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The retired detective who helped track down her daughter’s bodybuilding ‘violent monster’ killer has said the job is not finished until he gets life in jail.
Josephine Funes Wentzel, 63 came out of retirement to spend six years hunting down Raymond ‘RJ’ McLeod, 36, for the 2016 murder of her daughter, Krystal Mitchell, 30.
Former Marine McLeod – considered so dangerous he was set the highest-ever bounty by US Marshals – was eventually captured in the small town of Sonsonate in El Salvadaor on Monday after six years on the run.
Wentzel, determined to ensure that the case did not go cold, worked ceaselessly until a woman in El Salvador read an article on the case that Wentzel had shared widely and recognized McLeod.
‘Of course, I’m ecstatic that he’s been found and that this part is over, but at the same time, you’re reminded of why you’re there in the first place,’ Wentzel told The US Sun.
‘There’s no victory yet until he’s been given a life sentence, and that’s now going to be a whole other journey, another chapter.
‘I’m grateful to close this chapter, as are my family and grandchildren.’
Josephine Funes Wentzel, 63, came out of retirement in 2016 to spend six years hunting down the killer of her daughter, Krystal Mitchell, 30
Former marine Raymond ‘RJ’ McLeod, 36, spend six years on the run in Central America after allegedly strangling Mitchell to death in a hotel room
Krystal Mitchell, 30, was killed in a San Diego apartment in June 2016 and her new boyfriend, McLeod, then went on the run
She expressed her gratitude to the US Marshals who invested the time and money into the six-year case and ‘showed us that Krystal was worthy of justice.’
McLeod had told people he was Canadian, and used the fake name ‘Jack Donovan’, according to a Univision Spanish-language special about his case that was widely broadcast around Central America, where he was thought to be in hiding.
He was arrested on Monday in front of his class full of students at Direct English school where he was paid $1,000 a month in the small city of Sonsonate.
The arrest was the fruit of six remarkable years of tirelessly endeavor, working side by side with US Marshals to risk her own life crossing Central America chasing leads and working the case.
At one point she was threatened by a knife on the Guatemalan border, and at another she was savagely attacked by a wild dog.
The trail initially led her to in Guatemala, where he was spotted in 2017, and then to Belize, where he was spotted again the following year.
Krystal Mitchell, 30, from Phoenix, had only been dating McLeod for a few weeks when he killed her
McLeod was described as armed, dangerous, an ‘avid bodybuilder’ and ‘heavy drinker’
Mitchell is pictured with her mother, Josephine Wentzel, a retired detective, who worked on the case and was instrumental in tracking McLeod down
Wentzel said she spent long stretches of time in Guatemala – he was seen in a video clip in Christmas 2016, dancing with a woman at a bar inside the Almost Famous hostel in the coastal town of Livingston – but said she did not particularly focus on El Salvador.
‘Obviously my daughter cannot be brought back, but I’m relieved that this man is no longer a threat to the women of Mexico and Central America,’ she told Univision.
‘I did look in El Salvador, but I was never particularly focused on that country,’ she said.
‘A Hispanic friend told me: ‘He won’t go to El Salvador – they’ll kill him.’
‘But that’s where he was – in the same community of the person who told me that.’
Wentzel said that the local authorities were tipped off by a local woman.
‘There was an official complaint. A woman in El Salvador remembered having read an article on Univision’s site, and saw the man.
‘She rang to report him.’
Wentzel said she too shared the Univision article widely, in the hope of tracking him down.
Raymond ‘RJ’ McLeod is pictured on Monday in El Salvador, after he was arrested following six years on the run
McLeod is seen on Monday after he was arrested by Salvadoran police with the help of US Marshals
McLeod is seen on Monday being led away by police in El Salvador
‘I shared that article because it was in Spanish and explained everything.
‘I sent it out to multiple people on social media.
‘He was hiding in a small town in El Salvador, pretending to be Canadian. They could go right to his classroom and arrest him.’
An administrator at another nearby school said it was common that the identities of staff were unverified.
‘The hire teachers and don’t ask for identification,’ the administrator told DailyMail.com.
‘They don’t even verify if they are licensed to teach. A lot of the teachers there have tattoos.’
Mitchell was found strangled after she had visited a bar with McLeod, who had got into an argument with another man, also an ex-Marine.
All three were kicked out of the bar. McLeod and Mitchell returned to the rental apartment, and Mitchell was found dead the next day, with obvious signs of a struggle.
McLeod went on the run through Mexico and marshals appealed for help, but warned he was considered ‘armed and dangerous’ – and described him as ‘an avid body builder and a heavy drinker’.
Marshals said that McLeod was recognizable from his distinctive skull tattoos
When he was added to the Top 15 list, in 2021, Marshal Steve Stafford of the Southern District of California said they would never give up and paid credit to Wentzel.
‘Huge credit goes to the victim’s mother who never gave up searching for her daughter’s killer and worked closely with our office and other law enforcement to make this arrest possible,’ he said.
McLeod has a history of violence and is currently in custody in El Salvador, where he is expected to be extradited to the US to finally be charged with Mitchell’s murder.
At the time of her murder in 2016, McLeod was out on bond on a felony charge of inflicting injury on his estranged wife in Riverside, California.
He had also pleaded guilty to a 2009 misdemeanor aggravated assault charge and for violating a restraining order.
That charge was later dismissed as part of a plea deal that required the murderer to complete a domestic violence counseling program.