SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — It's been more than three decades since a San Diego mother was brutally killed, her body found across the border, but a suspect has remained out of reach. ABC 10News anchor Lindsey Peña revisits this cold case to find out why investigators and family are still hopeful they'll finally see justice.
Maria Hanbury worked hard to provide for her family.
Cesar Quezada is the oldest of Maria's five children.
"That's what everybody says: She's work, work, work, and that's really what she did — work to take care of us," Quezada says.
Quezada says his mother was supposed to be at work on March 22, 1990, when he heard a knock at their front door.
"So that day, you said you remember getting a knock on the door, and it was police officers, and what did they tell you?" Peña asked.
"He first asked me that if my mom had a blue car, yeah, so they told me that they just found the car in TJ burnt up with the body in the trunk, but the body was so burnt that they couldn't identify her," Quezada says.
Investigators eventually used dental records to confirm the body found in Maria's car was, in fact, hers. There was evidence she'd been beaten and stabbed, and in this case, it didn't take long to zero in on a suspect.
"Gonzalo Herrera Montanez. He was 21 years old at the time. He would be 56 now," says Tony Johnson, a retired San Diego County District Attorney's Office senior investigator. "And he was working for Maria... Apparently, they noticed money was missing, and they confronted him, told him not to come back, and I guess he did come back and killed Maria."
Johnson says Montanez was well known to the family.
He was Maria's daughter's longtime partner and the father of her granddaughter.
"Apparently, after he stabbed Maria, he went down to Tijuana and got treated because he had cuts on his hands," Johnson says. "Very often suspects in stabbings cut themselves along with the victim. He came back; he was interviewed. Samples were taken, but unfortunately, they didn't have the test results back in time, so they had to release him after the first interview, and that's when he fled down to Mexico."
He managed to get out of reach of U.S. authorities.
Johnson says they have every reason to believe Montanez is still in Mexico, perhaps even as close as Tijuana, but they're still waiting for a solid lead as to where exactly he might be.
"All we need is a tip. Just one — one's all it takes," he says.
That tip is what Quezada and his family are holding out for.
"It's just... It kills me a little. I mean, it's been over 30 years and my mom has no justice in her life," he says. "She loved us, worked really hard to take care of us, and now I just need someone's help to hopefully find this guy so we can close this chapter. I like to put my mom, you know, give her some peace."
