Become an Apple Subscriber or Patron to listen!
On Wednesday, December 19, 2018 a 911 call was placed in Jacksonville, Florida after 16-year-old Iyana Sawyer didn’t come home from school. With the help of surveillance video, investigators soon learned that she’d missed her last two classes of the day & was last seen leaving Terry Parker High School at 11 am. The Sawyer family came to realize that the predator who was responsible for her disappearance had been under their noses all along.
Iyana Sawyer was a sophomore at Terry Parker High School where she was a fantastic straight-A student. Her family indicated that she was a happy-go-lucky, hilarious girl who always managed to make everyone crack up with her comedic ways. Iyana went to school with her sister, SS, who was one year younger. Because her sister is a minor, only her initials have been given in order to protect her privacy.
Iyana’s family told the 911 dispatcher that SS took the bus home that day, but Iyana had not, which was completely out of the ordinary for her. SS immediately called her mother, frantic with worry, unsure of where her big sister was. Iyana’s mother, Kimberly Mobley was at work so she called her two sisters & one called 911 while the other headed to Terry Parker High School.
The 911 dispatcher asked Iyana’s aunt if she believed that her niece’s disappearance could be a result of foul play & at that point, she indicated that she truly didn’t know, she only knew that this was very out of character for Iyana.
Iyana was the first born & she was exceptionally close with her mother Kimberly. She was a kind, loyal person who loved spending time with her family. She was full of life & had high hopes for her future & wanted to be a pediatrician or a lawyer because according to her mom, she was fantastic at talking her way out of anything. Iyana was a wonderful child who at the tender age of sixteen, was carrying a very heavy secret; she was five months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. She had only recently told her mom & the family was supporting the young girl who had named her unborn baby girl Hazel Michelle.
Iyana’s family soon learned that she hadn’t attended the last two periods of her day & video surveillance showed that she left the high school at approximately 11 am. It’s unclear who picked her up since this area is outside of the camera footage, but she was seen carrying two bags. One bag contained regular school items & supplies while the other bag was filled with intimate attire from Victoria’s Secret as well as a body pillow.
Based on the available evidence, police believed that Iyana voluntarily left her school since there were no obvious signs of an abduction. They theorized that she ran away because her mother had been pushing to find out who the father of Iyana’s baby was. Iyana wanted to keep the identity of the baby’s father a secret so investigators questioned if this could have caused friction between Kimberly & Iyana.
Police as well as the family began their search for Iyana around the area of where she was last seen & set up a tip line. After two days of searching without any luck, police changed her status from a runaway to a missing person. After Iyana disappeared, Kim began frantically searching through her daughter’s room in hopes of finding a clue that could lead to her whereabouts when she came across something shocking on her laptop.
Kim found a Word document in the recycle bin of the computer which made it clear that Iyana wanted to keep it a secret. In the document that was a couple of pages long, Iyana poured her heart out about a person named “Jose” & wrote about her deep love for this person despite his betrayal. However, Kim had never heard her daughter mention a man named Jose before.
Kim wondered if her daughter was using a code name for this mystery man & questioned if they had run off together. The diary entry was written in February & March of 2018 which was nearly a year before Iyana had gone missing.
Around this same time, Iyana had been in a relationship with an adult neighbor that Kim didn’t approve of when Iyana was only fifteen-years-old. The man, 20-year-old Kamar Humphrey, lived across a street from the family & had a sexual relationship with the teen. In March 2018, nine months before Iyana went missing, police obtained a DNA swab from Humphrey for a rape kit after he admitted to having sex with Iyana at least once. DNA confirmed this & Humphrey was arrested as a sexual offender.
This timeframe was outside the window of the time in which Iyana would have conceived, but investigators as well as Iyana’s family wondered if the relationship could have secretly continued & questioned if Humphrey could be the father of Iyana’s unborn child. Based on the conversations she’d had with her friends, it was clear that their relationship had spanned months which made him a strong suspect in the case of her disappearance.
When Police spoke with Humphrey, he indicated that he was out of town when Iyana disappeared & after he showed proof of this, he was quickly eliminated as a suspect. Investigators were back to the drawing board & needed to figure out who Jose was that Iyana had written about.
Investigators soon heard a new name mentioned in relation to Iyana’s disappearance & this was 38-year-old Johnathan Quiles. Because Kim knew just how close Iyana & SS were, she decided to confront SS about “Jose” & SS admitted that Jose was Uncle John. Johnathan Quiles, aka Uncle John, was an uncle through marriage & he & his wife were very involved in both Iyana’s & SS’s lives.
John was described as a charismatic & likable guy; he was a mechanic & handyman & from the outside, his life seemed to be right on track. He was married, working, had one child & another on the way. Kim was aware of the fact that her daughters were close with Uncle John, but if he was, indeed the “Jose” that Iyana had written about, clearly an extremely inappropriate relationship had begun.
Kim was determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on that led to her daughter’s disappearance & contacted police with her concerns & suspicions. When police first spoke with John, his demeanor was calm & collected while he expressed his frustration about what was being implicated in regards to Iyana’s disappearance & described the idea of his involvement as crazy.
John portrayed himself as a concerned family member who only wanted to find his missing niece. He explained that the accusations were ridiculous as both he & his wife were deeply involved in the lives of SS & Iyana. He explained that they would have them over during summer breaks & on weekends. John was firm on the fact that had he known where Iyana was, he would have grabbed her ass & brought her back home.
John’s wife Naomi backed her husband & said that they had been posting information about Iyana’s disappearance on their Facebook pages in hopes of finding their niece. Naomi was insistent that John would not be capable of what he was being accused of.
As police stood outside, speaking to John & Naomi, they were informed that they had a warrant to search their home. John remained fully cooperative & calm & encouraged them to basically do what they had to do. Police noticed his extremely welcoming demeanor during their search & he had even offered them something to eat or drink as if they were there on a friendly visit. Naomi & John told officers that when Kim found the document on Iyana’s computer about the man named Jose, they were immediately blocked from any & all communication.
Naomi & John were asked if they’d noticed any items of Iyana’s that had gone missing since her disappearance & Naomi mentioned that when Iyana left, she’d taken a lot of her Victoria’s Secret undergarments with her. John jumped in & was even more specific when he mentioned that Iyana had taken thirty-eight pairs of undergarments with her as officers could only wonder how an uncle would be aware of this fact. Officers began to sense that something was not right as they spoke with the man.
When asked about Iyana’s pregnancy, he indicated that Iyana had mentioned that she knew who the father was but she wasn’t telling anyone. John was told that he would need to come to the station for an interview in order to clear him from the case. Throughout this time, he maintained that he had nothing to do with his niece’s disappearance & denied having an inappropriate, sexual relationship with Iyana. John voluntarily provided a sample of his DNA & after the interview he was free to go, but investigators remained suspicious of him.
The police soon turned the investigation over to homicide detectives & John’s DNA was processed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. A rush was put on the submission after detectives became aware that when the sexual assault kit had been conducted in March 2018 in relation to the case involving Kamar Humphrey, in addition fo confirming Humphrey’s DNA, they had also found unknown DNA. On January 7, 2019 investigators were shell shocked when it was confirmed that the unknown DNA found on Iyana’s underwear was a match to Johnathan Quiles.
Investigators were faced with another bombshell when they received a phone call from John’s brother Joseph who indicated that he’d received a phone call from John on either December 19 or 20, 2018. He said that John had been frantic when he said, this girl might be pregnant, it might be mine & I have to get rid of the body. Joseph said that John quickly hung up & called him back later, this time he was much calmer & not at all upset when he told his brother that he had taken care of it.
Joseph said that John called him four times the day after Iyana disappeared & when Joseph asked his brother to explain what he was talking about, John elaborated that he lured Iyana to the Ace Pick-a-Part junkyard in Jacksonville where he worked in order to murder her for fear that he would lose his family if she had their baby.
John told Joseph that he & Iyana were sitting in a car together at the junkyard when he tried to strangle her, but admitted that it didn’t work out because he couldn’t stomach it so instead, he shot her in the chest. He wrapped her body in a carpet, placed her remains in a dumpster & destroyed the vehicle. When Joseph asked John how long he’d been planning the murder, he said he had been preparing for months.
As Joseph listened in horror to what his brother said, he questioned if he could possibly be telling the truth. When he heard word that Iyana was missing, he realized that it was the truth & made the decision to contact the police, haunted by what his brother had likely done.
Police learned that the Ace Pick-a-Part junkyard was an area that had no surveillance video, little employees around, was loud & would have been the perfect spot to commit a murder.
Armed with this information, investigators brought John in for a second interview. The detectives asked him about his relationship with his nieces & he said they would often take them to the beach or swim in the pool when they were over, Iyana & SS often spending the majority of summers at their house. He said he was now in the hot seat after Iyana ran away because SS was saying that he was the Jose that Iyana wrote about. He said he couldn’t imagine who Iyana ran away with & expected her to reach out to him via Snapchat, text or smoke signal. It was clear to investigators that John was trying to portray himself as the victim in this case.
When John was informed that they had discovered Iyana’s underwear contained his DNA, he responded that it was not possible. One detective maintained that DNA doesn’t lie while the other detective tried to sympathize with John saying that he is not a monster & maybe it was Iyana & SS who came onto him & things just went too far. They were playing good cop, bad cop & the female detective said that it was clear he was involved: They had both SS & Joseph confirming his involvement as well as the DNA evidence. According to John, the last time he spoke with his brother, it was Joseph who was bent out of shape & twisting information & he had no idea how Joseph had those specific details. John maintained his innocence as he was placed under arrest for sexual battery.
While John remained behind bars & awaiting trial, detective Abbott convinced two inmates at the Duval County jail to talk to John about the murder. One was fitted with a wire to record the conversation & during a nearly two hour conversation, John admitted to killing Iyana & dumping her body into a landfill. He told the inmate that he used a 9mm gun to kill the girl & because so much trash would have been dumped into the landfill by that time, he doubted that police would ever locate her body.
The wire also captured John telling the inmate that his mother worked in a morgue so he had a basic understanding of human decomposition & assumed there would be little left of Iyana for police to find. The inmates could be heard asking John why he killed the girl & he admitted that she was sixteen & pregnant & it’s possible that the baby was his. He specifically chose the junkyard as the place to commit the murder not only because it was a very loud place that would have muffled the sound of the gun, but also the fact that the security cameras are very poor quality, the image blurry & unfocused.
Investigators headed over to the auto salvage yard where John worked in order to pull the surveillance video. The footage showed John leaving the junkyard around the time Iyana went missing from school, but he insisted that he was only leaving for work purposes. He explained that it was his lunch break & he needed to pick something up near the airport for work which was over 30 minutes away from Iyana’s high school. No surveillance video showed him with Iyana on the day she vanished.
Police believe that after John picked Iyana up near her school, he drove her to an area of the junkyard that was not equipped with cameras & was off limits to the majority of employees & shot & killed Iyana at this location. They put the pieces together based on his conversation with the two inmates when he indicated that he shot his niece. He said the weapon was back at his house after he had gone to the gun range that same day. When police went to the range, they found John’s signature on the sign-in log from the day that Iyana went missing which confirmed his story. The gun was located in John’s closet & contained no blood evidence or DNA despite the fact that it was alleged that he shot Iyana at close range, possibly even in the heart.
Each & every vehicle that sat within the junkyard was inspected & there was no trace of Iyana. Police theorize that after he murdered Iyana, he placed her body in a dumpster that was soon removed which meant that physical evidence was lacking.
Detective Abbott soon learned that one day after Iyana’s presumed murder, the dumpster in question was removed by All American Garbage & taken to the Otis Road Landfill on December 20, 2018. The area was searched for three weeks which cost over $1.5 million dollars. More than 5,000 tons of garbage that was eighty feet deep was excavated & combed through but there was no sign of Iyana’s remains. They did come across some undergarments from Victoria’s Secret, but these items could not be confirmed as belonging to Iyana.
After Iyana disappeared, SS confided in her mom & told her that not only had she witnessed Uncle John abusing Iyanna, but he had also sexually abused her when she was only thirteen. SS carried this secret to maintain her close relationship with her sister & for fear of upsetting Uncle John.
John’s wife Naomi had been suspicious of John & even confronted her nieces in March 2018, nine months before Iyana disappeared, after rumors began spreading within the family that John had been carrying out an inappropriate relationship with Iyana. Naomi spoke with SS & Iyana who insisted that nothing had happened. She later indicated that if they would have told her that something was going on, she would have taken her own daughter & left John that day. Since they told her nothing had happened, she dropped the issue.
Naomi called her husband while he was behind bars to directly ask him what happened & he told her that as much as he wanted to tell her the truth, people listening will take it the wrong way. Naomi said that at this point, she stopped believing in his innocence & began praying about her wedding vows & eventually left him.
At some point in 2017 John began a sexual relationship with his teenage niece. John had broken his femur & needed assistance as he recovered as he had a young daughter at home at the time. SS & Iyana often came over to help with the young child & it was during these unsupervised visits that John started to prey on both Iyana & SS.
On July 18, 2019, about six months after Iyana’s disappearance & presumed murder, John’s case was sent to a grand jury where he was indicted for sexual battery & first-degree murder for both Iyana as well as her unborn baby.
John’s case did not go to trial for another four years & began on September 14, 2023 in Jacksonville’s Duval County Courthouse. John pleaded not guilty to all three charges against him & the death penalty was also a possibility.
Based on court testimony, Iyana became pregnant after John began a sexual relationship with her & Iyana decided to keep the child despite his ongoing insistence that she terminate the pregnancy. SS indicated that Iyana was in love with John who had been sending text messages, professing his love to his sixteen-year-old niece, I’m just so in love with you.. I’ll kill you & cry. You’re stuck with me until you die… I love you way too much to let you go.
The jury was told that after John realized that Iyana was pregnant, he went into a tailspin & was afraid that he would lose his family if Iyana had the baby. His wife Naomi was also pregnant at the time. SS was fully aware of the situation, but she was terrified about coming forward with the information, fearful of retribution from her uncle.
It’s likely that John began to plan the murder in the months before he killed his niece, likely in the weeks after he learned that she was pregnant. He convinced Iyana that they would run away together & lured her from school, asking her to meet him at the junkyard where he worked.
The defense focused on the lack of direct physical evidence that tied John to the murder. Because Iyana’s body could not be located, there was no proof that he was the father of her unborn child.
John’s now ex-wife Naomi Mobley testified & admitted that she was initially defensive when her sister accused her husband of five years of behaving inappropriately toward SS & Iyana, but when her sister showed her Snapchats between John & Iyana, she changed her mind. The jury saw the Snapchat messages from John to Iyana in the months leading up to her disappearance. They were sometimes sexually explicit & even threatening. On September 4, 2018 about three months before Iyana vanished he wrote, I’m very aggravated right now. I’m going to hit you later. On September 7, 2018, he wrote, Yeah. So I need you to be like 100% with me at all times. I’m just so in love with you. I’ll kill you & cry.
Naomi indicated that she saw a change in John’s behavior after her niece went missing & prior to that, he had been very fidgety, nervous & restless. She said that after Iyana vanished, he slept like a baby which she knows because she was very pregnant & woke up almost every hour to use the restroom. Joseph Quiles backed this fact & also noticed a change in his brother’s demeanor during the time that Iyana disappeared & said he seemed very nervous & panicked. It was Joseph who told the jury exactly what happened after Iyana left school on the afternoon of December 19, 2018. John tried to strangle his niece & instead shot her in the chest & discarded her body into a dumpster.
On December 20, one day later, Joseph wrote his brother a text which the prosecutor read in court:
I can’t talk to you right now. I have to stay firm on my decision. What you told me isn’t a joke or something. So yeah I told the police because they need to know. If you was lyin’ then you will be cleared & free, but if you wasn’t, then you won’t. I’m sorry I have to do the right thing for that girl & her family. Not the right thing for you & your selfishness. I hate to lose you, but I’d rather that girl’s family have some peace. If you’re innocent, then you don’t have anything to worry about. They won’t find her body. But if you are not, they are going to find her. And in that case, I’ve already lost my brother. I’m sorry.
Damian Hatch, the jailhouse informant also testified & said that according to John, he shot Iyana & threw her body into the dumpster which was verified by the wire recording that the jury was able to hear.
Iyana’s younger sister SS also took the stand & testified that she had witnessed inappropriate touching, kissing & sexual encounters between Iyana & Uncle John & held the secret for at least two years fearing she would ruin the relationship she had with her sister. She also testified that Iyana was in love with John, that he wanted her to terminate the pregnancy but her sister refused. John had also given Iyana pills to try to prevent the pregnancy.
Kimberly Mobley took the stand & said that one of Iyana’s close friends said that on the day she went missing, Iyana told her that she was going to stay with John for two weeks. Kimberly indicated that she only learned about Iyana’s pregnancy sixteen days before her daughter went missing
Iyana’s grandmother testified that during Thanksgiving 2018, one month before Iyana went missing, she saw John intimately hugging Iyana. She said it was a full embrace, not a hug an uncle would give his niece & when he saw her, he got startled. After, she spoke with Kimberly & advised her to keep her girls away from John.
After a six day trial, the jury deliberated for about an hour before returning with their ruling. Johnathan Quiles was found guilty of sexual battery & first-degree murder of Iyana & her unborn child. The jury was then tasked with the decision of life in prison or a death sentence & decided on life in prison without the possibility of parole. Johnathan Quiles was given three-consecutive life sentences.
Kimberly read a statement in court & spoke about what a breath of fresh air Iyana was & how the young girl wanted so much out of life. She also spoke about her unborn granddaughter Hazel & how she would never have the chance to hear her first cries in the delivery room or see her daughter become a mother.
References:
- YouTube: Prime Crime: Pregnant teen vanishes after uncle picks her up from school
- Independent: A Florida man’s teenage niece was pregnant with his child; he killed her, and now he may face execution
- News 4 Jax: Sister of Iyana Sawyer says she knew about relationship between sister, accused killer but kept it a secret
- Jacksonville Florida Times-Union: Guilty: Uncle of pregnant Jacksonville teen faces possible execution in presumed death
- News4Jax: ‘I’m so thankful justice was served’: Mother of pregnant 16-year-old gives emotional statement as judge sentences killer
