A late night beach party along the Central Coast turned into the center of a widening mystery after a 35-year-old woman disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only her belongings and a swirl of conflicting accounts.
Danielle Staley of Utah was last spotted near the Platforms Beach stretch of Rio Del Mar in Aptos on November 6.
According to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, she had been with a group of people shortly before 11:30 p.m., and her items were later located on the sand.
Investigators noted there was no indication she had entered the water that night.
Staley had been staying in a camper near the beach with her 62-year-old boyfriend, Axl Nunez.
The pair had been in a relationship since September, and family members said she had remained in contact with them consistently until she vanished.
Nunez told local outlets he did not join her at the bonfire gathering because of his asthma, saying he had fallen asleep in their van. By morning, he realized she had not come back.
“And when I woke up, she wasn’t there,” he said to KSBW 8. He added that “there has to be some video surveillance” from the area showing what happened.
He described the search as agonizing, saying the sight of her missing person flier “just breaks my heart.”
He told FOX13, “I’m going to find her. I won’t stop, bro. I’m not stopping until I find her, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”
While Nunez portrayed himself as determined to bring her home, Staley’s family challenged his public pleas.
Her mother, April Miller, said they had concerns about the 13-year-long on and off relationship. Her brother described Nunez as “extremely abusive” and manipulative.
Miller told KSBW 8 that the explanation offered by Nunez “doesn’t make sense,” adding that he claimed Staley had simply walked away without her phone, purse or any of her belongings.
Lock Them Up! Russiagate is reigniting…
Obama, Clinton, Comey, and Brennan are all on the hook!
CLICK HERE to demand Russiagate conspirators got to prison!
“Honestly, we’re really alarmed by this because that’s not Danielle,” she said.
Nunez firmly denied having any role in her disappearance. “Absolutely not. One hundred percent. God as my witness, I have nothing to do with it,” he said in an interview with FOX13.
“Everybody’s asking that question. It’s pretty obvious, the boyfriend, the husband, we’re the number one suspect all the time. And all I want to do is help try to find her.”
He said he has cooperated with investigators, allowing officers to search his van and offering to take a polygraph.
“Whatever they want to do, they can do it. But I did offer it to them. I said, ‘I will take a polygraph test. I will take any kind of tests you guys want.’ I just want to help to try to find her,” he said.
Authorities confirmed that foul play is a possibility, though they have not named any suspects.
Sgt. Zach West of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office told ABC that Staley’s disappearance is being treated as a missing persons case with suspicious circumstances.
He noted that no crime has been formally established and that “there are not any persons of interest.”
Miller maintained that investigators privately indicated they believed something criminal may have occurred.
She told KSBW that police “think foul play is involved” and said they do not believe her daughter simply walked away.
“I probably talked to her at least four times a week, and we text other days… She’s in communication with us. She’s not trying to disappear from her family,” Miller said.
Nunez responded to the speculation about his guilt by suggesting Staley’s disappearance may be tied to substance use. “Yeah, she relapsed. And that’s the truth,” he said.
He told reporters he wants less attention on himself and more on the search effort.
“I just want her back,” he said to FOX13. “She’s my life, she’s my best friend.”
As it turns out, her family was wrong about Nunez. Three weeks after her disappearance, the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office reported that Staley was found “safe and uninjured.” No details about where she went or how she was found have been released by officials.
Staley’s stepfather, Slade Holtry, credited the media for getting her story on air. “That’s the only way we found her. Somebody saw the news and told her she was all over the news, and she contacted the sheriff’s department,” he told a local news outlet.
In a separate case in Massachusetts, a violent episode involving another couple left a woman dead and led to a life sentence for her boyfriend.
In September, authorities said 32-year-old Tyler Baglini walked into a New Bedford emergency room carrying a bloody knife and claiming a serial killer had murdered his girlfriend.
Investigators later determined that he had stabbed 31-year-old Kerri Fidalgo more than a dozen times.
Court filings said Fidalgo had urged Baglini to seek help earlier that morning, texting him at 9:57 a.m., “Tyler, we can talk later. After you get checked out. You need help. You need to get better.”
“You’re having an episode and you’re paranoid,” the message continued. “Everything will be OK, but you need help. I love you. I care about you. Please.”
Police said he replied, “Goodbye, I really loved you and I forgive you. Time to go to hell; you were the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Investigators said Baglini appeared at St. Luke’s Hospital that afternoon using a public phone to call his parents and Fidalgo, claiming he was checking himself in for psychiatric care. According to court documents, he left minutes later without doing so.
Prosecutors said he later sent Fidalgo a photo of a knife. By late afternoon, he arrived at the hospital again, this time covered in blood and holding the weapon.
A prosecutor told WJAR-TV that the “kitchen knife” still had blood on the blade.
He reportedly told hospital staff the stabbing had taken place at Fidalgo’s Atlantic Street apartment.
Police found she had suffered 14 stab wounds to her head, neck and torso, and noted signs she fought for her life.
She was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital, where she died from her injuries.
The Bristol County District Attorney’s Office charged Baglini with murder the same day.
At sentencing, Fidalgo’s mother, Melissa Fidalgo, addressed the court directly.
“I have watched him sit here in this courtroom, quiet and timid, as if he couldn’t possibly have done what he did,” she said, according to the Boston Globe.
“But I know the truth. I know how savage, how horrific, and how violent his actions were.”
“I hate that he thought he had the right to take my daughter’s life,” she added. “I hate that he took her from us, from the family that loved her so deeply, from the future she was building, and from the world that was brighter because she was in it.”
Baglini pleaded guilty to second-degree-murder and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
