Gilroy family copes with daughter’s disappearance
By Jessica Thy Nguyen Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – Eleven months have passed since Christie Wilson was first reported missing, and now all her parents want is closure.
Wilson, then 27, was last seen on videotape at 1:15am, Oct. 5, 2005, walking out to the parking lot of Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln. She was seen walking with a man whom police later identified as Mario Flavio Garcia, 53, a resident of Auburn.
“We just want our daughter’s remains to be recovered and for the suspect to be convicted,” said Wilson’s mother Debbie Boyd.
Preliminary hearings have been held and jury selection for Garcia’s murder trial began Monday in Sacramento.
He was formally charged with Wilson’s murder Nov. 1, 2005, even though Wilson’s body has still not been found.
The deputy district attorney prosecuting the case has said that he believes there is plenty of circumstantial evidence to convict Garcia.
“Her hair was found inside the trunk of his vehicle, as well as on the right passenger door handle, lodged behind the handle, and also in the back seat,” Wilson’s mother said.
Boyd said she had last seen her daughter a week and a half before the disappearance. They had spent the entire weekend together, had lunch and gotten pedicures.
During preliminary hearings, defense attorneys brought up Wilson’s tumultuous relationship and implied she might have committed suicide.
“That’s one thing she wouldn’t do – check out, never call her family again, never retrieve cell phone messages, never access her bank account, and leave her BMW, which was her little baby,” Boyd said of her daughter. “Leave her little BMW in a casino and just take off and never speak to anybody again. She was so close to her family, she would never.”
The Boyds fully believe police have caught the right suspect and want justice for their daughter.
“We can’t disclose any of the evidence police have,” Boyd said. “But based on what we are aware of, we know that she has passed.”
Now all they want is closure in order to give their daughter a proper burial.
“That’s the problem now,” Boyd said. “Our hope has gotten less about finding her. That’s the impossibility for the family. When do you say goodbye or when do you bury somebody?
“You need to grieve, you need to provide a respectful funeral,” she said.
Family members have experienced a roller coaster of emotions throughout the last 11 months, awaiting news of the recovery of her remains, and attending court hearings as the case winds its way through the criminal justice system.
“We’ve always thought that some hunter, some fisherman was gonna walk across and find her,” Wilson’s step-father, Pat Boyd said. “And as time has gone on, it would be harder and harder.
“The first few weeks there was more hope, because obviously when somebody is dead and laying somewhere, there’s an obvious odor or smell,” he said. “They’re gonna stand out more, but as time’s gone on animals may have moved her bones or he’s buried her.”
The entire family is grateful for the community support and law enforcement efforts to find Wilson’s remains. From this experience of a mother’s worst nightmare, Boyd said, “One of the messages that I want to be sure to get out there, especially for young women, when you’re going out be sure you have a plan … because anything can happen.”
“We were just an ordinary family,” she said. “Living out our lives, hard working people before October, and if something like this can hit our family, it can hit anybody’s.”
