Getting a loving husband is a dream of many women. However, for Tina Sandoval, it was because of her ex-husband’s blind and selfish love that her life ended at just 23 years old.
A Broken Marriage
The strange disappearance of the beautiful 23-year-old nurse Tina Tournai Sandoval was discovered at 7 am on October 19, 1995, at the North Colorado Health Center in Colorado, USA. Specifically, during her night shift the previous day, Tina suddenly went missing from the office and never returned.
About Tina’s background, at the age of 20, Tina seemingly had everything. She was born into a wealthy family, had a thriving career, and was very pretty. Despite this promising start, Tina’s life took a tragic turn when she decided to marry her college sweetheart John Sandoval.
In contrast to Tina’s perfection, John was just an ordinary student with nothing special about him. Despite her family’s objections, in 1992, Tina decided to follow her heart, marrying John and moving to the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
After overcoming many ups and downs to get married, the young couple’s marriage only lasted a mere 2 years. Disagreements and conflicts in daily life made Tina unable to bear her husband any longer. She decided to file for divorce, unilaterally separating from him.
While Tina was determined to restart her life and find new happiness, John was still deeply in love with his wife, expressing hope that they could reconcile. He even declared: “If I can’t have you, no one can touch you.”
Ignoring her husband’s pleas, Tina bluntly said she just wanted a quick divorce. As for herself, she would move out, live in a new apartment, and start dating again.
Suspicious Signs
Before Tina went missing, her sister Susan Tournai said Tina had told her she would meet her ex-husband after getting off work. Specifically, Tina wanted to ask John to sign some paperwork and settle a federal tax debt. Only then could their divorce be finalized soon.
Worried that her ex-husband might do something extreme to her, Tina begged her sister to go with her. But since Susan had to go to work that day, she couldn’t accompany her sister.
As the elder sister, Susan couldn’t rest easy with Tina going to meet her ex-husband alone. She asked her sister to call her right after meeting John. That way, at least she would know what was going on. However, while on her own shift, Susan waited but never received a call from her sister as planned.
With a hunch that something had gone wrong, Susan quickly called her mother Mary Tournai, asking her mother to check on the situation.
After arriving at Tina’s apartment, Mrs. Mary found her daughter had gone out. However, what worried her the most was Tina’s coat hung in the kitchen, indicating she had returned home before getting off work. Unable to reach John, Mrs. Mary called his aunt. Finding out that John was not at home that day and Tina hadn’t come to John’s house either, Mrs. Mary officially reported her daughter’s disappearance to the police.
Upon receiving Mrs. Mary’s report, the police promptly went to Tina’s apartment to investigate.
From initial observations, they thought Tina had returned home after her shift to change clothes and then left again. They found her nurse’s uniform in the apartment, but her car was nowhere to be found.
After much effort searching, the police finally found Tina’s car at 3 am on October 20th. It was parked four houses away from her ex-husband John Sandoval’s home.
Following the scent trail from Tina’s driver’s seat, the police dogs led them to John’s house. The police were very familiar with John Sandoval’s background, having brought him to the station many times in the past for questioning about harassment and theft crimes.
As soon as he saw the police at his home, John acted in an extremely suspicious manner. He jumped out of the bedroom window and tried to flee…
Clues in the Car
With their extensive professional experience, the police quickly caught up with John and arrested him. However, since it was too early at this point to confirm John’s involvement in the disappearance, the police came up with another reason to bring him to the station. Specifically, they told John that they suspected him of being involved in evading city fee contributions.
After hearing the reason given by the police, John’s spirit suddenly calmed down and he agreed to let them investigate. However, this attitude only made the police more suspicious that he was involved in Tina’s disappearance. Additionally, the investigators noticed fresh scratch marks on John’s neck, indicating he had recently scuffled with someone.
During the interrogation at the police station, the investigation seemed to go smoothly at first. However, when the police mentioned Tina’s disappearance and asked John if he knew where his ex-wife was, John immediately changed his attitude, emphasizing that he did not know. Furthermore, John abruptly stood up and left the interrogation, saying he was not ready to continue the conversation or cooperate with the investigation in any way.
Despite John’s denials, the police found clues confirming his involvement in the case.
They found a 5-liter white bucket, a new muddy shovel, rope, and flashlight in John’s car. However, the two clues that most worried the police about Tina’s safety were her credit card and a loaded 9mm handgun.
A Strange Illness
Speaking with Tina’s family about the frightening items found in John’s car, the police hoped the family could prepare mentally for the worst scenario. Additionally, through this conversation, the police also discovered more suspicious details.
Tina’s family told the police that she was very worried about meeting John after the divorce. She was determined to divorce him after discovering strange symptoms in her husband. Those symptoms haunted her, making her constantly afraid.
Tina said John suffered from a strange illness called scopophilia. Whenever John saw a beautiful girl, he would unconsciously follow her home. John would then monitor and watch her for 2-3 days.
Moreover, John often sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night to lurk around women. He satisfied his illness by watching pretty girls through their window frames. More dangerously, sometimes he would even break into the girls’ houses, hiding under their beds or in closets to admire their bodies more closely.
According to Tina, her husband even had the strange hobby of stealing the underwear of girls he fancied and bringing it home. When the police called in the summer of 1995 to question John on allegations related to a case of harassing women, Tina could no longer bear it and decided to leave him, unilaterally divorcing her husband.
Though she thought after the divorce she would be free from her perverted husband, John did not easily let Tina go. Once, Tina saw John sitting in a car parked outside her new apartment for hours.
At one point feeling helpless with her ex-husband’s stubbornness, Tina told her entire family the truth, including how John had held a gun to his head and threatened to kill himself if she dared divorce him. Tina also confided in her psychologist that she was worried John would harm her.
However, despite the valuable accounts from Tina’s family and the suspicious evidence found in John’s car, the district attorney at that time believed they needed harder proof. Only then would they have the authority to order John’s arrest and file charges against him. Currently, they did not know where Tina was, whether she was alive or dead, or what had happened to her…
The Open Grave
While the police maintained the view that John was involved in Tina’s disappearance, the district attorneys had a different argument. They believed Tina may have run away from town and started a new life.
However, that argument from the prosecution was dismissed.
According to what Tina’s relatives and friends shared, Tina was a responsible young woman. She would never disappear without a trace and cause her family to worry. She had never missed a day of work or been late paying her bills. In fact, she had just signed a one-year lease to start her new life. Therefore, there was no reason or sign that Tina wanted to leave and live somewhere else.
Moreover, after Tina went missing, all of her “living activities” also seemed to stop. There was no activity on her credit card, bank account, nursing license, or social security reports paid out after October 1995. Additionally, Tina did not have a passport to be able to leave the country.
Clinging to these arguments, the police affirmed that Tina’s disappearance was due to her being murdered by someone. And that person was her ex-husband John Sandoval.
Despite all the investigative efforts from the police, the case went cold. In 2002, the state of Colorado issued a death certificate for Tina.
In June 2009, when the new District Attorney Ken Buck was appointed, he requested a review of Tina’s case. However, in that year’s trial, John was acquitted due to a lack of evidence proving Tina was dead.
Surprisingly, in reviewing John’s background, the police discovered a bright spot. Before becoming an X-ray technician, John had worked at a cemetery and knew the burial process well. Therefore, the police issued a search warrant for several cemeteries in the area, including wooded areas and reservoirs.
According to an employee at the cemetery, the police investigated, on October 19, 1995, the same day Tina was last seen, there were three open graves at the cemetery. Two of those graves had concrete floors, and one did not.
However, the cemetery employee said the police could not exhume all the graves here just based on their speculation. Therefore, if Tina was truly buried under someone else’s grave, the only person who could know for sure was John.
Convicted After Two Decades
Faced again with the police’s accusations, this time John’s attitude changed. Instead of insisting on his innocence, he began to ponder the police’s investigation activities.
Seemingly realizing the truth would eventually come out, before the second trial, John offered a plea deal himself. Specifically, if he led the police to where Tina was buried, he would receive a second-degree murder sentence instead of first-degree murder.
After the police accepted his request, John led them to the location where he had disposed of his ex-wife’s body. As the police had predicted, one of the three open graves on October 19 was where Tina had been buried. It was the grave of a man named Arthur.
Specifically, according to John, in the middle of the night on October 19, 1995, he had brought Tina’s body to this cemetery. Taking advantage of Arthur’s open grave that had not yet been covered with soil, he dug an additional 2 meters below the grave and buried Tina’s body there.
After negotiating and receiving consent from Arthur’s son Richard, the police proceeded to exhume the grave and found Tina’s remains wrapped in a cotton blanket, covered with a tarp, and taped, 21 inches below the bottom of Arthur’s grave. It was only at this point that the cemetery employees realized in horror that they had inadvertently reburied Tina’s remains after John had hidden her body there.
Finally, after more than 22 years, Tina’s case came to light. However, as part of the earlier plea deal, in the trial on March 31, 2017, instead of receiving a life sentence for first-degree murder, John Sandoval only received 25 years in prison with 5 years of parole. Additionally, the reason he killed his wife was because he did not want to see her with another man – he wanted her to be his forever.
For the victim’s family, they believed the only reason John came forward and provided information to the police was for his own benefit. John had remained silent for 22 years, only leading the authorities to where Tina was buried because he believed he could get a shorter prison sentence.
