Three Boxes to Laredo: The Disappearance of Yessenia Suarez and Her Children

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

June 4, 2026

Yessenia Ivette Suarez was 28 years old, a student at Rollins College studying organizational behavior, and the mother of two children, nine-year-old Thalia and eight-year-old Michael, when she and both of her children vanished from their home in Deltona, Florida, on October 22, 2013. Her husband, Luis Toledo, the children's stepfather, was eventually convicted of murdering all three of them. No bodies have ever been recovered. Nearly a decade later, Yessenia's own brother disappeared while still searching for answers about what had happened to his sister, and was found dead days afterward.

A Marriage Already Breaking Apart

By the fall of 2013, Yessenia's marriage to Luis Toledo was falling apart, strained by an affair she was having with a coworker. Toledo himself carried a violent history that predated the marriage entirely. He had reportedly once held rank as the third highest member of the Latin Kings gang within the state, and his arrest record included charges for aggravated assault, aggravated burglary, shooting into an occupied dwelling, kidnapping, and attempted second-degree murder, a history that made him an extraordinarily dangerous person for anyone to be confronting about infidelity.

A Confrontation at Work

On October 22, 2013, Toledo confronted Yessenia directly at her workplace, American K-9 Detection Services in Lake Mary, Florida. The two argued about her affair, and Toledo struck her before fleeing the scene. He separately warned Yessenia's mother that something would happen if Yessenia pursued a protective injunction against him, a threat that made his intentions toward her chillingly explicit even before that day was over.

The Last Night

Despite an initial plan to stay at her mother's house that night, Yessenia instead returned to the family's home on Covent Gardens Place with both children around 8:00 p.m. Later that night, her boyfriend spoke with her by phone and noted that she sounded stressed and that her speech seemed slurred, a detail that would take on darker significance once investigators began piecing together the timeline of what happened next.

A Missed Morning Call

Yessenia had a standing habit of calling her mother every morning, and on October 23, that call never came. When family members grew alarmed and contacted police for a welfare check, investigators found the family's home completely empty. One of the family's two vehicles was still parked at the house, while the second was located abandoned in the parking lot of a Publix grocery store in Lake Mary. Authorities moved quickly to the conclusion that the entire family was already dead, and named Luis Toledo as the prime suspect almost immediately.

Blood Throughout the House

The physical evidence collected against Toledo was extensive. Investigators recovered Thalia's blood on one of Toledo's boots and on the trunk mat of the family's Honda, both items later discovered discarded in a dumpster in nearby Sanford, as well as blood traces found in the home's master bathroom and on a closet door. Michael's blood was separately discovered on a piece of gauze inside a trash can in the home's hallway. Neighbors in the area also reported having heard screams coming from the house that night, adding eyewitness testimony to the mounting physical evidence.

A Confession and a Scapegoat

When questioned, Toledo admitted to punching Yessenia in the throat during their confrontation, a blow serious enough to plausibly have killed her outright. He denied responsibility for the children's deaths, however, instead blaming a neighbor, Tyshawn Jackson, claiming Jackson had killed the children and disposed of their bodies. Investigators quickly dismissed this account. Jackson himself came forward voluntarily to authorities, telling them that Toledo had actually asked him to help move Yessenia's car after the fact, and had admitted directly to Jackson, in reference to the confrontation with his wife, that he had simply snapped.

"Three Boxes to Laredo, Texas"

Additional evidence against Toledo surfaced from an unexpected source: a letter he wrote from jail while awaiting trial. In it, he made reference to having sent three boxes to Laredo, Texas, a detail investigators interpreted as a likely reference to the disposal of the family's remains, transported far from Florida and, presumably, far from anywhere investigators would think to search.

Convicted Without Bodies

Luis Toledo went to trial in October 2017. After eight hours of jury deliberation, he was convicted of second-degree murder in Yessenia's death and first-degree murder in the deaths of both Thalia and Michael. He received a life sentence. As with so many cases built on overwhelming circumstantial evidence rather than recovered remains, the conviction gave the family a measure of legal closure without ever answering the question of where Yessenia, Thalia, and Michael actually are.

A Posthumous Degree

In recognition of the education Yessenia had been pursuing before her murder, Rollins College later awarded her a posthumous degree, a small but meaningful acknowledgment of the life and ambitions Toledo's violence had cut short.

A Brother Who Couldn't Let Go

The story did not end with Toledo's conviction. Yessenia's brother, Jonathan Suarez, spent the years afterward struggling visibly with the loss of his sister and the fact that her remains, and those of his niece and nephew, had never been found. His wife, Jazmine, later said that the disappearance had clearly eaten away at him over time, describing his mindset in the years since as an increasingly consuming need to find his sister himself. In January 2022, Jonathan disappeared after being involved in a minor vehicle accident in Sanford, Florida. His truck was located, but he himself was not, and eight days later, his body was found dead near the same area where the truck had been recovered. Authorities did not release a specific cause of death. For a family that had already spent nine years without answers about Yessenia, Thalia, and Michael, Jonathan's death added an entirely new, devastating layer of loss connected directly back to the same unresolved case.

Still Missing

More than a decade after Yessenia Suarez, Thalia Otto, and Michael Otto vanished from their Deltona home, none of their remains have ever been recovered, despite extensive searches across the years and the conviction of the man responsible for all three deaths. Luis Toledo remains in prison serving his life sentence, having never disclosed where the family's bodies can actually be found, and a case that already claimed three lives in a single night in October 2013 has continued to leave a trail of grief reaching into the following decade, touching even the family members who spent those years simply trying to bring Yessenia home.

Thalia would be in her early twenties today, and Michael would be approaching his own twenties as well, two children whose entire adolescence and early adulthood were stolen from them, and from the family left behind to imagine what might have been. Investigators have never located the three boxes Toledo referenced in his jail letter, and the trail toward Laredo, Texas, like every other lead pursued in the years since, has never produced a body. What remains is a conviction, a posthumous college degree, a grieving family that has now lost four members to a single act of violence spread across two tragedies nearly a decade apart, and a silence from Luis Toledo that has never once broken in the direction of giving anyone back what he took.

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