RICHMOND, Mo. — A Ray County woman’s fight for justice took more than four years to see the inside of a courtroom.
The KSHB 41 I-Team also uncovered a connection between her alleged assailant and the county prosecutor.
You can watch Sarah Plake's report in the video player below.
VOICE FOR EVERYONE | Share your voice with KSHB 41’s Sarah Plake
"I mean, I was shocked," the woman said. "Absolutely shocked."
Victoria is the alleged sexual assault survivor. We’re not using her real name or showing her face, and we are distorting her voice because of the nature of the alleged crime.
Juan David Gutierrez is charged in Ray County with one count of sodomy and one count of attempted sodomy in connection with Victoria’s case.
Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston was Gutierrez’s girlfriend at the time of the 2019 alleged assault, according to the Richmond police chief.
This “personal relationship” is now at the center of a civil defamation lawsuit between Johnston and an investigator who looked into Victoria’s case.
We start with Victoria, who takes us through her long path to justice. We follow the case from Richmond all the way up to the highest law enforcement office in the state.
Coming forward
In the small town of Richmond, Missouri, just 40 miles east of Kansas City, everyone seems to know everyone.
Victoria has always valued her close-knit community, until five years ago when she came forward with her painful and personal story of alleged sexual assault.
"It still took me a while to go to the cops because it’s just one of those things," Victoria said. "What’s going to happen in this small town? I didn’t want all the small-town drama or the rumors."
In February 2020, she worked up enough courage to walk into the Richmond Police Department. According to the police report, she told an officer Juan-David Gutierrez, a former boyfriend, sexually assaulted her.
She said it happened six months earlier when he texted her out of the blue one night and knocked on her living room window.
"I didn't expect him to just show up," Victoria said. "So I let him in 'cause I was like sure, we can catch up, I guess. Whatever."
Victoria said they were not dating at the time and hadn’t talked in a while.
She took a photo of Gutierrez sitting on her couch that night, which she later gave to police.
She told police his surprise visit went from a casual conversation to an unwanted sexual assault.
"It didn’t take until I started crying for him to stop, even though I had been telling him ‘No,'" Victoria said.
Richmond police requested the Missouri State Highway Patrol “handle the investigation,” saying “this department has a conflict.”
The conflict
That conflict? According to Richmond Police Chief Scott Bagley, Gutierrez was in a relationship with Ray County Prosecutor Camille Johnston, whose office would have handled the case.
Bagley pointed out the relationship in a March 2024 letter he wrote to the Missouri attorney general.
The AG's office was named special prosecutor, and the highway patrol took over the investigation.
"I was hoping it would be a pretty quiet thing so I could just get it done and figure out how to move on with my life," Victoria said.
Victoria said she met with the AG’s victim advocate and a highway patrol investigator in January 2021 to talk about her case.
A year rolled by and nothing happened.
A highway patrol spokesperson told us they hadn’t found Gutierrez yet when they turned over their findings to the AG’s office in 2020. We can't get the file because the case is still open, so we don’t know which investigative methods they used to try to find Gutierrez.
"I’ve wanted to just give up a lot of times because I felt like it wasn’t going anywhere," Victoria said.
Until 2022.
"He called me and said, ‘I’m on this case, and I’m going to get justice for you,'" Victoria said.
“He” is Jim Murray.
"She thought somebody was trying to get her justice, and they weren’t," Murray told KSHB 41.
Murray makes his living as a private investigator. But at the time, he was doing volunteer cold case work for former Ray County Sheriff Scott Childers when he learned about Victoria’s case.
"One of the big things for me is justice at this point for this victim," Murray said.
Murray started looking into Victoria’s case pro bono, and the longtime investigator learned there wasn't much movement.
"I went to the Ray County sheriff and said, 'This is a problem,'" Murray said.
Then-Sheriff Childers emailed the AG's office in August 2023, saying Gutierrez's Facebook page might lead them to his location.
Childers asked the AG to help them get search warrants to find Gutierrez.
In that August 2023 email, which the I-Team obtained, Assistant Attorney General Tristin Estep told Childers her office declined prosecution on Victoria’s case the year before, and “it is now outside of the statute of limitations. The matter we were appointed to handle is now closed.”
Victoria said hearing Estep’s words was a gut punch.
"Finding out from Jim that she wasn’t going to prosecute, I was like, ‘What in the world is going on? She promised me she’d do this,'" Victoria said.
But Murray pointed out a way to move forward under Missouri law. This statute says the time limitation on prosecuting first-degree rape or first-degree attempted rape does not run “during any time when the accused is concealing himself or herself from justice,” either in or outside of the state.
At the time, Murray said he was tracking Gutierrez’s vehicle.
New legal battle emerges
This is the point in the story where Victoria’s fight for justice intersects with a new legal battle between Murray and Prosecutor Johnston.
In a court document, Murray alleges Johnston helped Gutierrez "flee the jurisdiction” and “avoid prosecution" by driving her truck to Mississippi to “deliver” it to Gutierrez, appearing “to have even transferred the title of the vehicle into Gutierrez’s name.”
You can read the full counterclaim below.
Johnston denies it, saying in a lawsuit she “took no action to aid Mr. Gutierrez."
Johnston sued Murray in June 2024, accusing him of “publishing false and defamatory information on social media” about her and illegally obtaining her driver’s license information.
Her lawsuit says she had already told Murray she “did not have any involvement in the investigation” and "was not aware of criminal charges against Mr. Gutierrez at the time she sold him the vehicle.”
Her lawsuit says she told Murray “she was unaware of the allegations of sexual assault until after her relationship ended,” and “she knew Mr. Gutierrez had moved from the area in 2020."
You can read the full lawsuit below.
According to a highway patrol investigation report the I-Team reviewed, in September 2020, an investigator asked Johnston if she knew where Gutierrez went. She replied, “Somewhere south,” and said Gutierrez wouldn’t tell her where he was going.
Now, going back to that truck she sold him, according to records the I-Team obtained from the Missouri Department of Revenue, TitleMax released the lien on Johnston’s truck in February 2023. The paperwork shows Johnston signed the title of her truck to Juan-David Neri Gutierrez, who is listed as the buyer with a Mississippi address. The records do not have a date of sale.
That truck was then titled in Mississippi in April 2023. The Mississippi Department of Revenue spokesperson said they can’t tell KSHB 41 who titled the truck because we are not the owner.
All of that happened after the AG declined prosecution on the sexual assault and closed the case.
But when Missouri authorities located Gutierrez in Toledo, Ohio, they arrested him.
Charges come years later
On April 2, 2024, two years after initially closing the case, the AG’s office charged Gutierrez with one count of sodomy and one count of attempted sodomy in connection with Victoria’s case. He pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Gutierrez’s attorney has never responded to our requests for comment.
However, we hear Gutierrez’s recollection of events in a jailhouse interview with Chief Bagley, which the I-Team obtained.
Bagley said he was not there to interview Gutierrez about the sexual assault case, but rather his relationship with Johnston. Gutierrez talked about the alleged crime anyway.
"I don't do nothing wrong, I swear to God," Gutierrez said in that interview.
Gutierrez denied sexually assaulting Victoria. Gutierrez said he was living with Johnston, but her family kicked him out of the house after Victoria’s allegations came to light.
"All my clothes, all my everything was outside," Gutierrez told Bagley.
After that, Gutierrez said he moved to Mississippi for work.
Where things stand today
We reached out to Johnston, and her attorney told us she “doesn’t factor in” Gutierrez’s criminal case.
Gutierrez is currently in the Harrison County jail on a $100,000 cash-only bond. We've learned he’s on an immigration hold.
"I feel a little bit better knowing he’s in jail and there’s a hold on him," Victoria said.
The I-Team asked the AG’s office multiple times why it declined to prosecute Victoria’s case in 2022 and why it decided to pick it back up. The AG’s office has never answered those questions.
A highway patrol spokesperson said its involvement in the case stopped in 2020, when it turned over its investigative findings to the AG’s office. The highway patrol declined to give us those records because the case is still ongoing.
"It has been a rollercoaster," Victoria said.
And still, in the center of all the back and forth is Victoria, who says she’ll keep fighting for justice despite the emotional toll.
"The last thing I need is being in the middle of all this," Victoria said. "I mean, a sexual assault is bad enough, and then you add on these politics. And it just gets deeper and deeper, and it’s horrible."
Gutierrez's trial was scheduled to begin Sept. 29. His attorney filed a motion to push the trial back, and Judge Timothy Flook granted it on Sept. 9. A trial setting hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29 at 9:30 a.m. instead.
Johnston and Murray’s case is set for trial next summer.
Resources
Resources are available for sexual assault survivors. The Metropolitan Organization Countering Sexual Assault (MOCSA) has a crisis hotline for Missouri and Kansas.
- Missouri crisis line: 816-531-0233
- Kansas crisis line: 913-642-0233
Editor’s note: Star Investigations, a firm owned by Jim Murray, occasionally provides security services to KSHB-TV.
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