The death of 20-year-old Meagan Gonzales went unsolved for nearly seven years after her burned body turned up in a field in southwest Bexar County. Joey Emiliano Tovar-Vargas, 24, has now been taken into custody in connection with the case, according to Law&Crime. He faces a charge of tampering with evidence involving a corpse, not murder.
Investigators reportedly broke through a roadblock as new technology let them pull more data from a phone they had. Sheriff Javier Salazar said the department began taking a fresh look at her disappearance last year. The cold case unit used modern tools to dig into the device, which Salazar called a “treasure trove” of evidence.
According to Salazar, location data placed Tovar-Vargas near where some of Meagan Gonzales’ belongings were dumped and where her truck was found. The phone also allegedly held searches about “how long fingerprints last” and deleting social media accounts.
Investigators say a blanket in his phone photos looks like the one wrapped around her body
The case dates to November 2019 in San Antonio. Meagan Gonzales was last seen with the suspect in her truck, according to investigators, and was reported missing four days later. However, her truck did not turn up until weeks later at a Northwest Loop 410 apartment complex, with blood in the bed reportedly matching her DNA.
The next day, her body was found in a field on Wisdom Road. Salazar said she had been burned and badly decomposed, and her body was wrapped in a blanket with a distinctive pattern. That pattern became a major piece of the puzzle…