Chad Mancebo kidnapping and rape in Visalia

When considering all 400 episodes, the YouTube channel maintained by FilmRise True Crime is missing very few Forensic Files. But as of this article's writing (11/2022), this is one of them. I've never identified a pattern among the episodes they carry on YouTube and those they don't. And lately, certain episodes that were previously available from FilmRise on YouTube have recently become inaccessible. I hope they appeal to the YouTube gods and make these episodes available again. Ever since Netflix's unwelcome choice to stop carrying Forensic Files in January of 2022, the number of readily available episodes seems to be dwindling.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Across the hundreds of episodes, there is seldom a reason that the interviewee's "super" doesn't contain a descriptor along with his/her name. In our episode, "Agent Steven Shear" was accompanied by "Visalia Police Department". But oddly, "Agent Sharon Brown" gets no such love. Sometimes even a pseudonym of a victim who wishes to remain anonymous will still be attended with "Victim" as a descriptor. When the perpetrators themselves make an appearance, they often don't receive this courtesy. One instance is Bobby Joe Long in the episode The Common Thread (s02e01) about the Florida serial rapist and murderer's rampage in 1984. In Small Town Terror (s11e34) James Genrich is given the label "Bombing Suspect" early in the episode, before his arrest and conviction are revealed.

Another commonality between this case and that of Bobby Joe Long was the evidence that each victim intentionally left behind. The only living victim of Long was Lisa McVey, a 17-year-old he'd abducted on a late night in early November, 1984. McVey was allowed to use Long's bathroom without supervision. Even though she was blindfolded, Lisa deliberately touched countless services in the bathroom – not just obvious locations like the faucets, but hidden ones like underneath the toilet seat. It was stated that Mancebo's victim "Maria" deliberately left evidence on her abductor's vehicle. This was the bite impression in the weatherstripping of the driver's side door. But it was only when examining the vehicle (that police had obtained from its new owner nearly two years later) that "Maria" remembered she'd made the bite impression.

Chad Mancebo inadvertently helped police by committing an unforeseen blunder common to perpetrators: He drove a distinct vehicle. Visalia, California is not a "small" town per se, but Mancebo's blue Thunderbird was unique enough that police's active "Be On the LookOut" (BOLO) located it. This was in the parking lot of a convenience store on the same day Mancebo attempted to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and her six-year-old sister. Chad's offenses were a year before Diana Haun kidnapped and murdered Sherri Dally 200 miles south in Ventura, otherwise he might have known it was Haun's distinct, teal rental vehicle that led to her downfall.

"Methamphetamine is a hell of a drug"

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

In the infamous quote from 80s music icon Rick James, any number of harder drugs can be substituted for "cocaine". For Chad Mancebo, methamphetamine addiction took him down a dark road which led to divorce and jail. Meth has over a dozen street names, some of the more common being crank, speed, and ice. It's not to say Chad was on the straight and narrow and methamphetamine caused him to commit his crimes – he likely already possessed malicious tendencies, and meth emboldened him to act on them.

I've personally not lived the cleanest of lives. There was a time when I was exactly Chad's age of 20 when I tried methamphetamine. I'd experimented with several drugs by that time, some harder than others. I preferred smoking marijuana, but where I was living at the time, it was hard to come by. With conscious knowledge of the downsides of excessive and prolonged use of meth, a buddy and I decided to try it "just one time".

I'm thankful that I had the self-control to limit my use to that single occassion. The experience was other-worldly. I can absolutely see how someone could easily want to chase that euphoric high again and end up getting hooked on such a dangerous drug. I strongly recommend that you don't use meth and never try it. Read about it if you want to know what its effects are, and then read about all of the deleterious things it does to your brain and body. Chad Mancebo ruined his life with his ongoing addiction to methamphetamine. Only a serious intervention and a desire for a better life for himself and his family could've had a chance of steering Chad back onto the right path.

"Maria" was a 16-year-old who'd stopped outside her apartment to smoke a cigarette. Occasionally softer drugs, even nicotine and alcohol, can lead to drugs like cocaine, meth, and similar dangerous narcotics. These are often referred to as gateway drugs, and they hold dangers for those without self-control and a strong social support network. Depression and the desire to overcome its dreadful symptoms also tempt individuals to find an escape through drug use.

CompuSketch and eyewitnesses

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Our episode spoke to the case's divergent suspect descriptions given by "Maria" and "Anne". Neither looked much like Chad Mancebo. In the hand-drawn sketch, it seems Mancebo had been wearing a kerchief or durag over his hair. The other suspect drawing was generated by the computer application CompuSketch, still widely used in 1995. The grainy, low-resolution sketches it generates have their advantages. In a department without a skilled sketch artist, CompuSketch can help police generate a reasonable depiction of a suspect from a witness' description. They end up looking somewhat generic and symmetrical, but I'm certain police would prefer any sketch to nothing at all. Of course, the sketch has no value when the killer himself gives a fake description to police. This was the situation when Darryl Kuehl's described an "imposter" claiming to be Paul Gruber in If I Were You (s11e28).

I'm not sure how much trust could be placed in "Anne's" description of Mancebo to police. Recall that prior to Chad Mancebo's photo being among the "six pack" shown to "Anne" for identification, she'd previously indicated the suspect in Fresno as her assailant. This misidentification was a hurdle to overcome during Chad Mancebo's trial, and it's a reminder of how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. During an ordeal like that to which "Anne" was subjected, the mind sometimes doesn't absorb and retain the degree of detail we believe it does.

I did feel Kate Germond from Centurion Ministries may've taken this notion too far. She stated, "When a victim says that, 'That's the man' and they're unequivocal, 'that did this to me,' they're probably wrong." All circumstances are different, so to cast "probably wrong" out there is something of an overstatement.

Questions about details of Chad Mancebo's crimes

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Some of the vagaries in Chad Mancebo's attacks left me with a lot of questions. Ten days after his assault on "Maria", our episode described Mancebo's burglary and attempted abduction of the 33-year-old in her car in a shopping center parking lot. The woman supposedly resisted his assault "verbally", leading Chad to give up and flee the scene. Did Chad have and brandish the gun again in this case? Did the victim see this and still resist? And was Chad also high on meth again during this incident?

"Anne's" age was not described, but the reenactment suggested she was fairly young. But this victim broke the cardinal rule of self-protection: Never get into a car with a stranger. Perhaps it was Chad's own youth, soft-spoken nature, and nice vehicle that led "Anne" to let her guard down. If Chad Mancebo was able to drive far enough off the beaten path to pull behind a dairy barn (was this his family's?), shouldn't this have raised "Anne's" misgivings sooner? It was described that only after Chad was out of the car that "Anne" noticed the "drug paraphernalia and pornographic material" in the backseat. I'm hoping these items were less conspicuous during the actual incident than portrayed in the reenactment.

The 14-year-old walking with her younger sister did everything right – kudos to the young lady for first refusing to get into the perpetrator's car, and then for reporting the details of the incident to the police. Others might've regarded Chad's proposition as (mostly) harmless and not worthy of sharing with authorities. But this potential victim's instincts to protect herself and her sister led her to contact law enforcement. It was this young lady's description of Mancebo's blue Thunderbird that ultimately led to his capture.

Young Chad Mancebo

Given Mancebo's lack of criminal sophistication, he was lucky to avoid investigators linking him to the shoe and tire impressions. In "Maria's" case, there was no truck initially associated with Chad Mancebo, so police had nothing to compare the tire impressions from the scene to. There was also no usable DNA recovered from "Maria's" rape test kit. At "Anne's" crime scene, the shoe impressions were compared to shoes owned by Mancebo, but unfortunately the results were inconclusive.

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

It didn't happen quickly, but Chad's luck eventually ran out. Through tenacious effort, police identified a truck similar to that described by "Maria". It'd been owned by Mancebo's father, but it had since been sold. Police tracked down and obtained the vehicle. Recovering the truck probably revealed the most compelling evidence of the case - the bite mark. This conclusively placed "Maria" in the vehicle. Being the son of a prominent dairy farmer didn't afford Chad Mancebo any breaks, though according to Agent Steven Shear, "He just couldn't understand why mom and dad couldn't bail him out of this."

A few of the YouTube commenters took issue with the show's narration describing Mancebo's pistol as a "380 gauge". I'm not a gun enthusiast, but this did intrigue me enough to do a little research. There's no shortage of information about firearms on the internet. It seems the commentary should've indicated a ".380 caliber" pistol. I found a thorough summary that explains firearms' gauge versus caliber and each measurement's origin.

Closing arguments and observations

Along with details about the various incidents leading to Chad Mancebo's arrest, I wanted to learn more. When Chad used his father's truck in his assault on "Maria" and the attempted abduction soon after, did he already know his father planned to sell it? Might this have been the reason he used it instead of his own vehicle? Or did he influence his father to sell it after these incidents?

Image credit: Episode screen capture from Forensic Files

Based on the episode's timeline, I guess that Chad Mancebo was arrested around August of 1995. The timestamp on the video showing "Maria" examining the recovered truck is April 7, 1997. This is over a year and a half after Mancebo's arrest. What else took place in the 18+ months before the truck was located and examined? Was Chad released on bail during this period, or did they hold him in jail awaiting trial?

It was given that a search warrant at Chad's house uncovered additional evidence, and it was implied that this occurred after the bite mark was identified in the truck's weatherstripping. This additional evidence seemed to include ammunition for a .380 semi-automatic pistol and the pornographic videos seen by "Anne" in Chad's car. (And who pays $39.99 for a pornographic video!?) But with Chad being identified by both witnesses and a therefore a very likely suspect, I'd suspect police would've already executed a search warrant at Mancebo's home and recovered this evidence. Did this really not occur until 1997?

Being jailed around age 23 set Chad up for a long life of incarceration. This is a prime example of our American criminal justice system and penal procedures being more about punishment than rehabilitation. Near the episode's closing, Agent Steven Shear emphatically suggests that Chad Mancebo could never be rehabilitated. But I wonder about this, especially when one is very young when he commits the offenses. While young, the human brain is not yet fully developed. Impulse control and advanced cognition take place in the prefrontal cortex, which isn't considered developed until around age 25. 🤔

Where is Chad Mancebo now in 2024?

After his conviction in 1998, parts of Mancebo's case were reviewed. Much of the information was undisclosed. In 2000, his term was altered based on the court's unauthorized sentencing. It seems multiple counts that specified firearm were not properly imposed. The decision seemed to reverse two of the additional 10-year gun-use enhancements to Mancebo's sentencing. Chad Melvin Mancebo continues to serve his sentence at the California State Prison in Corcoran.