Dateline: Unforgettable on Oxygen - How did LaJoya McCoy die and where was her body found?

LaJoya McCoy, a boutique owner and single mother-of-two, had been missing for about a week when her body was found inside her car parked one mile away from her Monrovia, California, apartment in June 2015. She had been stabbed multiple times and strangled to death with a rope.

Over a month after the killing, LaJoya's jealous ex-boyfriend Jose Roberto Turner was arrested after investigators linked him to the DNA evidence found at the crime scene and also underneath her fingernails. They learned that Jose had been stalking her and had even journaled about murdering her prior to the slaying.

In June 2017, Jose Roberto Turner was convicted of first-degree murder and was later sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.

Dateline: Unforgettable on Oxygen chronicles LaJoya McCoy's murder case in an all-new episode titled The Dead of Night. The official synopsis states:

"A mother of two vanishes in Monrovia, Calif.; as detectives investigate, the woman's loved ones reveal that she feared she was being stalked; for Josh Mankiewicz, cases like these are all too familiar, and that's a tragedy he just can't shake."

The episode aired on the channel this Wednesday, August 2, 2023.

---

LaJoya McCoy had been missing for a week when her body was found inside her car

According to The Cinemaholic, 31-year-old LaJoya McCoy worked as an auditor for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, owned a clothing boutique in Monterey Park, and was a single mother of two children.

LaJoya went missing sometime around mid-June 2015. No one had heard from her in days and her co-workers reported that she failed to show up at work. She was last heard from on June 9, 2015.

When a welfare check was requested, Monrovia police found signs of foul play at LaJoya's apartment located on the 800 block of West Olive Avenue. She was reported missing on June 15 and a search for the mother-of-two followed.

The following day, police found LaJoya's abandoned car on the 200 block of West Cypress Avenue about a mile away from her apartment. Inside the car, they found her body covered with a blanket.

A subsequent autopsy confirmed that she had been stabbed multiple times and then strangled to death with a rope or a cord. They believed she was murdered on June 10.

---

LaJoya McCoy's ex-boyfriend and father of her children was arrested after DNA was used to link him to the crime

More than a month after LaJoya McCoy's murder, on August 27, deputies arrested her ex-boyfriend Jose Roberto Turner, who had been named a primary suspect in the slaying. He was the father of LaJoya's two children and had been with her for nearly a decade before she broke it off with him.

LaJoya's family and friends had previously informed law enforcement that she was concerned about her safety in the days leading up to the murder. Once they started looking into Jose, they discovered that he had been stalking the victim and was jealous of other men around her.

The Cinemaholic reported about Jose's journal, in which he expressed his anger and wrote about killing her not long before the murder. Moreover, he refused to cooperate with the investigation and appeared to be guilty.

A breakthrough was made using DNA evidence collected from the crime scene and from underneath LaJoya's fingernails. These samples matched Jose's DNA, who was then arrested and charged with first-degree murder. They also found a blood-covered note in the victim's car which alleged that he had been stalking her.

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported that on June 19, 2017, Jose Roberto Turner was found guilty of the murder charge. He was later sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.

---

Learn more about the case on Oxygen's Dateline: Unforgettable.