Investigators close to completing truck examination

Police are quickly, but meticulously, moving through the examination of a truck they hope will provide clues in the disappearance of Bertha Anguiano, who's 3-year-old son said she had been killed by the truck's driver now in custody in Utah, the sheriff said.

"We have been processing the vehicle ahead of schedule," Carson City Sheriff Kenny Furlong said. Furlong had initially estimated it would take longer than a week to process the 1992 GMC Jimmy truck. "We hope to get all evidence up to Washoe County (Crime Lab) before the four-day break. I expect all of my officers to take a break."

Furlong said any evidence won't be revealed at this point to the public to protect the "integrity" of the investigation.

The truck, registered to someone else, was being used by Juan Carlos Tellez. Tellez is known as Israel Tellez by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Police believe he was having an affair with the 33-year-old married mother of three.

He was stopped in Salt Lake City on Friday for questioning in Anguiano's Nov. 10 disappearance when he pointed a handgun at deputies.

Furlong said Tellez is not offering investigators any information and denies knowing where Anguiano is.

She was last seen talking with a man about 8 a.m. outside Empire Elementary School, where she had dropped off her 6-year-old son.

Some 90 minutes later her 3-year-old was found bloodied and clutching a dollar bill outside the Smith's grocery store in Dayton. He told police his mother and he had been hit by "Juan," his mother was pushed from a blue truck and she was dead.

On Tuesday, searchers took advantage of Army National Guard flight training to view the Carson River from East of Smith's in Dayton to Mexican Dam in Carson City.

Commander of Carson City Search and Rescue, Kitty Baran, said the search came up empty.

Contact F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or call 881-1213.