By Dan Nienaber
CHASKA — A year has passed and Monica Schanus still has more questions than answers about her brother’s murder.
It was Dec. 6, 2008, when 42-year-old Daniel Juarez’s body was found burned inside the rear cargo area of his 2003 Chevy Trailblazer, a vehicle he used for his satellite dish installation business. The SUV was found burning early in the morning in a wooded area about a mile northeast of Green Isle in Sibley County.
Investigators still haven’t told Schanus how Juarez was killed, but one Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent did tell her he didn’t burn to death. Whatever it was that killed him happened before his body was burned, Schanus said.
“They had the mercy on me to tell me my brother was dead before he burned because I was so worried he had burned alive,” Schanus said. “Just imagine your brother burning alive.”
Many more questions haven’t been answered. She wants to know who killed her brother, how he was murdered, where the crime happened and, most importantly to Schanus, why someone decided to end the life of a successful businessman with a wife and four children.
She’s concerned the case has lost its priority with investigators due to language barriers and cultural differences.
Complex case
Sibley County Sheriff Bruce Ponath said the murder is still being actively investigated. His department is the lead agency in the investigation, but his detectives are working with the BCA and other agencies “which may or may not have similar incidents,” Ponath said. The agencies are following new leads.
“Though this is a complex case that may be taking time, we will continue to work on it as long as it takes,” Ponath said in a press release. “The $10,000 reward still remains in effect for information leading to an arrest in this case.”
A search warrant filed in Hennepin County District Court by a BCA agent in March said Juarez was receiving a substantial amount of money from unknown sources. The affidavit used to request the warrant said Juarez was only claiming an income of about $24,000 per year but had monthly expenses totaling $8,500 to $10,000 per month.
That suggested criminal activity, the BCA agent said in the document.
In addition to the DJ Satellite Service business, Juarez also was starting a bilingual newspaper called El Heraldo in Chaska, Schanus said. Both businesses were operated from a small office in the Professional Center building in downtown Chaska.
Schanus said her brother used to stop by her house regularly and talk business. He told her he was making more from his satellite dish business than he was disclosing on his taxes.
The reason for that, Schanus said, was he was selling dishes to people who weren’t legally in the country and couldn’t use their real names to apply for credit from the dish service providers.
What he was doing was illegal but not something that would lead to murder, she said.
“Police have told me they suspect he was selling drugs because he was cheating on his taxes,” Schanus said. “The money wasn’t coming from drugs. If he had been selling drugs, he wouldn’t have been working so hard. He worked all the time, day and night.”
There was an important clue left behind at the Professional Center office the morning Juarez disappeared, his sister said. It was a laptop computer he always had with him. She suspects the computer was either left behind as Juarez was forced to leave or someone placed it there later to throw investigators off their track.
“If he was taken from his office, somebody must have heard something because my brother was a fighter,” Schanus said.
“He was in the Army. Otherwise he knew the person very well. I know there’s somebody who knows something. They’re just not coming forward.”
Miles away
Investigators told Schanus that Juarez’s wife, Rosalba, told them Juarez left the house at about 12:15 a.m. the morning of Dec. 6, saying he was going to work. His body was found about four hours later when Green Isle firefighters were dispatched to Juarez’s burning truck, which was in a wooded area at a privately owned farm.
Green Isle is about 25 miles southwest of Chaska. Schanus said she didn’t know of any connections her brother would have had to the area.
Investigators also received reports that Juarez was seen at an acquaintance’s house in Burnsville, which is about 20 miles in the opposite direction, before he disappeared, Schanus said.
Rosalba Juarez declined to comment for this story. But several other people who knew Daniel Juarez through business dealings said he was a good person who didn’t seem like the type to be involved with illegal drugs.
Rodrigo Perez owns the San Jose Supermercado, a grocery about a block away from Juarez’s office. He said he advertised in Juarez’s newspaper and spoke with him regularly. The last time he saw Juarez was about a week before the murder.
“Right after we opened the store, he started the newspaper,” Perez said. “He was a nice guy who was always working hard.”
Juarez hadn’t always been a businessman in Chaska, which has a growing Hispanic business community, Schanus said. His first job in Minnesota was working in a Chaska food production plant.
He was born in Mexico and became a citizen in Chicago, which is where he also met his wife. The couple moved to Chaska about 17 years ago, and Schanus followed a short time later.
The Juarez family also was well known at the Chaska My Love Mexican Restaurant, said Gabriela Villegas, an employee there. She has not seen the family since Juarez was killed.
Villegas also said Juarez had a friendly personality and didn’t seem like the type of person to use or sell drugs.
A final death certificate, filed in February, only said Juarez died as a result of “homicide violence.” It also said Juarez was injured by another person and he died within minutes. The cause of death was not released because it remains under investigation.
That certificate wasn’t even made available to a corrections agent who was handling an April 2008 domestic assault case against Juarez. Rosalba Juarez obtained an order for protection against her husband after that incident. She had it removed about two months later, saying the two were running a business together and attending the same church.
The charge remained, however, and Daniel Juarez was sentenced to 45 days home monitoring in October 2008 after he entered an Alford plea. That type of plea allows a defendant to maintain innocence while acknowledging a jury might find him guilty.
Juarez’s case was discharged in May at the request of Kristi Holcomb, his corrections agent.
“The defendant was murdered and the case remains unsolved,” Holcomb’s request said. “This officer did confirm the defendant’s identity with Chief Deputy Pat Nienaber with the Sibley County Sheriff’s Department, but because the case remains open, no documents can be released.”
