He was Larry Ris, a native of Olympia, Washington. He joined the Navy after high school, and through his perseverance and skill, he was promoted to commander, eventually becoming a leader in the army that fought in the Gulf War.

During a vacation in California, he met Sonya Rios on a blind date. Sonya was a Filipina who owned a salon in Lomita, California.

She was 16 years older than Larry, but this was not an issue for the two. According to Larry’s sister, he was close to their family, but when he entered the relationship, Larry grew distant.

This was allegedly because Sonya did not want Larry visiting his family.

After a year, the two married and lived in Sonya’s house in Lomita. According to their neighbors, Jim and Nicole Thompson, Sonya and Larry were kind and generous neighbors.

When he retired from the Navy, Larry became a high school teacher. According to his colleagues, he loved children and was a very good teacher.

However, one of his co-workers shared that Larry admitted his relationship with his wife, Sonya, was not good because they were no longer intimate.

He wanted a child, but because Sonya was over 40 years old when they married, they had difficulty conceiving.

During one of their vacations in the Philippines, they decided to adopt two of Sonya’s sister’s grandchildren, Quincy and Jetmark.

The children’s parents agreed, believing the two would have a better life if they grew up in the United States.

Sonya agreed to the adoption on the condition that she would handle and manage the adoption process. One to three years passed, but the adoption never materialized.

Larry discovered that Sonya had not processed the papers. Because his last chance to have a child was shattered, he asked Sonya for a divorce.

Sonya agreed, but with one condition: she wanted him to go home to the Philippines alone to take care of their taxi business before they divorced.

Because he wanted to separate from Sonya and also wanted to see Quincy and Jetmark, he agreed to go to the Philippines. It also happened to be Quincy’s 7th birthday.

Before flying to the Philippines, he decided to go home to Olympia, Washington, to attend his family reunion. After that, he flew to Manila, and upon arrival, he traveled to Tanza, Cavite.

As planned, he attended Quincy’s birthday party. At the party, he noticed that one of Quincy’s cousins had a swollen eye, so he decided to take the child to the hospital.

Larry, along with Quincy’s other family members, rode a jeep to the hospital. After the child was treated in the ER, they all rode the jeep again to go home.

While on their way, a motorcycle arrived, and one of the riders suddenly shot Larry in the head and stomach.

After the shooting, the suspects immediately fled on the motorcycle, and everyone panicked. According to Jetmark’s testimony, they rushed Larry to the emergency room, but it was too late.

Larry died at the age of 43. The Tanza police investigated, but the witnesses could not describe the suspects because they were wearing helmets, and the case was eventually left unresolved.

In Lomita, California, Sonya heard what happened and shared the news with her close neighbors, Jim and Nicole Thompson. They were the ones who informed Larry’s family.

Just one day after Larry’s death, Sonya asked her neighbor Jim for help in processing the life insurance paperwork for her husband.

Because Larry and Sonya were still married, she had the rights to his body. She did not want to return Larry’s body to the United States, so she had it cremated, but she did not bring the ashes back.

This news shocked and saddened Larry’s family in Washington, who were already preparing for his funeral.

Even without a body, Larry’s family proceeded with the memorial service and even got a headstone for him, hoping that one day they could retrieve his ashes from the Philippines.

A Familiar Pattern

What they didn’t know was that this was not the first time Sonya had lost a husband.

To find out what happened to Sonya’s first husband, we need to go back 16 years. Sonya’s first husband was Earl John Baugh.

He was born in Davenport, Iowa, near the Mississippi River. In his youth, his nickname was “Duke.”

He joined the Marines during the Vietnam War but was stationed at a Navy base in the Philippines.

Here, he met a Filipina who sang at a nightclub near their base. They married, and just a few months later, he brought Sonya home to the United States to introduce her to his family.

Because Sonya and his family did not get along, they decided to move to Southern California.

Years passed, and Sonya opened her own salon, while Earl retired from the Navy and worked at a bakery.

However, because Sonya was controlling, Earl asked his wife for a divorce. Sonya agreed but demanded one condition.

She needed him to go to the Philippines alone because she wanted him to process the sale of their taxi business there.

According to Earl’s brother, Dennis, he was saddened by Sonya’s request, but because he was desperate to end their relationship, he agreed to go.

Worried about his brother, Dennis tried to accompany Earl to the Philippines but couldn’t get a passport before the flight, so he couldn’t go.

Earl arrived in the Philippines and traveled to the town of General Trias in Cavite. He stayed at Sonya’s family home and, due to fatigue, fell asleep, but he never woke up.

The next morning, the police arrived and found Earl shot, drowning in his own blood.

According to the investigation, men allegedly entered Sonya’s family home. At first, they thought the motive was robbery, but everyone was shocked when they shot Earl.

No items were missing, and no one else was harmed in the crime. The investigation progressed, and five men were arrested.

The suspects were Sonya’s own family members. Although the evidence against the suspects was strong, the case was dismissed because Sonya did not attend the preliminary hearing.

No one was jailed for the crime. Earl’s family in Iowa couldn’t believe it, and his brother, Dennis, believed his brother’s death was planned and that the mastermind was Sonya.

He never stopped seeking justice for his brother, hiring a private investigator and spending thousands of dollars to find evidence linking Sonya to the crime.

The Investigation Turns

When the insurance company learned that Sonya’s second husband had also died under the same circumstances as her first, they hired their own private investigator.

According to the investigator, Sonya was known for committing fraud. She once burned her hair salon to collect insurance money. She also didn’t pay taxes to the IRS.

She was also fond of suing people to get money and stole Social Security numbers.

According to the investigator, from Larry’s death, Sonya inherited two houses, one valued at half a million dollars, and their Lomita home, also valued at $500,000. She also got the vehicles.

After the background check, the private investigator passed all the findings to the insurance company, and Sonya was not paid.

Larry’s family learned of this and contacted the same private investigator to look into their brother’s death. For months, the PI monitored Sonya’s house and salon.

To learn about the movements of her relatives in the Philippines, he contacted private investigators there.

A retired policeman became the PI in the Philippines, and according to his statement, corruption was the reason Larry’s case did not progress. He believed Sonya paid the police to make the case disappear.

The information gathered from the Philippines and the PI in California was brought to the FBI.

Nine months after Larry’s death, his sister, Sherry, received an email from someone claiming to be Sonya’s relative.

The person stated they could return Larry’s ashes in exchange for $35,000. The email signature read “John Baugh.”

If you recall, the name of Sonya’s first husband was Earl John Baugh, but this was not the same person. Sherry discovered that Sonya had a son from a previous relationship whom her first husband, Earl, had adopted.

Sonya had hidden the existence of her son, and Larry never knew about him.

The Final Twist

Police arrived at Sonya’s house and found her dead inside. One of Sonya’s nephews, Eric Dela Cruz, immediately spoke to investigators to share what he knew.

He was a Marine and had just returned to the United States from working in Asia.

He immediately pointed to Sonya’s son, John, as the suspect, stating that John was a bad person and that they should look at the son first.

The police talked to John, but he denied any involvement. He was subjected to a lie detector test, where he continued to deny any connection to the crime.

He shared that although his relationship with his mother was not good, he could not kill her.

The FBI visited Dennis, Earl’s brother, but he denied any involvement, and suspicion was cleared when the FBI confirmed he was far from the crime scene.

They also visited Sherry, Larry’s sister. She showed them the email she received from “John Baugh,” but like Dennis, Sherry was quickly removed from the suspect list due to her solid alibi.

The police returned to John, but he vehemently insisted he did not kill his mother.

Meanwhile, his cousin, Eric, was determined to get justice for the old woman and kept contacting the police, insisting that John was the suspect and adding that his cousin used drugs.

He also visited Sonya’s neighbors, Jim and Nicole, to ask for help in resolving the case.

The police did not immediately arrest John, wanting to observe him to get solid evidence.

In their investigation, they found that Sonya had 911 records. She had twice reported a man watching her outside her salon.

One time, he called the salon while in the parking lot, wanting a haircut, but Sonya refused, saying the man’s hair was fine. She wrote down the man’s phone number, but her bad feeling about him was strong.

A few days later, the same man returned and shot at Sonya’s salon, but she managed to escape. The man who fired the shots was the same one who wanted a haircut.

Fearing for her life, she bought her own gun. Investigators immediately requested the cellphone records for the number Sonya had saved, and it was registered to a Fernando Romero.

They did not see John Baugh’s number in the call history or text messages.

However, one day, a detective received a call from a phone number seen in Romero’s call history, and it was from Eric Dela Cruz.

They saw that Romero and Dela Cruz frequently talked before and after Sonya’s murder.

A week later, the FBI re-examined the emails Sherry had received, allegedly from John Baugh.

When computer forensics investigated the IP address, they discovered it came from various Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand.

They also found that these IP addresses were exclusively used by the Navy. They confirmed that Eric Dela Cruz was part of the Marines.

The FBI requested help from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). The NCIS confirmed that Romero and Dela Cruz were in the same department in the US Navy.

The Mastermind Revealed

The big question now was: why would Eric kill Sonya, his aunt (not grandmother as stated in the text)?

Sonya was killed on a Friday night, but on Monday morning, before her office even opened, Sonya’s lawyer saw Eric Dela Cruz waiting for him.

His first question was, “How much? How much will I get?” To his shock, all of Sonya’s property was bequeathed to her son, John.

When the FBI received the complete report from NCIS, they arrested Eric, and on the same day, his accomplice, Fernando Romero.

They were charged with first-degree murder. According to the prosecutor, Romero committed the crime, but the mastermind was Dela Cruz.

Since there was no forced entry, they believed Dela Cruz let Romero into the house to kill Sonya.

In February 2011, the trial began. The defense argued there was no DNA, no murder weapon, and no witnesses.

The jurors did not believe them. After only one day, the verdict was delivered.

Romero and Eric were sentenced to 26 years in prison. After the trial, authorities apologized to John Baugh for the trauma he endured.

Sherry, Larry’s sister, went to the Philippines in June 2019, hoping to retrieve her brother’s ashes.

She met Jetmark and Quincy, the children Larry once wanted to adopt, but unfortunately, she was unable to find or retrieve Larry’s ashes.