Celestina Ramirez reminisced about her little, Clarissa Castro, and the bond they shared.
"She was my sister. We did everything together — we talked to each other, protected each other... That's all we had was each other, growing up," Ramirez says.
The protective older sister says she had a sense something was wrong the day Clarissa disappeared over 30 years ago.
"I don't know what came over me... I just started having these feelings. I was drawn to her — I just couldn't figure it out. I didn't know what was going on," Ramirez says.
It was Oct. 13, 1991, and according to Ramirez, 14-year-old Clarissa was having a party at the Lomita home she lived in with her mother and younger siblings. At the time, Ramirez lived elsewhere but still saw her family often.
"I was the oldest, and I wanted to protect her in any way possible," she says.
Ramirez says the party eventually broke up, and the last time she went to the house, everything was quiet. She and Clarissa talked outside briefly; it was the last time they would ever speak.
"She went back inside — I made sure she went back inside — and that was it. That was the last time I seen her, and then the next morning my mom came to the house and asked where did I hide her, where did I put her?" Ramirez says.
Clarissa was never seen alive again, and it would be years before the family would get any kind of answers about what happened to her.
On Dec. 8, 1991, a teen on a walk discovered her body.
"This 14 year old is walking along this pathway and comes across what he believes is maybe a body," Chula Vista Police Sgt. Anthony Molina explains. "It scares him. He doesn't even get that close, 'cause he sees what looks like maybe decayed legs wrapped in some sort of tarp against what's a chain link fence at the time."
Molina says with the condition the body was in, there was no doubt that investigators from the homicide team had to be called to the scene immediately.
The level of decomposition presented a major challenge.
"This actually required the work of a forensic anthropologist, and that happens sometimes when bodies are badly decomposed or pieces put back together," Molina says. "So those type of cases tend to have a lot more question marks around them."
According to Molina, investigators still don't know exactly how Clarissa died. Her body went unidentified for years.
Then in 1994, the Department of Justice performed an audit on missing person's cases from the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, the agency that took Clarissa's missing person's report.
That was when sheriff's investigators and those with the Chula Vista Police Department started to connect the dots.
"When that happened, that was the opportunity for detectives to share information, and lets compare dental records, and when they did that they realized the missing person was the person we had," Molina says.
The news was a shock to Ramirez, who had clung to hope her sister was still out there somewhere.
"I still couldn't believe it, and I kind of blame myself, 'cause I had that feeling... I just didn't know what it was," she says.
Identifying Clarissa was just the beginning of a murder investigation that would turn up few answers.
The case quickly went cold, but after all these years, there's new attention on Clarissa's story.
"I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is 'The Deck,'" a podcast host says.
The true crime podcast "The Deck" featured Clarissa's case on a recent episode.
"We were all kind of shocked that such a young, vulnerable person didn't have the kind of reporting that we would hope to see," says Flowers, who also hosts the popular "Crime Junkie" podcast. "It's the whole reason we started 'The Deck' — to bring more awareness, bring more reporting to these cases that maybe hadn't gotten the kind of coverage that they deserved."
"The Deck" refers to special playing card decks that have pictures and information about the victims in unsolved cases on each card. They're handed out in jails and prisons in states all over the country, in hopes someone inside might know something that leads to a break in a case.
Clarissa is the king of hearts for San Diego County. Flowers says the idea behind the podcast was to breathe new life into cases like these, giving them a national platform.
"We've kind of made it a priority to hit every single state that has a deck, every single state that's willing to work with us," she says.
As for the lack of attention that Clarissa's case received back in the '90s, her sister believes it may have been because Clarissa did have ties to local gangs, but that was the reality for many of the young people living in her neighborhood at the time.
Molina says regardless of the circumstances, the commitment is still there.
"I can tell you from my experience, especially with our detectives that work all of our cases, we see a 14-year-old girl and a family that's hurting that needs answers — needs justice," he says.
"She was only 14 years old. She was a little girl," Ramirez says. "If this was one of your loved ones, would you stand back and do nothing? I am hopeful... I'm hoping that we get some kind of answer, or more than what we know right now."
