Heidi Broussard case: Fiancé of Texas mom was in shock as he watched police find her body in car trunk on live TV
HUMBLE, TEXAS: The fiancé of a Texas mom, who had been missing for a week before she was found murdered and stuffed in the trunk of her best friend's car, had refused to believe what he was seeing on television as FBI and police forces closed in on her location, his friend has revealed.
MEA WorldWide (MEAWW) previously reported that Heidi Broussard, 33, was officially classified as missing on December 12 after fiancé Shane Carey notified the police that she had not been seen or heard from since she dropped off her six-year-old son at school that morning.
Their two-week-old daughter Margot Carey was also missing. After a frantic search led by multiple police departments in the state as well as the FBI, they zeroed in on the Jersey Village house of Broussard's long-time friend Magen Fieramusca.
While Broussard was found dead, strangled and stuffed inside the trunk of a silver Nissan belonging to Fieramusca, Margot was luckily found alive and well.
Speaking about the time officers swooped in on the suburban Houston home, Shane's best friend Mike Quintanilla revealed to true-crime podcast The Critical Kay that the father thought the raid was fake news and a media stunt.
"I told him apparently the FBI, Texas Rangers, Austin Police Department, and Houston Police department were all there," he said. "They said the medical examiners came out. There was a body in the trunk, there's a baby there. I asked him, 'Who's Magen?' He said, 'Wait, what are you talking about?'"
"I said, 'Look, man, they've found Heidi in the trunk of this vehicle that's been parked in the back yard of this house,'" he continued. "He was like, 'Shut the f*** up man, don't t talk to me, don't tell me this. Turn your phone off right now. This is the media."
Quintanilla said he tried to convince Shane that there was no way law enforcement could set up such an elaborate ruse, but that he couldn't get through to him.
"He didn't want to believe me," he said. "He was star-struck kind of. He said, 'Don't tell me this s**t man', and his knees buckled a little bit."
Fieramusca was charged on December 20 with two counts of kidnapping and one count of tampering with a corpse. The prosecutor in charge of the case said additional charges could be filed against her.
Child Protective Services had initially taken custody of Margot to conduct a DNA test, and were planning to apply for short term custody but dropped the application and returned her to Shane's custody earlier this week.