The murder of Mackenzie Cowell

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In February 2010, 17-year-old Mackenzie Cowell was a senior at Wenatchee High School in Wenatchee, Washington when she disappeared on Tuesday, February 9, 2010. Reid Cowell last saw his daughter at about 7:15 am that morning when she was hurrying to get out the door for school.

Mackenzie Nicole Cowell was born on April 1, 1992 to parents Wendy & Reid Cowell, who eventually divorced & shared custody of their children. In 2010, Reid was engaged to a woman named Sandy Francis while Wendy was in a relationship with a man named Joey Fisher.

At only 17-years-old, Mackenzie was a highly ambitious young woman who was not only finishing high school, but also working toward her future, earning extra school credits at a cosmetology job training program at the Wenatchee Academy of Hair Design. She started her day at 6:15 am, leaving the house shortly after 7 to spend the first half of her day at school where she was a member of the dance team, the Appleettes. She spent the second half of her day from noon until about 5 pm at beauty school where the studio was situated in the center of the downtown area that was surrounded by the Cascade Mountains & apple orchards.

According to a friend, Mackenzie never did anything halfway; if she decided she was doing something, she did it 110%. She was the center of her family unit & exceptionally close to her father. As she left the house on the morning of Tuesday, February 9, 2010, she told her dad that she would see him at home later that evening for their dinner date of teriyaki burgers. 

Reid was surprised when his daughter wasn’t home at 5:40 pm that evening since beauty school normally finished at 5 pm, but when he called to check in, it went straight to voicemail, something that was out of the ordinary. As time continued on & Mackenzie still hadn’t come home, each message that Reid left got increasingly more concerned.

It was around this time when a rancher in remote Chelan County contacted authorities after he came across an abandoned red car that was parked near his driveway off of Pitcher Canyon Road. This area was near Mission Ridge, about 40 miles from where Mackenzie and her dad lived in Orondo. When police checked the car’s license plates, they learned it was registered to Reid Cowell. 

When Reid answered the phone two hours after he expected his daughter home, a deputy was on the other end, asking if he was missing his car. He explained that not only was he missing his car, but also his 17-year-old daughter who drove it. 

As Reid drove through the cold, darkness of night towards the location of where Mackenzie’s car was found, he recalled feeling a pit in his stomach at the sight of a police cruiser’s flashing lights parked next to his daughter’s car. 

Reid found some clothes inside as well as Mackenzie’s purse, but her cell phone, keys & debit card were missing. Since his daughter never went anywhere without her purse, the fact that it was left in the car only increased his concern. Officers noted only one pair of footprints at the scene & immediately believed that something terrible had happened to Mackenzie.

Three residents recalled seeing a thin man with dark hair & a dark coat walking away from Mackenzie’s car down Pitcher Canyon Road sometime between 4:30-5:30 pm that evening. 

Meanwhile, a student from the Academy of Hair Design indicated that at 3 pm, Mackenzie left after she asked if she would have to sign out of the studio if she was only going to be gone for fifteen minutes. Her classmate assumed that Mackenzie was likely going to get some coffee nearby, but she never came back. 

External security cameras depicted her leaving through a rear door, walking to her car in the parking lot & backing out in what would be the last images of Mackenzie alive. When she got to her car, she sent a text to her boyfriend, Joaquin Villasano, only writing a single word, Hey. This was the last anyone heard from her.

Investigators indicated that six outgoing calls were made from Mackenzie’s phone to an East Wenatchee phone number immediately after she drove away from the Academy of Hair Design all within a few minutes of each other. She didn’t connect with anyone on her attempts to the call the number & she didn’t leave any messages. Other than her text to Joaquin, there was no other activity from her cell phone after this point. When investigators spoke with the family attached to the phone number she called, they indicated that they didn’t know or have any association with Mackenzie. Authorities theorize that she may have misdialed the number, potentially as a butt-dial situation. The last outgoing activity on her phone was made at 3:26 pm.

Community members came together to help search for Mackenzie as investigators conducted ground & air searches, but there was no sign of her.

It wasn’t until four days after she vanished, when Reid got a phone call from the FBI with absolutely earth shattering news. Mackenzie’s body had been found by a passerby about fifteen feet from the banks of the Columbia River at Crescent Bar, Washington near Quincy at a resort community 40 miles from home. She was found fully clothed, but it was obvious that Mackenzie had been brutally beaten & strangled. There was blunt force trauma to her head & a deep laceration to her neck that cut her jugular vein. There was a knife embedded into her shoulder where her killer had sickeningly attempted to remove her arm. According to her autopsy, she had not been sexually assaulted & there were no drugs or alcohol in her system.

A multi-agency task force was assembled with consultation from the FBI in one of the largest investigations that Wenatchee Valley had seen. They started by questioning those closest to Mackenzie, including her parents as well as her boyfriend, Joaquin. 

When Joaquin was given a polygraph test & asked the question, Do you know who killed Mackenzie, he was told that he failed, but he was adamant that he had no idea who was responsible for killing his girlfriend. Because he had a solid alibi, Joaquin was eliminated as a suspect.

It wasn’t long before investigators learned that Mackenzie had her share of issues with her mom’s boyfriend, Joey Fisher. According to Reid, only one day before his daughter went missing, she & Joey had gotten into a huge argument when she told her mom, It’s either him or me. However, investigators weren’t able to find any evidence that he had been connected to Mackenzie’s murder & he was also eliminated as a suspect.

Two months later, a woman named Liz Reid, a former Oxycontin addict, who was now working as a police informant, told investigators that she knew who was responsible for Mackenzie’s murder. She indicated that two convicted criminals & drug dealers that she hung out with, Sam Cuevas & Emmanuel “Buddha” Cerros, had abducted & killed Mackenzie on a bluff near Crescent Bar.

According to Liz, Sam Cuevas told her, I choked that b**ch to shut her up. He went on to say that they had to choke her twice because after the first time, they realized she was still alive. She also gave detectives a description of the knife they utilized & said that the men killed her in a case of mistaken identity, believing that she was working as a police informant. Liz went on to say that they not only told her about the murder, but they showed her a snuff film of Mackenzie’s murder.

Investigators ultimately determined that Liz’s story had not been true. They had been unable to find the video she described despite months of searching & then Liz retracted her story about the video’s existence. She said she was terrified that police were going to charge her with murder despite the fact that they only saw her as a desperate informant rather than a suspect. 

Based on phone records & their attendance at work on the afternoon that Mackenzie disappeared, Sam Cuevas & Buddha Cerros were eliminated as suspects.

In August, police received a letter suggesting they look into Mackenzie’s beauty school classmate, 29-year-old Chris Wilson. When they reviewed the surveillance video from the Academy of Hair design, they noticed that both Chris & Mackenzie each left the building 72 seconds apart from one another & his whereabouts for the rest of the day were unknown. 

They also learned that Chris, who was an artist & musician, lived only three blocks away from the school. Many people told investigators that he was fascinated with serial killers & death. He previously worked in a funeral home before he was let go for unknown reasons, while some claimed that he admitted that he liked to cut people up at his job. He also sported a tattoo of Hannibal Lecter on his right arm. 

According to Chris’ mom, Kathleen Zornes, her son was neither dark nor evil, he was just different from the average person living in the small town of Wenatchee & would have fully blended in had he lived in a city like Seattle. His friend described him as an eccentric, but good person who just happened to live in a small town where everyone looks the same & she denied that he was dangerous or fascinated with death & serial killers.

The source of the letter that suggested Chris could be responsible for Mackenzie’s death was Theo Keyes, another police informant struggling with mental illness who had been a friend of Chris Wilson’s. He wrote the letter while he was serving time for exposing himself to a barista. 

When police spoke with another friend of Chris’, she indicated that while she had been at a party in his apartment, he came up behind her & began choking her; after he released her, he walked away as if nothing happened. 

In August, Chris, along with other students from the Academy of Hair & Design, had given a sample of his DNA. Although his DNA was not found in Mackenzie’s car, nor was her DNA found in his car, his DNA was found on a piece of duct tape near her body that also contained Mackenzie’s blood. Although the crime lab determined that the DNA on the duct tape could belong to Chris, it wasn’t totally conclusive. 

When investigators searched Chris’ apartment & utilized Luminol, they found a fairly large stain that they believed to be blood near the edge of his bed. However, Chris claimed that the stain had gotten there during a party, while testing proved that it was Mackenzie’s blood. 

Although they were classmates, investigators found no link to suggest that Chris & Mackenzie were friends or had ever communicated either in or outside of beauty school. Regardless, police believe that when Mackenzie left school at 3 pm, she met Chris at his apartment & was likely murdered only minutes after arriving. 

Not only was Chris’ DNA not found in Mackenzie’s car, nor was hers found in his car, but there was also the question of how Chris would have managed to get Mackenzie’s 5’8”, athletic, strong body out of his second floor apartment in broad daylight. 

A Verizon Wireless technician told investigators that most of Mackenzie’s cell phone activity likely took place from the Burke Hill Apartments where Chris lived, but the technician admitted that it was equally likely that the calls had been made from the Orondo Street Boat Launch.

When Chris sat down with investigators, he denied ever going to Crescent Bay where Mackenzie’s body was found. After he requested a lawyer, he showed absolutely no emotion as he was arrested for Mackenzie’s murder on October 6, 2010. He was held at the Chelan County Regional Justice Center with a bail set at $1 million. 

Eight months after Mackenzie’s car was found abandoned, Chris appeared in court where he made no eye contact with anyone, pleading not guilty to Mackenzie’s murder. His mom remained firm on the fact that he was innocent, indicating that during the timeframe in question, Chris was with her, picking up a plate of cupcakes, acting completely himself.

In addition to the blood stain found on Chris’ apartment floor, investigators also discovered a video that Chris’ ex-girlfriend, Tessa Shuyleman recorded as Chris was moving out of apartment 28 in June 2010. The video depicted them discussing if the apartment was clean enough for Chris to get his security deposit back while police believe they were referring to blood as Tessa zoomed in on the exact location of where the blood had been found. There were also photos of Tessa posing as a dead person on the floor in the very location. Tessa was arrested for concealing the crime, but was released without charges.

On the day of Mackenzie’s murder, Chris & Tessa texted each other several times between 3-3:33 pm & he also called her five times between 4-5:03 pm with each call lasting between 1-4 minutes. There was then more than a five hour gap in their communication with calls resuming at 10:35 & 11:09 pm. 

Detectives speculate that they may have planned a meeting during their 5 pm phone call & later met to potentially dispose of Mackenzie’s body at Crescent Bar, believing that he likely murdered her at his apartment sometime between 3:33-3:45 pm.

22-year-old Tessa made several calls to her boyfriend between 9:10 & 10:33 pm & during the first call she told him, Something bad has happened. Please pray for me. He was surprised by this request since he knew her to be anti-religion, but when he talked to her later, she said that everything was fine. However, when she came by his apartment sometime between February 9 & the 11th, he said she seemed really scared  & she was acting very weird. Although she told him that she was stopping by to get some of her belongings, she left without taking anything. 

A friend of Chris’ indicated that although he had his own car, he borrowed her car between 4 & 5:15 pm on the day that Mackenzie vanished. He wanted to keep the car longer, but she wouldn’t let him.

Chris’ high-powered attorney, John Henry Browne, who his mom hired, accused law enforcement of corruption, claiming that Mackenzie’s blood had been planted in Chris’ apartment. With this claim, he referred to something known as the Wenatchee Witch Hunt, a time during the 1990s when dozens of people were wrongfully charged with child sexual abuse.

Browne argued that had Mackenzie’s jugular vein been cut inside Chris’ apartment, there would have been blood all over, not just in one spot. Meanwhile, investigators referred to the Showtime series, Dexter, where Dexter killed a victim in a room that had been draped in plastic.

According to Chris’ mom, who also believed that her son had been framed, indicated that because was not even friends with Mackenzie, she would have had no reason to have gone to his apartment in the first place. Chris maintained that he had never once had a conversation with Mackenzie let alone killed her.

In April 2011, prosecutor Gary Reisen offered Chris a deal of a lifetime to plead guilty to manslaughter & serve only 6 ½ years in prison. Although it would be a very difficult task to convince a jury that evidence had been planted in Chris’ apartment by law enforcement, he refused the deal, saying that he wasn’t going to plead guilty to something he had nothing to do with.

Meanwhile, Liz Reid came back around & told Chris’ lawyers that she would testify under oath about Sam Cuevas & Emmanuel “Buddha” Cerros being responsible for Mackenzie’s death. She maintained that she had seen the murder on video & insisted that Mackenzie had not been killed in Chris Wilson’s apartment, rather, on a secluded bluff. She knows this for sure since Buddha Cerros demanded that she go to this location to find a ring that had been ripped from Mackenzie’s hand while she was murdered, something that she ended up finding. 

Although the ring matched a ring that was visible in a selfie that Mackenzie took, investigators say that her family didn’t recognize the ring & concluded that the ring as well as Sam Cuevas & Buddha Cerros had nothing to do with the case.

When the jury questionnaires came back, 80-85% indicated that Chris Wilson was guilty before the trial had even begun. In order to avoid an even longer sentence, in May 2012, a then 31-year-old Chris Wilson chose to take a plea deal, pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter, first-degree robbery for taking Mackenzie’s cell phone & second-degree assault for an unrelated case. 

The deal included a written statement that he kidnapped & murdered Mackenzie & in exchange, he was given 14 years & three months in prison. Regardless of his plea, he maintains that he is fully innocent & was framed by law enforcement.

Prosecutor Reisen indicated that they chose to offer the deal because there was no evidence to prove that Chris Wilson had been there when the blood was deposited in his apartment.

Less than one year later, Chris filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea, indicating that the plea was not voluntary & he misunderstood how much time he would serve in prison. In 2013, an appeals judge denied this motion. 

After serving 11 ½ years of his sentence, a 43-year-old Chris was released from Monroe Corrections Complex in December 2023 & he will remain on probation until December 10, 2026.

Despite Chris Wilson’s conviction, there are many questions that remain about what really happened on that February afternoon in 2010. Mackenzie was said to be someone who would have never gone anywhere with someone she barely knew, so how did she end up in Chris’ apartment? There is no evidence to suggest that Chris & Mackenzie had been carrying out a secret friendship. Had Chris acted alone or was his ex-girlfriend, Tessa involved? Other than fulfilling a sick fantasy, what would have been the motive?

Mackenzie Cowell never got the opportunity to see her 18th birthday, to fulfill the dreams she was working so hard to fulfill since her life was stolen long before she had a chance to truly start it. Although justice came in the form of a conviction, nothing will ever fill in the hole that is left behind in the hearts of those who so loved Mackenzie. 

References:

1. YouTube: 48 Hours: Secrets of the river
2. CBS News: Secrets of the river
3. The Wenatchee World: Wenatchee man convicted in Mackenzie Cowell case released from prison
4. The Wenatchee World: Authorities can’t explain 6 calls from Cowell’s cell
5. KXLY: Court documents reveal grisly clues in teen’s murder
6. Investigation Discovery: Man fascinated with serial killers, dead bodies convicted of killing beauty school class mate
7. Seattle Times: Hair-academy student held in slaying
8. Catt’s True Crime Corner: The murder of Mackenzie Cowell
9. Ati: Inside the grisly murder of Mackenzie Cowell at the hands of her serial killer obsessed classmate
10. Criminal: Mackenzie Cowell’s murder by a classmate obsessed with serial killers
11. Medium: The vanishing of Mackenzie Cowell: A small town mystery that shattered a community
12. KXLY: Cell phone records link suspects on day Cowell disappeared