationship. We had four kids living in the house and we had a two bedroom house, not enough space, ’cause Lizz had come out of a lesbian relationship to be in our relationship and she was going out, sometimes with her gay friends and stuff and I was unhappy and things weren’t going well.

And, uh, Diana Rebollar. That was a freaky pack of specifics I don’t understand exactly. Too young. Not developed. That was an opportunity, a freaky thing that I don’t know why I did that. I remember seeing this girl walking alone.

JS: Do you know what street you’re on?

TS: I wanna say on Main Street. North Main somewhere around 21 st to 26th. I’m not really sure where in there. I know there is a parking lot and I pulled in and I talked to her and . . . there wasn’t anybody around and I don’t know what the hell. I’m sitting there going . . . the girl. I just picked her up, put her in the van. Nobody saw shit. And I told her to be quiet—

JS: Did you wrap anything around her or anything or just took her into—

TS: I just threw her in initially and I told her to be quiet and that it was kidnapping and that she wasn’t gonna get hurt, this and that. She made like she was gonna not cooperate so I remember using duct tape to bind her. Hands and feet.

Then we drove around. I don’t know where we ended up. I remember this was a big, big parking lot and a building. Looks like it had been vacated. And, uh, in the bay area where the trucks come back up and stuff. And I was gonna molest her and she fought like hell. Strangely, she fought like hell. Just couldn’t go on with anything.

JS: Hispanic girl?

TS: Yeah, Hispanic girl. And I knew it wasn’t gonna happen and she was so afraid, I’m sure, but she shit herself on her underwear. Made a huge mess. And I remember using her clothes and stuff to clean her off.

She fought and fought and I don’t recall what type of cord or strand, a piece of wire or something. And the same thing, I knew I was fucked and I don’t know why the shit kept happening. I couldn’t stop it. I could say, “Yeah, there are voices in my head,” but it’s my own sickness.

JS: You don’t remember what, it was a cord or . . . ?

TS: That I don’t recall. It seems like there was a pencil that I used to twist.

JS: But you don’t know what the cord looked like, what color it was?

TS: No, that I don’t recall.

JS: Okay.

TS: But, uh, then I tried to have sex with her but it wasn’t happening, wasn’t happening. She just fought so bad, and she’s so small, and I just said, “God, you sick fuck. What the hell is wrong with you? Why have you lost your fucking mind?” And I just wanted, I just wanted it to end. I just couldn’t, every time I’d tell myself, I’d just kept saying, “Oh, this has gotta stop. I’m a sick, sick puppy.”

There wasn’t anybody around. I could’ve taken time, I could’ve done this or I could’ve done that and I had this sick, sick [thought] going through my head but I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to get away from there.

I knew I couldn’t just let her go because I knew that, well obviously, she’s gonna go tell and then my life would be all fucked up. Just selfish, self-centered, fucked-up thinking, I know.

So, I did the ligature and she was [messy] because of shitting herself. I cleaned up the mess. I used her clothes. I don’t remember. I think I left her t-shirt on. She was wearing a black t-shirt as I recall. I used the rest of it to clean her up.

She bought a bag of sugar and she cleaned it and I took that and cleaned that up and there was shit in her hair and I cleaned that up as best I could.

JS: So, you took the shit and threw it away?

TS: Yeah, I just took all the shit, what was left in the van, and I took it to a car wash and I tried to scrub the fuck out of it.

JS: What’d you do with the shit in—

TS: Uh, I drove around with it the day before I got rid of it. And, once again, I threw it in a trash bag and I threw it in a Dumpster somewhere.

JS: So you remember having a black t-shirt on her and you left that on her and then you took her pants?

TS: Pants and underwear and shit. I had to clean up the shit that was everywhere. And it seems like I stopped at a resell shop somewhere and bought myself a t-shirt and used my t-shirt to clean her up good. I ended up going to a car wash to try to clean up the mess. It was a big mess.

JS: How much was that mess?

TS: I didn’t want anybody to know that there was shit in the van or the smell and everything.

JS: Okay. Alright. It’s now about twelve minutes to one. 12:48 A.M.