Episode 128: Isabel Palacios – Bite-Sized Crime

When a young woman disappears, the last person to see her has multiple stories to tell. What really happened to Isabel Palacios?

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Crime scene investigators at the home of Gregory Parks *(ABC11)*

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Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a case with a lot of moving pieces, changing stories, and a convoluted timeline that investigators needed to unravel. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

In the summer of 2015, 20-year-old Isabel Calvo Palacios was living in the small town of Bailey, North Carolina, just outside the capital city of Raleigh. Isabel, who went by the nickname “Chaveli”, always had a smile on her face and was quick to laugh. Her sister told the Wilson Times that Isabel was the life of the party. “She’s very energetic, loud. It’s hard to miss her.”

Isabel had a three-year-old daughter whom she adored. She was a good mom and did her best to give her little girl the life she thought she deserved. But Isabel was also young and impulsive, and often made choices that took her to dark places. She would stay out with friends for days at a time, drinking and doing drugs while family members looked after her daughter.

On the night of July 30, 2015, Isabel drove to the neighboring town of Wilson, stopping at the house of a man named Gregory Parks. Isabel and Parks spent the night smoking crack cocaine, only leaving the house to obtain more drugs.

Throughout the night, Isabel was also exchanging text messages with her friend Ronald. Ronald Parker had known Isabel for about a year, and the pair often met up to smoke weed. Isabel told Ronald that she was at Parks’ house, so Ronald headed that direction. When he pulled up to the house around 3am, he saw Isabel’s car in the driveway. He walked through the carport and knocked on the side door, but Isabel didn’t open it for him. Through the glass, she told him that the deadbolt was locked and could only be opened with a key that she didn’t have. Alarmed that his friend was locked inside this house, Ronald asked her if she wanted him to get help. But Isabel said she was fine and told him to just come back later.

Ronald left and returned shortly after 5:30am. This time, he saw both Isabel’s and Parks’ vehicles in the driveway. He also saw two men standing outside the house. They said Parks owed them money for drugs, but Parks was refusing to pay. Ronald watched as Parks called 911 and told dispatchers that the men were trying to break into his house. When Isabel heard this, she became upset, telling Parks that she didn’t want the police to come. She had two warrants out for her arrest in Nash County and didn’t want to get caught up in whatever was about to happen. Parks told her to leave with Ronald and drive around for a while until everything calmed down.

When Isabel and Ronald finally returned to the house, Parks invited them inside and locked the deadbolt behind them. Ronald saw evidence that Isabel and Parks had been smoking crack, but that particular drug didn’t appeal to him. Instead, Ronald and Isabel went into a spare bedroom, smoked some weed, and had sex. Ronald fell asleep and woke up hours later to Isabel and Parks asking him if he had any dope. He didn’t, so he decided it was time to leave. Around 10am, Parks unlocked the deadbolt and let Ronald out.

Ronald picked up his cousin and drove around town for a few hours, smoking weed and selling it where they could. Several times they drove past Parks’ house, and Ronald noticed that Isabel’s car was still parked in the driveway. This surprised him – he knew Isabel had a daughter that she usually went home to. Finally, he decided to give her a call and see what was going on. But when the call connected at 2:45pm, Ronald heard terror in Isabel’s voice. She screamed for help, saying over and over again, “He’s hurting me.” Then, a man’s voice, telling him that she was just playing, that she was all right. The call disconnected.

Confused and high on marijuana, Ronald and his cousin drove around for a few more hours, repeatedly calling Isabel’s phone. But every call went straight to voicemail. Finally, around 6pm, they circled back to Parks’ house. Isabel’s car was still in the driveway, but when Parks answered the door, he refused to let them in, saying that Isabel had left a while ago with some “Mexican guys”. Suspicious, Ronald and his cousin walked around the back of the house. Through a broken window, they could see dark red stains smeared on the curtain.

Ronald called 911 and told the dispatcher that he was worried about Isabel. He told them about the phone call, the cries for help, and the possible blood by the broken window. Then, because they had marijuana on them and didn’t want to get arrested, Ronald and his cousin left the scene.

Soon, two officers from the Wilson Police Department arrived at the home of Gregory Parks to do a welfare check. Parks let the officers inside and told them the same thing he’d told Ronald – Isabel had left with some Mexican guys in a pickup truck. When asked why she hadn’t taken her own car instead, Parks said that the car had been running hot and she was worried that it would break down. He allowed the officers to search the house to confirm that Isabel wasn’t there. Because they didn’t have a search warrant, they could only perform a cursory search, but one officer noticed that the tub in the hallway bathroom had a bunch of bedding soaking in the water. He also noticed the broken window in the bedroom. Parks said that earlier in the day, someone had tried to break into his house, so he broke the window to escape and had cut himself on the glass.

Meanwhile, Ronald and his cousin had returned to the house, perhaps feeling guilty that they had left. When the officers came back outside, Ronald told them about the phone call with Isabel and how worried he was about her. But there was no sign of Isabel in the house, and the officers didn’t have a warrant. There wasn’t much they could do at this point.

Frustrated, Ronald drove the 20 or so miles to Bailey and talked to some of Isabel’s friends in her neighborhood. Around 10:30 that night, Ronald and several other men pulled up to Parks’ house, determined to look for Isabel. Her car was still in the driveway. The men called 911 and requested another welfare check. This time, two different officers from the Wilson PD arrived at the house. When they asked Parks why Isabel’s car was there without her, Parks said that she had lost her keys and couldn’t drive home. She had left the house on foot. Once again, officers checked the house for any sign of Isabel but didn’t find her.

By this time, Isabel’s friends had alerted her family to what was happening. Even though they were used to her disappearing for days at a time, Isabel always stayed in contact with them. They tried calling her, but they got the same results as Ronald – every call went straight to voicemail.

At first, they wondered if Isabel had just run out of minutes on her phone or had possibly let her battery die. But that had never stopped her in the past; she would have found a way to reach out. The family called local hospitals, but no one matching Isabel’s description had been admitted. Finally, after days of searching, they called the police and reported her missing.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time police were hearing about Isabel Palacios, so they knew where to start. On August 4th, an officer showed up at the home of Gregory Parks. No one answered when he knocked on the door, so the officer looked around outside while he waited. Isabel’s car sat in the driveway in the exact spot it had been for days. The officer noticed a large trash can under the carport. Thinking that Isabel was a small woman and could potentially fit inside the can, the officer lifted the lid. Inside, he saw what looked like carpet padding. He immediately closed the lid, not wanting to compromise any potential evidence, and made a note of what he had seen.

Not long after, Parks pulled up to the house. He told the officer that Isabel had been there the night of July 30th and that they had smoked crack together. He said that when Isabel had gotten ready to leave the next day, she couldn’t find her keys. He told her that she could leave her car at his house and come back to get it later. She had left on foot and he hadn’t seen her since.

The officer asked Parks to come down to the police station for questioning, and Parks agreed. He showed up on his own a few hours late and waived his rights. He sat with a detective and told the same story again: Isabel had lost her keys and left her car at his house. But the detective pointed out that this was different from what he had told the first officers who had spoken to him on July 31st; at that time he’d claimed that Isabel had left with a “Mexican guy”. Parks said that he must have misspoke; Isabel had left on her own.

The detective also asked Parks if they would find any blood in his house. Parks said no, but changed his story later in the interview, saying that there might be a little speck of blood – Isabel had stepped on a piece of glass from a broken crack pipe and cut her foot. When the detective pressed further, Parks admitted that he had tried to have sex with Isabel but couldn’t perform. She had left the house after that.

On the night of August 4th, hours after Parks’ interview had ended, Wilson police executed a search warrant at his house. Within hours, the story hit the local news – a young mother had gone missing after last being seen at the home of a convicted felon.

Gregory Kent Parks had a criminal record a mile long. The 56-year-old had been arrested over 100 times for everything from larceny and fraud to manslaughter and attempted rape. He had dozens of convictions and had been in and out of jail since 1983. In 2013, he had been convicted of participating in the prostitution of a minor, but his conviction was overturned a year later.

As investigators were searching his home, Parks was giving interviews to local news outlets. He told WRAL that he had given the police all the information he had. He and Isabel had been partying together and then she left. “We were friends. We were having a little fun.”

But when he spoke to ABC11 the same day, he downplayed their relationship. “We were not close friends, just associates. I had known her for 4-5 months on just a casual basis. I wish she would walk up right now and this would all go away. I allowed her to leave her car there and I explained that to the police.”

Inside the house, crime scene technicians processed every inch. They used luminol spray throughout the home, revealing multiple bloodstain patterns. In the back bedroom, blood on the windowsill and a small handprint swiping across the wall were illuminated. Bloody footprints and drag marks lit up, leading from the bedroom to the side door of the house. There was blood on an ashtray, in a clothes hamper, on the bathroom cabinets, and on the shower door. The carpet in the bedroom had been ripped up, but it was nowhere to be found. Instead, investigators found red carpet fibers leading down the hallway in the same path as the blood residue. And on the bookshelf, hidden behind a small statue, were Isabel’s car keys.

Outside the house, investigators opened two large trash cans. Inside, they found a large piece of carpet padding, a purple bath mat, an electric candlestick, and the base of a lamp. They also found carpet cleaner, an empty bottle of ammonia, and more red fibers inside the bin. When they processed Parks’ black Cadillac, the trunk was wet and speckled with tiny red carpet fibers.

While police gathered evidence, Isabel’s family waited anxiously for answers. They kept calling her phone, hoping that she would answer, that all of this would turn out to be one big misunderstanding. Her sister told the Wilson Times, “We want anybody that has information to come forward… We just want to find her. We are praying. That’s all we can do. We love her.”

Days passed, and the search for Isabel continued. Friends and family passed out flyers, police knocked on doors, helicopters and K-9 units searched the area. Wilson Police Captain Eric Smith told reporters that tips were pouring in and that they were utilizing all department resources to find Isabel. “Police are combing through that information and following up on each of those potential leads. We are working around the clock… We are trying every single thing.”

Detectives continued to question Parks, asking him why he had pulled up the carpet in his bedroom and where he had taken it. Parks said that it had been dirty and covered in tiny shards of glass from years of drug use. After the window broke, he got tired of cutting up his feet as he moved around the room, so he decided to get rid of it. He told detectives that he put the carpet in his trunk and drove it to the church on the corner – people often left junk there for others to grab. If no one took it, the city trash service would. When investigators went to the church, they didn’t find any red carpet fibers in the parking lot where Parks said he’d left it.

During their investigation, detectives learned that the day after Isabel disappeared, Parks had gone to a nearby pawn shop and gotten $25 for a gold ring. Two days later, he went back to the shop and pawned a set of tools that included an old saw and a pair of hole diggers. Shop employees confirmed that Parks was a regular there, and surveillance video showed him entering the store and making those transactions. Detectives claimed the ring from the pawn shop and sent it to the lab where it tested positive for blood – Isabel’s blood.

On August 19th, Gregory Parks was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping. Once he was in custody, detectives questioned Parks again. This time, Parks claimed that on the night in question, Isabel had smoked marijuana laced with PCP and had started to freak out. She had cut her hand on the broken glass from the bedroom window, and he had tried to clean up the blood. He remembered wiping specks of blood off the wall and washing his bedsheets, then passing out in a drug-fueled haze.

During the interview, Parks admitted to detectives that women often came to his house for drugs, and they would pay him with sex. If they didn’t give in, he had no problem using violence to get what he wanted. This certainly aligned with his past criminal convictions.

Detectives showed Parks pictures of the luminol lighting up his house with bloodstains. Parks said that actually, Isabel had cut both of her hands and there was probably quite a bit of blood in the house because of that. He told the detective that the human body had 8 pints of blood – had they found that much in the house? They couldn’t prove that Isabel was dead, and they certainly couldn’t prove that he had anything to do with it.

Parks was held in the Wilson County Jail on a $1 million bond. Isabel’s aunt Gloria told the Wilson Times that while the family hoped for justice, their focus was on Isabel. “Really all we want is to find her. If he’s the guilty person, then we hope he pays for his crime.”

Parks continued to maintain his innocence even from behind bars, writing letters to the police department and to local news outlets. In a letter to the Wilson Times, Parks wrote, “No one believed me before and there are probably not many that believe me now… but I’m innocent and if the law is followed, I will be just fine and the truth will set me free… Don’t believe the hype.”

In October of 2017, after two years of slowly crawling through the court system, Gregory Parks’ trial began. In opening statements, the prosecution told jurors that although Isabel Palacios had not yet been found, although there was no body in this case, the physical and circumstantial evidence would be enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Isabel had died at the hands of Gregory Parks, a convicted felon with a history of violence towards women.

The defense told the jury that Gregory Parks was innocent, that he had merely been helping out a friend by letting her leave her car at his place. “He did not harm this girl. He did not kill this girl. The last time he saw her, she was walking away.” The defense painted Isabel as a wayward young woman, possibly a gang member and sex worker, who had gotten high on crack and had run away from her life, away from the warrants that were outstanding against her. There was no proof that she was dead, and no proof that Gregory Parks had done anything to hurt her.

Isabel’s friend Ronald Parker testified to what he had experienced on July 31, 2015. He told the jury about the phone call where Isabel was crying out for help. On cross-examination, the defense asked him why he waited so long to call 911. Ronald said, “I panicked. I was high, riding around smoking weed. It just seemed surreal. I didn’t know if it was a joke.” He said his timeline may have been a little off because he was afraid of being a snitch, but his concern for Isabel outweighed his fear.

Also testifying was a woman who said she had smoked crack with Parks on August 1st, the day after Isabel disappeared. According to the woman, she had stayed in the car while Parks went into a pawn shop to get money. He had returned with $25, which they used to purchase a crack rock, then they returned to Parks’ house to smoke it. The woman recalled that there was an odd smell in the house, especially in the back bedroom. “The room stunk… It was terrible.” Parks told the woman that a girl had vomited on the carpet the night before and he had tried to clean it up. The woman testified that when she went to the bathroom, Parks made her use the one in the bedroom and not the one in the hallway like she usually did. He told her that the sink was broken and there was plumbing work going on. The next day, Parks called her to say he had been up all night removing his carpet and asked if her brother would help him replace it. The woman eventually lost contact with Parks, changing her number and getting back with an ex-boyfriend. She hadn’t talked to him since.

In addition to witness testimonies, several experts testified for the prosecution, focusing on the forensic evidence in the case.

Reports from the N.C. State Crime Laboratory showed that Isabel’s blood was found on multiple items inside and outside of Parks’ house. Her blood was found on the purple bath mat, the carpet padding, the electric candlestick, and on a shirt from Parks’ closet. Swabs taken from the closet door, the hallway bathroom, the bedroom door frame and interior lock, and the bedroom windowsill all tested positive for Isabel’s blood. They also found her blood inside a laundry hamper and on a copy of the Wilson Times newspaper. The large swipes of blood on the wall also belonged to Isabel.

Several forensic pathologists testified that the amount of blood at the scene – especially the blood found on the bath mat and carpet padding – indicated that Isabel Palacios would have needed urgent medical attention to survive that much blood loss.

Near the end of the trial, Gregory Parks took the stand in his own defense. He told the jury a combination of all his previous stories. On the night of July 30, 2015, he and Isabel had smoked crack into the wee hours of the morning. Then, Isabel had smoked a blunt laced with a hallucinogen that made her woozy. She had vomited on his carpet and on his bed, and had cut her hand on the windowsill which was lined with broken glass. He cleaned it up and both of them fell asleep. The next day, Isabel couldn’t find her car keys, so she got a ride from another man. Parks didn’t see her after that.

Parks told the jury that he didn’t notice the awful smell of the carpet until the next day when his friend came over. The carpet was old and dirty and covered with tiny shards of broken pipe stem glass from years of cocaine use. On August 2nd, after some missionaries from his church visited the house, Parks decided the carpet had to go. After all, it had been in the house since his childhood, and he had been wanting to do some renovations. Parks spent all night pulling the carpet up, then put it in his trunk and hauled it to the church on the corner for trash pickup. Then, he suddenly found himself at the center of a murder investigation that he knew nothing about.

When the prosecution confronted Parks about his changing stories, Parks said that he had just answered detectives’ questions – it wasn’t his fault if they didn’t ask the right ones. He hadn’t done anything to Isabel and had nothing to hide.

In closing arguments, the defense leaned heavily on the fact that there was no proof that Isabel Palacios was dead. “People walk away every day. He did not kill that girl and he’s not guilty of all charges.”

The prosecution reminded the jury that even though they didn’t have Isabel’s body, it was evident that she had been killed in Parks’ home. When the drugs ran out and he demanded sex, Isabel had fought back and paid with her life. “The blood in that house tells a story. It’s the amount of blood… she would have not survived. He took away her life.”

After nearly four weeks of testimony and several hours of deliberations, the jury found Gregory Parks guilty of the kidnapping and murder of Isabel Palacios. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

After the verdict was read, Isabel’s mother told reporters, “I’ve been waiting for over two years. But I always knew there would be hope, justice.”

As of this recording, Gregory Parks remains in prison; all of his appeals have been denied. In 2019, advanced DNA testing connected Parks to the 1984 rape and murder of 13-year-old Marsha Anita Whitted. That case is currently making its way through the courts.

Isabel Palacios’ remains have yet to be found. Her family hopes that one day they can bring her home and lay her to rest. If you have any information about the case, please contact the Wilson Police Department at 252-237-8300.