Grave Mysteries on ID: What happened to Amber Hess?

Amber Hess, a 17-year-old from Queen Creek, Arizona, went missing from her home in June 2007. Her parents were out on a weekend trip at the time and returned home to find blood inside their home. Her badly burned body was located in the desert a few days later, and a subsequent autopsy determined the cause of death to be multiple stab wounds.

Using phone records, authorities were able to conclude that one of Hess' close friends, Todd Hoke, along with Nicolas Castillo, was involved in the killing. The latter was eventually tricked into confessing. In 2013, they both pleaded guilty to first-degree and second-degree murder, respectively.

An upcoming episode of Grave Mysteries on ID is slated to revisit the gruesome killing of Amber Hess by her friends. The episode, titled Ultimate Betrayal, airs on Friday, March 17, 2023, at 7 pm ET.

The synopsis states:

"A couple returns home from a trip to find blood everywhere, signs of struggle and their teenage daughter missing; police stumble across her charred remains in the desert; digital clues soon lead police to a shocking secret and a deadly betrayal."

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Queen Creek teenage Amber Hess was stabbed to death in her house

Amber Hess went missing from her home in June 2007 while her parents, Mike and Candy Hess, were out on a weekend trip to Mexico. They reportedly returned on June 24 to find a bloody crime scene at their house, with their 17-year-old daughter and her car missing. The couple discovered that the front door was unlocked and that inside, the kitchen was covered in large amounts of dried-up blood.

Detectives who arrived at the crime scene found a garden hose coming out of the house, which suggested that someone had tried to clean up the place but didn't do a good job at it. Moreover, they found multiple signs of struggle inside the house: Amber's room door was torn off its hinges, and her bedding was missing. Her parents claimed that a gun was also missing from the house.

During the initial stages of the missing person's investigation, authorities learned about Amber Hess' close friend Todd Hoke, who spent a significant amount of time at her house and even joined her family for dinners. The then-16-year-old Hoke told authorities that they were supposed to go to the movies with another friend, Nick Castillo, but that Hess never showed up. Castillo was his alibi, and they were both ruled out.

Three days into investigating Amber's disappearance, a burned body was found in the desert, which was later identified as the missing 17-year-old using dental records. An autopsy confirmed that she was brutally beaten and stabbed to death before her body was set on fire. Her car was later found with blood evidence, including handprints and other DNA.

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Close friends, Todd Hoke and Nick Castillo, were involved in the killing of Amber Hess

After a few unimportant leads, detectives traced Amber Hess' phone records and found that multiple calls had been made from her phone after she was killed. The calls were made to Todd Hoke's sister, who later confirmed that he had called her from a blocked number and was also snooping around the house for cleaning supplies.

Detectives then tricked Nick Castillo into confessing by lying to him by saying that Hoke was trying to pin everything on him. Castillo told police that the latter was the mastermind behind the killing and that they first tried to strangle Hess at her home, but she tried to escape.

They then stabbed her multiple times in the chest, back, and neck in the kitchen and staged the scene to make it seem like a robbery before driving her body to the desert and burning it. Both Hoke's and Castillo's fingerprints were found in the victim's car.

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ID's Grave Mysteries will shed further light on Amber Hess' 2007 case on Friday at 7 pm ET.