Dancing on Her Grave (9 page)

Lorenzo describes Debbie as a beautiful, fun, and outgoing woman. One day he even asked her “why such a pretty girl was going out with such an ugly man.” Jason Griffith was deemed as “hot” by other women, but to Lorenzo Buitrón, Griffith did not seem an adequate counterpart for beautiful Debbie. “I was just joking with her. She just laughed it off,” he said. At that point, Lorenzo had felt comfortable enough with his regular customer to joke around with her like that.

Griffith wasn’t the only man Debbie would show up with at his restaurant, however. She also kissed and was affectionate with other men, he remembers. But he didn’t care one way or the other—Debbie was his friend, not Griffith. Lorenzo even went to see Debbie perform at the Luxor when she gave him comp tickets. The server, who didn’t have the money to pay the pricey admission fees to see a Las Vegas revue, was thankful for the gesture and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacles. And he knew that she had been practicing many hours a day because of her solo
role in the next Las Vegas extravaganza at the hotel where she worked.

But a couple of weeks before Debbie’s demise, Lorenzo said, she changed. She became quiet, not at all talkative, seemed even frightened, and often cried. She continued to order her usual, but often she did not even taste the meal.

On the Thursday before Debbie disappeared, December 9, 2010, Lorenzo recalled that the couple showed up at the restaurant at around 11
P.M.
Through the window, Lorenzo noticed them arrive in separate cars. The dancer told the server she wanted a table in a private area, even though at that time of night, that area of the restaurant remains closed and tables are not available. “I came to break up with him,” she told her friend. At this point, Debbie probably knew that Jason Griffith was still having an affair with
Zumanity
dancer Agnes Roux.

This didn’t surprise him, although Lorenzo characterized Debbie’s relationship with Jason Griffith as “very confusing.” He said, “One day, they were a couple and seemed all happy and all over each other; the next day, she wouldn’t want me to even ask how he was doing.”

Lorenzo sat them in the private area, but his manager was there, so he could not pay much attention to their table. But he did see the couple arguing, and noticed Debbie was crying. About an hour later, two other men walked over to the couple, and the four of them started
talking. Debbie left a couple of minutes later, by herself. It was curious, in light of Griffith’s allegations afterward, that Debbie did not argue with him or follow him that night. Lorenzo was used to seeing them argue often.

That was the last time Lorenzo Buitrón saw Debbie alive. It was a few days later that he was at a Starbucks when he opened up a newspaper to read his friend was missing. He said he was stunned, just like everyone else was, when they found out what happened to
her.

Dancer in the Dark

It was now spring of 2011, and several months had passed since we’d stopped covering Debora Flores-Narvaez’s murder case on a daily basis. Time went on and new stories developed and became the new headlines.

As a reporter for a local TV station, I covered many cases. Every one of them is important, of course, but unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, unless someone asks or reminds me about a particular case, I usually don’t think about it. I don’t take work home with me. But Debora Flores-Narvaez’s murder was different. I thought about it every day. Early in the case, I remember going to a farewell party for a Colombian friend, Maria Fernanda, at a local casino in Las Vegas. That night, the nightclub was full. On several occasions, I thought I
spotted Debbie among the crowd. Of course it wasn’t her, but I had been talking about her for days now, which is something I don’t normally do.

My husband, Andrés, would patiently listen to my endless stories about the missing dancer. Even my mother, Leticia, would ask me about her, and she cried thinking about Debbie’s mom when I told her that the dancer had been found dead.

On one occasion, when the mystery of what had happened to Debbie had deepened and was still unsolved, as I was driving back home from the office at almost midnight, I began thinking of her.
Was she alive? Had she run away? Was her dead body lying somewhere in the desert? Had she met a rich and handsome man and run away with him to an exotic island?
Silly musings straight out of one of those lavish Mexican soap operas, the telenovelas that aired on our parent network, Univision. But as all those thoughts crossed my already tired mind, I suddenly got scared. I turned on all the lights inside the car and continued driving home a little faster. I felt like if I looked in the rearview mirror, I would see Debora sitting there.

Once Debbie’s body had been found and her ex-lover arrested, the police report was almost immediately available for the media. I got a copy and read it over and over, trying to understand all the tragic details of the case.

Knowing that Jason Griffith had kept her dead body in his garage for a night before he’d decided to hide it
elsewhere, I went to the house to get footage of the place where it all began, and where for Debbie, it had all ended. At the time Griffith killed Debbie, there could have been a family next door having dinner, a child doing his or her homework, or a mother putting her baby to sleep. It was a chilling sensation to know what an awful thing had transpired inside those walls. What was it for Jason Griffith? Rage? Revenge? What?

From television shows like
Ghost Whisperer
and
Medium
, to countless films like
The Sixth Sense
and
The Others
, there are a plethora of stories about spirits of the dead who have not “crossed over” for one reason or another.

The Flores-Narvaezes are a Christian family who hadn’t given the idea of communication with the dead much consideration, but after Debbie’s demise, her mother, Elsie Narvaez, began finding feathers around the home, which she attributed to coming from Debbie, since there are no birds or feather pillows at the house, and the windows were always closed. And feathers, Elsie said, and Celeste had also heard, were a sign from angels. Celeste also found signs. She often saw blue butterflies and ladybugs at times when she was thinking about Debbie. She felt Debbie’s presence.

On her Facebook wall, Celeste Flores-Narvaez wrote the following, on May 24, 2011:

“I am stunned, shocked and curious. I was in my room
when I heard a noise in the living room. I went to check it out and found all my sister’s pictures and mementoes knocked down on the floor. There was no one but me in the house, and no way for them to have come down on their own. Could it be her, letting me know she’s here? I’m deep in thought about it.”

According to experts in the paranormal, this sort of activity is supposedly caused by a trapped and tormented spirit, such as that of murder victims, perhaps seeking justice for their lives being taken suddenly.

The day after her public Facebook post, Celeste wrote in a private correspondence, “I think everyone has a sixth sense, some more than others. I sense stuff all the time. And as far as things moving around, this was not the first time. I have the mantel of the chimney filled with her pictures and things. Her couch sits in front of it facing her things. It is her area. Sometimes my dog barks at her things in her area. And sometimes the baby babbles straight at the couch as if there were someone there, as if he’s looking at someone sitting on the couch and talking to them. Well, there was always something moving or falling. But this was the first time when all of it fell together at the same time. But I don’t feel scared, not at all. I just pray that it’s her.”

And Celeste was not the only one to receive a “message.”

Dancer Tessa Ortiz, who works with magician Rene
Delgadillo as his dancer-assistant, had been Debbie’s roommate before Sonya Sonnenberg. “While I was living with her she was going through problems with her restraining order with Jamile,” Tessa recalled.

“I was very shocked after her death, but in a way kind of not, because I had a bad feeling that something was going to happen, that something wasn’t right.” About a month before Debbie’s death and disappearance, Tessa said, she’d had a dream, “a very frightening dream. It was very scary.” Tessa dreamed that Debbie’s dead body was hidden underneath her bed. “In my dream I was terrified. I kept thinking to myself, ‘the police are going to think I did it.’ After I had that dream, I found out what happened to her, and [that] Blu was telling people at his work [that] the police were going to think he did it. When I woke up the next day I called [Debbie] immediately to make sure she was all right. I didn’t tell her [why]. I didn’t want to scare her. It was a month before it happened. Now I feel kind of guilty that I didn’t tell her about it; maybe she would have taken more precautions.”

Not long after her Facebook entry, Celeste sought the advice of renowned psychic Gale St. John, whom Larry King once introduced on his program as “the only psychic who has ever prevented a murder.” Gale had once warned the police that a dead girl, whose father had contacted the psychic previously, was telling her to look for her roommate, who was also in peril. The police did so, albeit
reluctantly. It turned out the roommate was in danger of being killed by the same person who had murdered the first girl.

Gale St. John, for her part, had often participated in the Internet radio show
Missing in America
, hosted by Marta Sosa out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The show attempts to find solutions to crimes, through victims’ families, investigators, and friends, by putting their cases out there, on the air. Gale is the show’s “go-to psychic” on their programs about missing persons. When contacted about appearing on that program so she might speak with Gale St. John, Celeste eagerly agreed.

The show aired live on August 2, 2011. Once everyone was in place, Marta Sosa, the host, asked Celeste about growing up with her little sister, Debora, to start things off on a happy note and ease into the topic. Celeste talked cheerfully about how she and Debbie had played together as children, with games and with their stuffed animals. “We were always loved and cared for. We weren’t rich, but we had a lot of fun.”

Then the older sister talked about how Debbie had loved to dance and perform as a child, about her success as a cheerleader, and about her desire for attention. “She always spoke her mind. She always stood her ground. And she wanted the world to know who she was.”

Celeste and Marta also spoke about the day Debbie
disappeared, right before she was slated to become a lead dancer in the Las Vegas Luxor show,
FANTASY
.

Marta Sosa then asked Celeste what she knew about Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, Jason “Blu” Griffith. As she had said before, and others had corroborated, the dancer had been rather secretive about the whole affair. “What she did was tell everybody a little bit of everything so nobody had the whole story,” Celeste said.

Psychic Gale St. John had remained silent until this point, but then she said she had to jump in and voice what she was receiving, nonstop. “I really feel, and I have to say this, that your sister knew very well this person was going to be the end of her, but she couldn’t stop her emotions. That driving desire, that feeling of ‘gotta have it,’ it’s like a drug addiction. She knew what was going to come of it. She had visions of what would happen, she had dreams, she had impressions, but she put them off, because of her driving desire to have a relationship with this person. It isn’t necessarily she thought she could change him as much as she tried to accept him and live with the way he was. He wasn’t loyal to her.”

Celeste agreed: “No, he wasn’t.”

The psychic elaborated, as she saw more images. “I see pearls; I see pink pearls.”

Celeste was astounded. “Oh my God, she loved pearls.She was always wearing them!”

Gale St. John continued, “I don’t know what this means, but she really liked pink. She liked purple, too, but the lavender purple, not the gaudy purple.”

The sister was pleasantly surprised. “Yes, she loved pink and lavender! And I never liked them and I wear them now. All of a sudden I surround myself in purple and pink, and I never liked them before. Is there anything she wanted me to know in particular?” she asked Gale St. John.

The psychic wasn’t ready to move on to that question yet. She was still working to prove to Celeste that she was really communicating with Debbie. “This is going to sound strange, but a lot of people love roses. She hates them; she likes daisies.”

Celeste came alive again: “Yes! She hated roses! She loved daisies!”

“And pearls, she is wearing pearls. She wants you to know that. Pink pearls!”

“Oh my God!” the sister exclaimed again. “Yes, she loved her pearls and she was never without them, her pink pearls!”

“These are things that are important to know, so you see she’s really here. The most important things are the things she impresses with you every day, the love and the comfort.” Gale St. John then returned to speaking about Debbie’s doomed relationship. “She had a good friend that he slept with, and that really hurt. They partied and
drank together. She was changing herself and losing a part of herself in the process. The final straw was the cheating with the friend. That was a huge argument. He did drugs, and the other girl did drugs. I don’t feel that your sister liked drugs.”

Celeste interjected softly, “No, she did not.”

And Gale proceeded. “That was a huge letdown for her, and he said a lot of unforgiving things. Your sister was not prone to violence, but he pushed her to the limit and she slapped him. From there it spiraled downward.”

After a few beats, Celeste said: “This confirms a lot of what I know, and surmised.” And then she asked the most difficult question of all. “Did she go peacefully?”

Gale St. John did not hesitate in her response: “I would say there were moments of suffering. She knew it was over. When the friend was there he was holding her against the wall. I’m not seeing a whole picture but at the last moment she knew. He wasn’t letting her have any air.” On this the psychic was right on point. Jason Griffith had placed a plastic bag over Debbie’s head, and she complained she couldn’t breathe. Gale St. John did not know this.

“She did suffer until the moment when she passed out. But she knew. When the friend left, it crossed her mind to leave, but it was too late. Her last thoughts were she should have left.”

Marta Sosa then asked Gale St. John if she thought
Debbie Flores-Narvaez’s murder had been planned. Some people, like Debbie’s high school friend, Tennille Ball, had theorized that Griffith had planned on killing Debbie all along, because he did not want her to testify in court against him for the incident in which he had assaulted her in October 2010.

The psychic now hesitated: “How do I put this? He had feelings of wanting to hurt her severely, and had thought about it. There was a certain amount of pleasure he got from it. Some people are actually remorseful. With him there was no remorse.”

The radio show host then turned the talk to Jason “Blu” Griffith’s upcoming trial for murder, thinking that perhaps Celeste might be able to draw some strength from this, for the difficult time to come. “The trial,” Marta Sosa said. “It’s not going to be an easy thing for Celeste.”

Now Gale St. John was emphatic, because apparently she was getting urgent messages from Debbie to relate. “Yes, but what she’s saying is, it’s not important what happens in the way of looking at her life; she’s a little angry right now. She’s angry right now, and she is saying, ‘Everyone thinks I’m dead!’ Her attitude is kind of ‘Damnit, don’t let that destroy what I am!’ Take an item of hers with you, something pink or purple, and think of her today.”

Celeste was crying again. “I talk to her every day like she’s here.”

“That’s what she wants. She doesn’t want you to think about what happened. It’s important to you, it’s important to the court, but she’s very headstrong.”