In the 1990s, when TikToker Raquel Michaelson (@thats.life.raquel) was three years old, her childhood turned into an unimaginable nightmare. Her dad murdered her mom and two sisters.
It took nearly a decade for the truth to fully come to light. Her dad did not go to jail for his crimes until eight or nine years later.
So, she spent a large chunk of her childhood living with the abusive man who destroyed their family, a reality that most people can’t even begin to fathom.
Raquel, her brother, and their dad moved away from California to Las Vegas right after he committed the murders. They actually drove with their deceased mother and sisters in the van all the way to Vegas.
Apparently, their dad went to the Boulder Station Casino and made his way to the top floor to scout out a suitable spot to bury the bodies. He dumped the bodies in the desert, not knowing that a big water plant would eventually be built in the area.
Construction workers found the bodies, but there was little evidence to connect them to their killer. At the time, there hadn’t been any reports of three missing Asian women, so it was difficult to identify them. Their bodies were also in pretty bad shape.
Later, the Downey Police Department in California reopened a cold case that led to Las Vegas, which was how they tracked down Raquel and her family.
When Raquel’s dad was finally arrested, her world was shifted yet again. She and her brother were placed with a foster family, leaving behind the only parent they had really known.
However, their foster family gave them a chance to say goodbye to their mom and sisters, something that they had been denied for years.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
“They helped put together a memorial service for my mom and my sisters. It was beautiful. It gave us a place to grieve, to process, and to feel connected to them in some way,” Raquel wrote in the caption of a follow-up video.
Friends and detectives from both California and Las Vegas attended the memorial service. It provided Raquel and her brother with some closure, although they still have many unanswered questions to this day.
Her foster family even bought gravestones for her mom and two sisters, so that she and her brother could have a permanent place to visit and remember their loved ones.
Their mom and sisters were all initially labeled as Jane Does, but they were able to engrave their names onto the new stones: Edith, Luz, and Gabriela.
When Raquel turned 18, she immediately left Las Vegas behind because of the bad memories. But every time she goes back to Vegas, she visits her mom and her sisters.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
