Investigators believe video exists of Okla. teen's gruesome 2011 slaying
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is offering up to $10,000 for a video believed to exist of the five-year-old slaying of a 19-year-old woman.
The OSBI said Wednesday that many people have claimed to have seen a video of the slaying of Carina Saunders in October 2011, but no copy has been found. The agency says it’s offering the largest reward available under state law for a copy.
“I believe there is a video... based on the human intelligence that we’ve been given… information from people that say they saw [it,]” OSBI Special Agent Jim Ely, who is investigating the case, told CBS affiliate KWTV.
The OSBI says Saunders was last seen Oct. 8, 2011, getting into a red, dual cab pickup at the Newcastle Casino. A man who was seen getting out of the truck had tattoo sleeves on both arms, the station reports.
Saunders’ dismembered body was found five days later on Oct. 13, in a duffel bag behind a grocery store in the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany. An autopsy found she died violently, and ruled the death a homicide, KWTV reports.
Bethany police initially handled the investigation and arrested two men who witnesses claimed abducted Saunders, held her in an abandoned home, and then tortured and killed her. But the case was handed over to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation in February 2013 and murder charges against the men were dropped due to insufficient evidence.
The teen’s family says they’re hopeful the new reward will encourage anyone with information to come forward.
”How can you sit there and watch this beautiful girl be murdered and tortured in horrendous ways and not want justice?” the victim’s sister, Sara Saunders, told the station. “Where is your humanity?”