SAN JOSE, Calif. (KRON) — Disturbing details surrounding the disappearance and homicide of a young woman, Alyssa Nicole Salazar, were released in court documents obtained by KRON4 this week.
The accused killer, Ivan Alfaro Escobedo aka Iban Alfaro Escovedo, threatened to kill Salazar and her family in July if they cooperated with police officers who were investigating Escobedo for rape, Santa Clara County court documents show.
Days later, the 33-year-old woman went missing, and a neighbor saw a barrel burning outside Escobedo’s sister’s home in Gilroy. In September, detectives found the barrel with Salazar’s skull, hand, and rib bones inside, according to a police report written by Gilroy Police Department Det. Jason Greathead.
Escobedo is scheduled to be arraigned in court Wednesday on murder charges.
Police officers interviewed Salazar on April 27 after she reported that her ex-boyfriend, Escobedo, had physically assaulted and raped her, police said. GPD issued an arrest warrant for the 31-year-old Gilroy man in May and continued investigating the rape case.
In July, “Salazar’s sister and grandmother received phone calls from a male voice they believed to be Ivan Escobedo. Escobedo threatened to kill Alyssa Salazar and her family if Ms. Salazar reported the rape,” Det. Greathead wrote.
The last time Salazar was seen alive was on July 26 at 12:30 p.m. when a surveillance camera recorded her leaving Steinbeck Library in Salinas, court documents state. The surveillance video shows the victim getting into the front passenger seat of Escobedo’s 2007 Honda Accord before the car drives out of the library’s parking lot.
Three minutes later, Salazar used Escobedo’s phone to make a phone call. It was the last time anyone heard from her.
Salazar’s family reported her as missing, shared photographs on Facebook asking residents in Salinas and Gilroy to be on the lookout for her, and prayed for their loved one’s safe return home.
Police officers pulled over Escobedo on August 30 while he was driving his Honda Accord and arrested him. Officers found a 9mm handgun inside the Honda, as well as blood stains on the front passenger seat and door frame. The blood was sent to a lab for DNA testing and it matched Salazar’s DNA.
On the same day Escobedo was locked behind jail bars, officers went to his sister’s home on Young Road in Gilroy. She lived in a blue trailer on the property. A witness told investigators that they saw a fire burning for “several days in barrels next to the trailer in late July,” Det. Greathead wrote.
“In a burn barrel next to the trailer, investigators found burned human bones including pieces of ribs, skull, and hand,” the detective wrote. DNA from the bones also matched the missing woman. Blood stains were spotted in the home’s bathtub.
Based on evidence found at the sister’s Young Road trailer, a Santa Clara County Medical Examiner coroner pronounced Salazar deceased.
Two witnesses later told investigators that they saw Escobedo with his Honda Accord at the trailer on July 26, the same day that the woman went missing.
“Witnesses 2 & 3 say they saw Alyssa Salazar slumped down in the front passenger seat. Alyssa appeared motionless. Witness 2 said that a few days later, Ivan Escobedo told Witness 2 that he shot Alyssa Salazar inside his car, cut her body into pieces in a bathtub inside the trailer, and then burned her body,” Det. Greathead wrote in court documents.
