New details have been released in the case of a Florida woman found dead after she and her boyfriend were reported missing last month.
Court documents obtained by WESH in Daytona Beach from Orange County reveal shocking details. The documents pertain to the disappearance of Carmen Elsa Escalante Carrera, 29, and Jorge Javier Quintero, 41, both reported missing on October 29 by their relatives.
Quintero was located by US Marshals in a Mobile, Alabama suburb after a confrontation with law enforcement that left him injured. However, Escalante Carrera was not found with him. Tragically, her body was later discovered in Georgia.
The newly surfaced documents disclose that Escalante Carrera’s remains were found beside a Georgia highway. The last signals from her phone were traced to Seminole County, a peculiarly shaped county on the southwestern border of Georgia that barely brushes against Florida.
As previously reported, Orange County deputies began the hunt for the pair after relatives said he’d made suicidal statements in text messages. The new documents say that deputies conducted a welfare check just after 8 a.m. on October 29 and found a large kitchen knife, a bloody bathtub, bloody clothes, Quintero’s phone, and handwritten suicide notes.
The deputies also obtained security video that showed a man walking out of the apartment’s back door and driving away in a white truck — later determined to have been rented by Quintero — 30 minutes before they arrived.
They also found information related to another apartment, rented to Quintero. The couple was in the process of moving to the new address, the documents say, and deputies found more bloody items there, along with personal items belonging to Escalante Carrera.
By 1:30 p.m. that day, license plate readers had been pinging the rental truck as it traveled away from Orange County and Escalante Carrerra’s phone pinged in the Georgia county.
The license plate readers in Florida showed a large trash bag in the truck’s bed.
Meanwhile, financial records showed Escalante Carrera’s bank card used at a gas station in Lake City, Florida, at about 11 a.m., and security footage from the store showed Quintero making those purchases using her phone.
Two days later, marshals found Quintero in Saraland, Alabama, and took him into custody after a shootout that left him critically wounded.
Three hours after the shootout, Georgia officials found Escalante Carrera’s body in a suitcase beside a highway. According to the police report, she had a power cord wrapped around her neck and had been stripped naked. Her body was partially dismembered.
Quintero was released from the hospital in Alabama on November 7, according to WALA. He was extradited to Florida and booked into the Orange County jail on Monday, charged with first degree murder and fraudulent use of personal identification, jail records show.
