Orange County Blog

UPDATED THROUGHOUT!

The final piece in the puzzle explaining how swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore was brutally murdered and mutilated, as well as whether anyone helped now dead murder suspect Ryan Alexander Jenkins kill and/or dispose of the body in a Buena Park dumpster, could have been found with the discovery of the victim's missing luxury car in West Hollywood.

A Trader Joe's shopper called police Wednesday afternoon to report the white 2007 Mercedes-Benz was parked next door at the closed Union Bank at 8623 Santa Monica Blvd. Police called it a key p

iece of evidence because investigators believe the car was used to transport Fiore to Buena Park.

 

Courtesy of Buena Park Police Department

Ryan Alexander Jenkins

The international manhunt for 32-year-old Jenkins--who was suspected of strangling his former wife Fiore, stuffing her nude and mutilated body into a small suitcase and tossing the luggage into a Buena Park apartment complex dumpster--ended Aug. 23 when the reality television ontestant was found hanging from a belt looped over the closet bar in a British Columbia motel room.

Canadian mounties have not confirmed it, but national television network CBC reports that Alena Jenkins checked her older brother into the Thunderbird Motel in Hope, British Columbia, for a three-night stay--at least a day before Fiore was brutally murdered. The young woman has not been charged. When she and her brother did not check out, a motel employee entered the room and discovered the suicide scene.

Fiore, 28, who had recently moved to Los Angeles from the Las Vegas area to become a real estate agent and help start a friend's personal training business, was reported missing to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department  Aug. 15 by Jenkins, a Calgary investment banker who appeared on the reality series Megan Wants a Millionaire, which VH1 has cancelled. Jenkins was also supposed to appear on a new VH1 program called I Love Money set to air in January.

Several 

Courtesy of Buena Park Police Department

Jasmine Fiore

hours before Jenkins reported Fiore missing, a resident looking for recyclables in the dumpster behind an apartment complex in the 7400 block of Franklin Street in Buena Park discovered an unzipped, mustard-colored, blood-stained, 2-foot-wide by 3-foot-long by 2-foot-tall suitcase with a small-framed, naked woman stuffed inside. Her teeth and fingers were missing, but the county coroner was later able to identify her as Fiore thanks to the identification numbers on her breast implants.

Fiore was last seen alive the night of Aug. 14 accompaning Jenkins, who was playing poker in San Diego. He filed the missing person report the following night at the LASO's West Hollywood station. Deputies say he told them he had not seen Fiore since the previous afternoon, when she left their Los Angeles home to get her nails done.

But police now say Jenkins lied to them about the timeline of events leading up to Fiore's disappearance, which prompted the Orange County District Attorney's Office to charge him with her murder. The by-then fugitive's bail was set at $10 million and the international manhunt was launched.