San Antonio man allegedly burned girlfriend’s body in 2019. Five years later, police found one phone search: “how long fingerprints last.”
The death of 20-year-old Meagan Gonzales went unsolved for nearly seven years after her burned body turned up in a field in southwest Bexar County. Joey Emiliano Tovar-Vargas, 24, has now been taken into custody in connection with the case, according to Law&Crime. He faces a charge of tampering with evidence involving a corpse, not murder.
Investigators reportedly broke through a roadblock as new technology let them pull more data from a phone they had. Sheriff Javier Salazar said the department began taking a fresh look at her disappearance last year. The cold case unit used modern tools to dig into the device, which Salazar called a “treasure trove” of evidence.
According to Salazar, location data placed Tovar-Vargas near where some of Meagan Gonzales’ belongings were dumped and where her truck was found. The phone also allegedly held searches about “how long fingerprints last” and deleting social media accounts.
Investigators say a blanket in his phone photos looks like the one wrapped around her body
The case dates to November 2019 in San Antonio. Meagan Gonzales was last seen with the suspect in her truck, according to investigators, and was reported missing four days later. However, her truck did not turn up until weeks later at a Northwest Loop 410 apartment complex, with blood in the bed reportedly matching her DNA.
The next day, her body was found in a field on Wisdom Road. Salazar said she had been burned and badly decomposed, and her body was wrapped in a blanket with a distinctive pattern. That pattern became a major piece of the puzzle.
Salazar said photos on Tovar-Vargas’ phone appeared to show that very blanket inside his home before the homicide. A witness also told detectives they saw him dumping evidence shortly after Meagan Gonzales vanished, according to the sheriff. Another witness told investigators he allegedly asked for help moving a body.
The evidence investigators described may sound strong. The current charge is limited to tampering with evidence involving a corpse. “What we can prove at this point is that he disposed of her body,” Sheriff Salazar said during a press conference, adding that investigators believe Tovar-Vargas was involved in her death.
The suspect is currently held in the Bexar County Jail on a $200,000 bond. His next court date is set for March 29, and he was also booked on an unrelated warrant from another county.
For Meagan Gonzales’s family, the news brings relief after a long, painful wait. Her father, Eddie Gonzales, told KENS he visited her altar to share the update. “I told her, ‘Meagan, it looks like you’re getting your justice that I promised you,'” Gonzales said.
Texas treats hiding a body as a far more serious crime than most evidence tampering
Texas lawmakers raised the penalty for this offense in 2007. Under Section 37.09 of the Texas Penal Code, tampering with evidence is normally a third-degree felony, but it becomes a second-degree felony when the evidence is a human corpse. That carries two to 20 years in prison and a possible $10,000 fine.
A legislative analysis of the bill noted that more serious charges sometimes cannot be pursued, as a corpse may deteriorate too far to be useful as evidence. Here, the medical examiner could not determine a cause of death for Meagan Gonzales.
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