GOVERNMENT
Thomas had a cocktail of pills in his stomach. He had a stalker, his neighbor said. He had a brother who showed up unannounced, in Thomas’s car, when his body was being handled by the authorities, screaming uncontrollably. The brother had an interest in butchering knives, a relative said. Two people told the police Thomas was murdered, and that they knew who did it. They named different killers. It took the investigators six weeks to declare they had exhausted all options. They’re only human, after all. They get stumped, they err and they bleed, just like us — like Thomas did — and when they encounter cases as odd as this one, decades of experience in sleuthing give way to the gravity of the unknown. What use were Lt. Elliott’s 30-plus years in Arizona law enforcement when, in her own words, it was “definitely not something I have ever seen before”? Perhaps the only person who knew what happened in the Meadows late last April has taken that secret to his own grave. Six months later, on the same street, 16-year- old Esteban Valenzuela would be murdered by gunfire; police said they found his killer days later. What can be said of the other Dirk Street killer of 2024? ‘No one should see something like this’ One of the last two people to see Thomas alive was the first person to see him dead. “It doesn’t make sense,” said Mary T. Dos Marcos, 57, the landlord for the Dirk Street home. She was serving an eviction notice that morning. She knocked on the door. No response. She peeped in a window. It seemed quiet. She unlatched the back gate and poked her head around the corner. “This is disgusting,” she thought to herself as she was accosted by a swarm of flies. “Did they leave the garbage out?” Then, it hit her. She let slip a primal scream and stopped herself just short of vomiting. “I was the first person to see the body,” she said, her voice tinged with horror. Documenting the condition of the property as any landlord would when a tenant moves out, her cell phone camera was rolling when she turned the corner, and the specter of death filled her screen. “I saw a face, an eye … and I ran out,” Dos Marcos said. “I’ve never seen a dead body before. No one should see something like this.” She dialed 911 immediately. For Dos Marcos and her husband, Lawrence E. McFall, the episode was “traumatizing.”
MATTRESS & FURNITURE is Valentine’s Day, fall in love with the comfort of a perfect night’s sleep.
The invisible killer A 24-year-old was stabbed to death in his backyard. Piecing together his final moments has been impossible
BY ELIAS WEISS
NOW SELLING AMERICA’S NUMBER ONE MATTRESS: BEAUTYREST BLACK!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sequel to my piece in the December 2024 issue of InMaricopa magazine, Inside Maricopa’s secret murder house (scan this QR code to read it). In continuing my coverage of unsolved murders and suspicious deaths in Maricopa, I chose a case that has never left my mind. Maybe because his death day was my birthday, and it left me asking myself, ‘Why did I get to live longer than him?’; or because in my eight years reporting on crime, and the lead investigator’s 30 years solving them, neither of us had ever encountered anything quite like it. The authorities may have been content enough to leave this case frozen in time; I was not.
H
a 2022 scholarly article in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. “Suicidal stab wounds are occasionally seen in less than 1% of all suicidal deaths.” Even MPD Lt. Kathleen Elliott, the lead officer on the case, conceded that the investigation “didn’t definitively come to a conclusion one way or the other,” and hopes to reopen it someday. Today, the case remains frozen in time, like Thomas, the youngest member of his family who grew up in Atlanta and worked hard to support his older relatives in Maricopa. He earned a promotion in the days before his death. But he never cashed a paycheck after that raise at his gas station management job. The clues the authorities found strewn around his body — a toppled ladder, seven cell phones, a broken table— only confused them further, and their prospects of identifying a suspect melted away as alibis checked out, even when nothing else made sense.
days before his untimely demise, died when he closed the case July 12. McCullar said it was “most likely an accidental or suicide death.” But some people, like two Cobblestone Farms residents who found the body that eerily sunny Monday morning, and who spoke exclusively with InMaricopa , believe not only that it was a murder but that they can identify the killer. “Stabbing is an uncommon method of suicide,” seven medical experts wrote in
OMICIDE AND SUSPICIOUS DEATH cases are cold-blooded, in a way. For a case to go cold, it must be exposed to the elements so long
that the frigidness consumes its vital organs. It must be warmed with evidence and leads; the less it is nourished, the quicker it succumbs to hypothermia. The case of Makaiel Michael Thomas, like the man himself, was destined to die young. The authorities know about as much about Thomas’s death today as they did April 29, 2024, when they found his body in a Maricopa Meadows backyard, the 6-inch blade of a kitchen knife still lodged in his stomach. “It’s a perplexing case,” Maricopa Police Department Chief Mark Goodman told InMaricopa . “It’s … it’s just bizarre.” Deaths such as Thomas’s can be classified in one of three ways: homicide, suicide or accident. MPD Det. Kevin McCullar said he did not know how Thomas, who turned 24 just
We offer 40-MONTHS
0% Interest O.A.C
Follow us on Facebook
I saw a face, an eye … and I ran out. I’ve never seen a dead body before. No one should see
something like this.” MARY T. DOS MARCOS, LANDLORD
602-366-0447
44360 W. Edison Road, Suite 100 Maricopa, AZ
InMaricopa.com | February 2025
February 2025 | InMaricopa.com
20
21
Powered by FlippingBook