VALLEY CENTER, Calif. (KGTV) – A homicide investigation by the San Diego County Sheriff’s office in Valley Center is still underway a day later.
“It’s, I don’t know, scary. It’s exciting. It’s nerve-racking. Everything; all the different emotions,” Diana Hertz, Valley Center Neighbor, said.
It’s been nearly 36 hours since Hertz was jolted out of bed early Wednesday morning on Oak Creek Road. She was woken up to the start of a homicide investigation by the Sheriff’s Office in Valley Center.
The Sheriff’s Office says it’s searching for 65-year-old Nadine Jett and evidence on the 20-acre property next door to Diana.
A neighbor who hasn’t been seen in nearly two years.
“Everybody’s wondering it and everyone’s calling me. But I don’t know they’re not telling me anything,” Hertz said.
ABC 10News saw everything from drones to search dogs to a backhoe brought to the property as a part of the investigation.
“A rule of thumb, the larger the crime scene, the more complex,” Paul Cappitelli, a former homicide investigator with the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office, said.
Cappitelli said he served with the Sheriff’s Office for 29 years and was a homicide detective for roughly three of them.
ABC 10News spoke to him about his insight as to what goes into a search on this big of a property, given what we know so far about this investigation.
“They probably are looking for evidence on the entire acreage there, which probably could include something related to bodies, dead bodies. That would be my best guess,” Cappitelli said. “Whenever you see excavation taking place, you know, there's only a few things that are involved in a homicide investigation that are buried.”
The Sheriff’s Office isn’t saying if a body has been found, and no arrests have been made at this time.
Cappitelli told ABC 10News that an aspect of using all of the technology and manpower can be to help look for people connected to the case.
“There's a lot of ability to take any type of DNA evidence and use that to trace it back to some type of person,” Cappitelli said. “And so, when you're searching a property of that nature, maybe you're looking for, you know, discarded straw or, a coffee cup or anything that could possibly contain DNA.”
