DoctorOz: The Tragic Truth Behind Vanessa Guillen's Disappearance

Fort Hood became a household name after the reported disappearances and in some cases deaths of at least 13 soldiers connected to the base in the past year alone. 20-year-old Vanessa Guillen is one of those shoulders. She went missing in April and tragically her remains were found in July. In a massive shake-up, Fort Hood Commander Major General Scott Effland has been removed from his post but the story is far from over. Ever since she was a little girl in Houston, Texas Vanessa Guillen wanted to be in the military and when she turned 18 she enlisted. Just two years later she was dead but why? The 20-year-old army specialist was last seen alive in the parking lot of her barracks at the Fort Hood Texas post on April 22nd. Her car keys and wallet were found in the armory room where she'd been working. Authorities found that Vanessa's last text was sent to fellow specialist Aaron Robinson who witnesses later said was seen pulling a large seemingly heavy tough box that same day. In the wake of her disappearance Vanessa's friends and family said she claimed she was being sexually harassed at work. Finally on June 30th near a river about 30 miles from her army post Vanessa's dismembered body was found. Her remains partially burned. On the same day investigators spoke to specialist Aaron Robinson's girlfriend Cecily Aguilar who reportedly confessed to helping him get rid of Vanessa's body after he'd struck her in the head with a hammer and killed her. The next day as he was being confronted by authorities Robinson killed himself with a pistol. Cecily Aguilar pleaded not guilty to charges including conspiracy to tamper with evidence. She faces a possible 20-year sentence if convicted. Following Vanessa's initial disappearance her family maintained she had faced sexual harassment by superiors at the base and feared for her safety. They say their concerns were not taken seriously. Joining us now is Vanessa's sister Myra Guillen. Myra thank you for joining us. Tell me a bit about your sister. Who was Vanessa? Hi thank you for having having me on today and my sister she was a U.S. soldier. She was a young girl only 20 years old and she primarily graduated high school went straight into the army. She was a very active person. She loved soccer cross-country running the track anything that had to do with um just being active on the daily that that's what she was up for. Did she always want to be a soldier? Yes that's something that she always um she wanted to be honored and respected. So let's talk a bit about what happened to your sister. How difficult was it for you to hear that your sister's remains had been found? You know that was one of the hardest days of the 22 years that I've been here on earth. It was exactly on June 30th when I received the call and out of all the days that we could have found her um it had to be on the 30th and you know what hurts the most especially to me is that um that's my birthday. You came face to face you believe with your sister's alleged killer during a meeting with army officials which is incredibly bizarre. Can you please explain what happened? Right he was one of the individuals I was waiting on my arrival the first day that she went missing. I'm not sure why um but he was there. He never spoke to me um but I could sense that something was off with him. You just sensed it? Yes. And how did you feel when you heard Aaron Robinson had committed suicide? Um I was just disappointed at how they handled the case and how they let him go because if he was under watch how was it possible for him to escape and commit suicide as they say um for me it's clearly that you know something went wrong or they let him go. Explain in more detail what happened and how he was able to commit suicide. From what I know um he got in a car I don't know whose car I'm not sure how their car was there who he had contacted with fled for hours about two hours no one was able to find him then all of a sudden somebody finds him on the road which would be law enforcement and he commits suicide. Oh my goodness. So your family has continued to fight for answers from Fort Hood and just days ago it was announced a congressional investigation into the base would be conducted. Myra you're also trying to change the way sexual harassment in the army is investigated. What did your sister share with you about what harassment she was suffering? She shared it with my mother and shortly after the disappearance my mom decided that it was correct to share it with the rest of the family and apparently it was one of the sergeants but come to know um as soon as we start digging deeper and deeper for details and answers we do come to find that it wasn't only that one time but it was several different soldiers, several different harassers and several different situations which you know we we didn't even know where to start looking. And your sister had no place to turn. Well I'm so sorry that you and your family are going through this Myra. I know this is a tough conversation but it's so important that you're sharing Vanessa's story and and not letting go of this. You keep pulling as hard as you can. We're going to help you. Of course. Thank you very much we'll be right back. We've been talking about the tragic murder of army specialist Vanessa Guillen while stationed at Fort Hood Texas. We're back now with attorney Natalie Kawam who's representing Vanessa's family. Natalie what first ignited suspicion towards specialist Erin Robinson? Well um a lot of factors and a lot of evidence and a lot of facts and a lot of witnesses informed us of a lot of things that Erin Robinson had done that were very suspicious that pointed towards him as being the main suspect. And I'll give you some examples. He was the last person with Vanessa that day. He had lied about where he was the night of the murder. They pinged his phone and found him near the river where he buried her. Yet he told officers that he was with his girlfriend at her apartment that evening. The day after she went missing they had brought everybody into the military police to be interviewed. Myra was there. They took everyone's cell phones and looked through their cell phones reviewed their cell phones. Everybody but his phone. Why? Why would they do everyone else but him? Why treat him differently or give him preferential treatment? A lot of questions we have. Yeah a lot of questions don't have answers. So within one day of Vanessa's remains being discovered her alleged killer Erin Robinson commits suicide as he was approached by law enforcement. So the plot starts to thicken here. So how has Erin's suicide affected the case? Well unfortunately we'll never get all the answers we want. We'll never know why it took so long for everyone to give us answers. I mean truly they never figured out the crime. His girlfriend sung like a canary and that's the only reason we figured out the crime. Can you give us some details about what she said? Sure. Cecily says that Erin called her and told her that Vanessa had looked at his phone and saw Cecily on Erin's phone. Vanessa had told Erin that she was going to report Erin for having an affair with a married woman because Cecily was married to another soldier. By the way this we believe is not true but it's hearsay and I got to tell the story as it is. She says that she told Erin she was going to report him for adultery and he got upset and he was worried about his career and he took a hammer the first thing he could find and bludgeoned her to death in the army room. After that he says that he took and put her body in a pelican brief, wheeled it outside the hallway, cleared cleaned the room, took the pelican brief, took it to his car, took her body in the pelican brief to the river nearby and buried it. Cecily says that he called her and said honey I have her body in a pelican cap, a pelican brief out near the woods, I need you to help me bury it. He picks her up from the gas station where she was working, they go to the woods and they they try to first set her body on fire, burn her but it won't, they won't, they're not able to successfully burn her body. So then they grab a machete, really gruesome, and cut her into pieces. Cut her into pieces and dismember her body and buried her into three shallow graves at that river. They come back a couple days later and they re-bury it with cement on her body so it can't be found. This is horrible. It's disgusting. We believe that he was sexually harassing Vanessa as we knew about in the past and this time he took it too far and she probably confronted him or she probably pushed him off and he probably got violent with her and there was probably a scene where he bludgeoned her to death because of you know maybe she said I'm going to report you or maybe she was hostile and there was some kind of fight that happened but we do know that there was so much blood it was all over the room when they did a blue star on the room. So that means it was a real serious fight with a lot of blood and a lot of you know unfortunately a lot of a lot of resistance. So Natalie you also once represented the family of another Fort Hood soldier who was recently found dead, Sergeant Elder Fernandez. Similar to Vanessa, Elder Fernandez had also alleged sexual harassment prior to his death. What's happening at this base? Well with Elder's case so this was an example of you know sexual assault in the military not being gender biased you know. Unfortunately sexual assault sexual harassment does not see color, does not see gender, does not see race, does not see rank. It can happen to anyone and unfortunately our soldiers don't have rights and protections in place. The system is broken and unfortunately he had killed himself uh you know he too was sexually assaulted. He unlike Vanessa reported it although Vanessa did report it to her friends family and soldiers he reported it to the command like he was supposed to. They harassed him, they bullied him, they hazed him and eventually he killed himself because he couldn't take it anymore and that's the problem. When you report it's the saying of you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. That's why we need military reform, that's why we have the hashtag I'm Vanessa Gein bill that we plan on proposing next week on Wednesday at noon. It's going to be a big press conference in DC and you know at this point we can't lose another soldier. One soldier too many I thought it was over when I went and did that press conference in DC with Vanessa a month ago when we found her remains and it happened again and it happened again now we're up to 28 soldiers so at this point it's time for change or we just a national security issue it's going to be a national security crisis where our soldiers need to be protected and saved. They should be focusing on being deployed and protecting our country against terrorism not being uh that where we have to protect them we have to give them rights and we have to give protections that they so deserve. So let's actually to pursue your point look at Fort Hood compared to another base when it comes to crime statistics. So this is over the last four or five years average base population per year approximately 34,000 people at Fort Hood a lot of a lot of soldiers but there are 46,000 at Fort Bragg much bigger right even though Fort Hood is smaller I'll say that again Fort Hood is smaller than Fort Bragg look at how many more violent and non-violent crimes that they have been forced to report so the same number of years including the homicides of violent sex crimes and kidnapping robbery aggravated assault I can't believe this is all happening on a base there were 129 reports for Fort Hood and the much bigger Fort Bragg only 90. Same years non-violent felonies that's the things like drugs you know crimes drunk driving desertion smaller things but representative of a culture 940 at Fort Hood the small in the smaller institution the larger Fort Bragg had only 822. So how much of a difference will it make Natalie now that congress has authorized a formal investigation in the Fort Hood? You know I live in Tampa Florida I have MacDill Air Force Base we have none of that problems in MacDill. I represent like I said soldiers all over the country actually all over the world because we have bases in Germany and Japan and such but I have not seen this problem anywhere else. I have literally spent the last few months of my life non-stop 24 hours a day speaking to soldiers and families about what's going on in Fort Hood so I could figure out what the problem is not because that's my job or I'm getting paid for this because I'm not I'm doing it because I really believe in helping those who need a voice and these kids these soldiers these men and women that honorably serve our country they deserve the truth they deserve to be protected they need to focus on you know protecting our country and their deployments and their family they should be focusing on whether they're going to be oppressed or be told that they're going to be you know put in a be denied something or demoted if they say something or they they see something it's kind of like the saying see no evil hear no evil and that's pretty sad you know I mean I know that this is not an area of law that anyone wants to get into I shouldn't sign up for this but you know it's my obligation as American citizen as a human being to help these kids. Well Natalie I'm glad you were on the case Godspeed good luck and we'll be watching uh all the things you're doing Vanessa's case and as well as the events at Fort Hood really closely because all of these families deserve answers about their loved ones we'll be right back. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss anything and remember to check back often to see what's new.