things,” she said. “And I remember her temper, too. She had one. She didn’t do anything halfway.” Although the two women were not “superclose,” as Sonya put it, Debbie did confide in her roommate somewhat, and regarding Debbie’s relationship with Jason Griffith, Sonya said, “I knew pretty much right away it wasn’t a good thing.”
As an accomplished aerialist whose work often takes her out of town, and even out of the country, Sonya had been away from Las Vegas and working in Arizona when investigators finally found Debbie and arrested Griffith. Sonya said she’d had a “bad feeling” when Debbie disappeared. Her reaction to her roommate’s death was even more extreme.
“I was out town when they found her body,” she said. “I got a phone call at five o’clock in the morning, from the police telling me she was dead. I collapsed. I actually fell on the ground and started crying, ‘that is a terrible, terrible thing.’” The aerialist noted that she’d been half expecting an outcome like this. “By then she had been missing for a month, so I was waiting for that phone call.” But if the phone call itself did not take Sonya by surprise, the circumstances did. “I didn’t expect we would find her alive, but I didn’t think he would go to those lengths,”she said, referring to the dismemberment and concealment of the body.
Another of Debbie’s colleagues was Rene Delgadillo, who offered a fuller, and more violent, account both of the relationship and of what might have happened to Debbie. Rene, a choreographer and magician, fits the image of an old-fashioned magician, with his slicked-back black hair and moustache and catlike moves. Debbie had been one of the partners in his “Salsa Magic” act (which involved Latin dance), and the two of them had worked hard together, he said. They’d known each other for almost two years.
“She was having some issues with her previous boyfriend. She said he had beaten her up,” Rene said, referring to Jamile McGee. But recently, the dancer had been calling up her magician friend, Rene, about yet another relationship gone wrong.
“She was calling me crying and depressed, and I would ask what was wrong. Blu was cheating on her”—Rene referred to Griffith by his stage name—“and it was almost like a love triangle. And she would say, ‘I don’t care if he’s with another girl as long as he’s with me.’ I would tell her, ‘Debbie you need to get out of this thing before something happens.’ I saw the red flags. I knew something was coming, [but] I was in shock when that happened. I knew something would happen but not to thatdegree. I was totally blown away. She was really secretive about it.”
Rene recalled one particular incident that attested to the violence in the relationship. The magician didn’t seem all too fond of his close friend’s then-boyfriend.
“One time, she came over to my house, and her car was all bashed up, the turn signals were broken, and she said she got in an accident. But things were broken inside the car, and then when I read the report, I saw that Blu had smashed her face against the windshield and that she broke some of her teeth inside her car. It didn’t add up. She didn’t seem to want to let go, but she was getting abused.”
Tennille Ball, Debbie’s high school friend from Baltimore, also had a sinister take on the entire incident.
“She was in love with Blu,” Tennille said about Debbie’s relationship with Jason Griffith. “And the way that he killed her was out of a horror movie. He just went too far. I don’t think anybody who is normal does anything like that. We all go through relationships like that, where we argue back and forth, but what he did was beyond belief. He’s a sociopath! And I believe he preyed on the fact that she loved him to lure her over there because he wanted to hurt her. It was his birthday weekend. He invited her over to watch
Dexter,
which was his favorite show? A
As an accomplished aerialist whose work often takes her out of town, and even out of the country, Sonya had been away from Las Vegas and working in Arizona when investigators finally found Debbie and arrested Griffith. Sonya said she’d had a “bad feeling” when Debbie disappeared. Her reaction to her roommate’s death was even more extreme.
“I was out town when they found her body,” she said. “I got a phone call at five o’clock in the morning, from the police telling me she was dead. I collapsed. I actually fell on the ground and started crying, ‘that is a terrible, terrible thing.’” The aerialist noted that she’d been half expecting an outcome like this. “By then she had been missing for a month, so I was waiting for that phone call.” But if the phone call itself did not take Sonya by surprise, the circumstances did. “I didn’t expect we would find her alive, but I didn’t think he would go to those lengths,”she said, referring to the dismemberment and concealment of the body.
Another of Debbie’s colleagues was Rene Delgadillo, who offered a fuller, and more violent, account both of the relationship and of what might have happened to Debbie. Rene, a choreographer and magician, fits the image of an old-fashioned magician, with his slicked-back black hair and moustache and catlike moves. Debbie had been one of the partners in his “Salsa Magic” act (which involved Latin dance), and the two of them had worked hard together, he said. They’d known each other for almost two years.
“She was having some issues with her previous boyfriend. She said he had beaten her up,” Rene said, referring to Jamile McGee. But recently, the dancer had been calling up her magician friend, Rene, about yet another relationship gone wrong.
“She was calling me crying and depressed, and I would ask what was wrong. Blu was cheating on her”—Rene referred to Griffith by his stage name—“and it was almost like a love triangle. And she would say, ‘I don’t care if he’s with another girl as long as he’s with me.’ I would tell her, ‘Debbie you need to get out of this thing before something happens.’ I saw the red flags. I knew something was coming, [but] I was in shock when that happened. I knew something would happen but not to thatdegree. I was totally blown away. She was really secretive about it.”
Rene recalled one particular incident that attested to the violence in the relationship. The magician didn’t seem all too fond of his close friend’s then-boyfriend.
“One time, she came over to my house, and her car was all bashed up, the turn signals were broken, and she said she got in an accident. But things were broken inside the car, and then when I read the report, I saw that Blu had smashed her face against the windshield and that she broke some of her teeth inside her car. It didn’t add up. She didn’t seem to want to let go, but she was getting abused.”
Tennille Ball, Debbie’s high school friend from Baltimore, also had a sinister take on the entire incident.
“She was in love with Blu,” Tennille said about Debbie’s relationship with Jason Griffith. “And the way that he killed her was out of a horror movie. He just went too far. I don’t think anybody who is normal does anything like that. We all go through relationships like that, where we argue back and forth, but what he did was beyond belief. He’s a sociopath! And I believe he preyed on the fact that she loved him to lure her over there because he wanted to hurt her. It was his birthday weekend. He invited her over to watch
Dexter,
which was his favorite show? A
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