commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Back in late October, we reported on the mysterious disappearance of Christina Marie Morris, a perky 23-year-old Texas woman who was last seen heading into a parking a garage in Plano, Texas at around 4 am after spending the night partying with friends. She was accompanied by Enrique Gutierrez Arochi, a young man she knew slightly from high school, who had spent the evening with her and her friends and volunteered to walk her to her car in the covered parking lot.
Two things add a kind of bitter poignancy to Christina’s disappearance; first, she had always been deathly afraid of being abducted since she was a young child; and second, the only reason Arochi walked her to the parking garage in the first place was because she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend via text messages and had decided to drive directly home to Fort Worth, presumably to mend the fences, instead of spending the night at a girlfriend’s place which had been her plan prior to the argument.
Oddly, Christina’s silver Toyota Celica was not discovered there in the parking lot until four days after she disappeared. As the last person seen with her (he was caught on surveillance video entering the garage with Christina), Arochi was interviewed by the Plano police whose spokesman David Tilley made the following statement at the beginning of the investigation:
“They walked into the parking garage and, according to him, they split and went in opposite directions,” Tilley said. “He said he went to one side of the garage where he was parked and she went to the other side of the garage, where her car was parked. A lot of people have said that is not the case – what he is saying is not correct – but we don’t know. We don’t have any evidence to support either way.”
At that time, Tilley stated that Arochi was neither a suspect or even a person of interest but that no one had been ruled out.
At that time, we wrote:
Something fishy here and I suspect the police know full well that something’s fishy. They, however, do not have sufficient evidence to arrest Arochi or even lean on him hard, not yet.
Well, the police continued their investigation, working slowly and carefully, and on Saturday they decided it was time for the big shoe to drop.
David Lohr of the Huffington Post writes:
A former high school classmate of a missing Texas woman has been arrested in connection with her disappearance, more than three months after the woman vanished from a Plano parking garage.
The Plano Police Department arrested 24-year-old Enrique Gutierrez Arochi on Saturday and charged him with aggravated kidnapping in the August disappearance of 23-year-old Christina Morris, police said.
Now that they are confident that they have at least some of the goods on Arochi, the Plano authorities are being quite forthcoming and it appears that they may have both direct and circumstantial evidence linking Arochi to Christina’s disappearance.
“The basis of this arrest stems, in part, from the results of DNA samples that were collected,” Plano Police spokesman David Tilley told The Huffington Post.
Although the police initially refused to tip their hand and admit that “the long arm of investigation was draped firmly about Arochi’s shoulders,” we now know that an affidavit for a search warrant to scour Arochi’s 2010 Camaro contained plenty of damning information including the following details:
1) The affidavit alleges that when interviewed “Arochi made false statements about when he parked his car and the details surrounding the last time he was with Morris.”
2) The affidavit further alleges that one of Arochi’s co-workers told the police that Arochi “had visible injuries when he came to work on the morning of Aug. 30.” Given the fact, that Christina disappeared around 4 am that morning, combined with the strong probability that other individuals who had spent the evening with Christina also underwent police interviews, it seems virtually certain that if asked, they would have reported that Arochi had no visible injuries when he and Christina left the others and began walking to the parking garage. This information would have glaringly contradicted what Arochi told his co-worker who told that police that “when he questioned Arochi about his injuries, Arochi said they occurred during a fight on Aug. 29.”
Oh yeah! Our boy Arochi playing fast and loose with the timeline will prove to be his undoing. In addition to the above evidence, the police also eventually obtained “surveillance video from a convenience store that was taken on the morning of Aug. 30,” which shows Arochi wiping down his passenger-side door and the back of his vehicle. Arochi was a busy beaver on the morning of Aug. 30.
“Arochi has intentionally made false statements which have hindered detectives in locating Morris,” the affidavit alleges.
Although the police didn’t admit that Arochi was a “person of interest” early on in the investigation, it appears that certain members of the media found him to be singularly interesting and in an interview with ABC affiliate WFAA, he claimed that 1) Christina Morris was never in his car, and 2) he had nothing to do with her disappearance.
He actually had the gall to state, perhaps cavalierly:
“I feel like they’re wasting their time on me when they could be looking at someone else that’s actually the suspect or the person who actually did it.”
When the search warrant for Arochi’s car was granted, the police took DNA samples and collected other evidence that was sent out for testing. Although by this point, Tilley appears to have said plenty to satisfy the public, he did add the following details:
“There are other factors beyond the DNA that allowed us to get that search warrant, and we’re not releasing those details,” Tilley said. “They did a lot of testing and they gathered a lot of evidence … and all of that has been sent off for testing.”
In addition, Tilley suggested that they were holding back considerably more information and that there was still “a lot more work to do.”
There certainly is. Meanwhile, Arochi’s bond has been set at $1 million and he’s being held in the Colin County Jail.
* * * * *
It’s very possible that once he and Christina were alone, Arochi decided that he was going to attempt to take her in the Biblical manner with any and all necessary force. Keep in mind that he was very likely intoxicated. Christina appears to have objected vociferously – thus, Arochi’s visible injuries. I like to think that this perky and spirited young woman put up a damned good fight, but notwithstanding me cheering her on, it seems pretty clear that he ultimately overpowered her. What happened next is unknown. Christina’s mother desperately wants to believe that Christina is still alive, even if it means she has been sold into prostitution. I am less optimistic and although I certainly hope I’m wrong, I suspect that our “creep of the week” raped and killed this unfortunate young woman.
Click here to view our earlier post on Christina Morris and her mysterious disappearance:
Perky Texas Woman Vanishes without a Trace in the Wee Hours in Plano Parking Garage