Sweet But Psycho: Isabella Guzman

0:02 Discretion is advised. This is ten minuted murderer. Forty seven year old you Me Hoy was becoming more and more frightened of her teenage daughter, eighteen year old Isabella Guzman. The two of them had never had a great relationship, and they frequently argued ever since Isabella was a little girl. The arguing got so bad that when Isabella was only nine, she spent a portion of time living with her biological father in the hopes that some distance would improve the relationship with her mother. According to Isabella's stepdad, Ryan Hoy, Isabella continued to disrespect her mother throughout her teenage years. After she dropped out of high school, the relationship deteriorates, did it even further, her behavior escalated to include screaming at Yumi and even spitting at her. The assaults and threats came to a head on Wednesday, the twenty eighth of August twenty thirteen, when Yumi received a threatening email from her daughter. The email was simple, saying you will pay, but Umi was so shaken by it that she and Ryan decided to call the police and report that their daughter had threatened to harm them, as well as calling the police about the threat, Umi and Ryan called Isabella's

1:34 biological father and asked him to come and talk to his daughter. Robert Guzman had always had a much better relationship with Isabella, and Umi hoped that he might be able to calm her down. Robert was aware that Umi and Isabella always had a strained relationship. Umi worked grueling twelve hour days at her portrait studio in town, trying to support the family, but Isabella just quote, didn't appreciate anything her mother did for her. Soon after the phone conversation, Robert Guzman drove over to the house and he called Isabella into the back yard to speak to her alone. Quote. I started to talk to her about the respect that people should have for their parents, Robert said. And I was trying to let her know that she should be obedient to her parents, not rebellious, and that she should try to listen more. And everything was going fine in the conversation. I thought I made progress, but obviously it didn't do nothing, because hours later this thing happened. When the police arrived at the house, they had a stern talk with Isabella, telling her that because she was a legal adult, if she didn't behave her mother could kick her out of the house. They didn't seem to think that there was a serious threat. Instead, they viewed her as a rebellious teenager who needed to learn a lesson to you. Me and Ryan's relief, the presence of the police seemed to work. Isabella calmed down and left them all alone, spending the rest of the early evening alone in her bedroom. It was something that

3:05 she often did when she was upset, retreating to her room and listening to her iPod. Later that night, Ryan was eating his dinner in the living room of the house when Yumi went upstairs to have a shower. Shortly afterwards, Ryan was startled by a loud banging noise and Umi calling for help. He ran upstairs and he tried to enter the upstairs bathroom, but when he tried to push the door open, he saw that Isabella was inside with Umi. She pushed her back against the door to hold it shut and then locked it behind her. Ryan quickly noticed two things. The shower was still running, and there was a puddle of blood flowing from underneath the door. Ryan then ran to call the police, telling the dispatcher that his wife had been attacked, and he tried to get into the bathroom again. Shortly afterwards, Isabella opened the bathroom door and walked straight past him. She was carrying a bloody knife in one hand and looking straight ahead as if she didn't see her stepfather at all. Without saying a single word, Isabella calmly walked downstairs and left the house, wearing only a pair of shorts and a pink sportspra In the bathroom, Ryan saw Yumi lying naked on the floor, her eyes opened and pointed in the direction of the ceiling. Isabella had stabbed her mother a total of seventy nine times in the face, throat, and neck. Ryan, who was still on the phone to nine one one, explained what was

4:38 happening. The operator instructed him to clear yu Me's airway and start to perform CPR. He did his best to try to revive his wife, but her injuries were too severe she was already dead. On Thursday afternoon, the police received a call from a concerned member of the public who believed they had seen a body inside a park car. Officers traveled to that parking garage where the caller had been found the vehicle, but now there was no sign of a body anywhere. A brief search of the car uncovered items that were believed to be connected to Isabella, so a K nine team and several undercover officers were called in to thoroughly search the area. During the search, an undercover officer saw a teenage girl matching Isabella Guzman's description walking calmly out of the parking garage.

5:30 He stopped and talked to her, but before she walked out of the building and into the parking lot, the three officers strategically followed Isabella, and before she could decide how to escape, they had completely surrounded her and drawn their weapons. She was quickly placed under arrest and taken to the Aurora Police headquarters. That Friday, a judge ordered that Isabella beheld in the Arapahoe County jail without bond leading up to her trial. Short date was meant to have taken place on Thursday, but it had be postponed after Isabella simply refused to leave her jail cell. Throughout the hearing, Isabella seemed like she wasn't taking the situation seriously, making faces at the camera in the courtroom and smiling when the judge informed her that she was facing a first degree murder charge. Isabella began crying, but then she looked straight at the courtroom camera and pointed at her tears as if saying, look, I'm crying. Isabella decided to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and shortly afterwards a psychiatric evaluation led to her being diagnosed with schizophrenia and found unfit to stand trial. According to Isabella, she hadn't realized that she was stabbing her own mother. Instead, she had been experiencing delusions that she was stabbing a different woman by the name of Cecilia because she believed that she had to kill Cecilia to quote save the world.

7:01 Isabella was institutionalized at Colorado Mental Health Institute, due to be released when the time came that she was found to be no longer a threat to herself or others. She spent seven quiet years receiving treatment at the Colorado Mental Health Institute. Then in twenty twenty two things happened. Isabella declared that she was now mentally fit for release, and she became an online celebrity. The footage from her hearing in twenty thirteen had been reposted on TikTok, and bizarrely, she quickly gathered a fan base of supporters. The videos were reposted to music that romanticized Isabella's actions, including the Ava Max song Sweet but Psycho. Commenters praised Isabella's physical appearance, filmed videos of themselves imitating the facial expressions that she made in court, and even created Instagram fan pages dedicated to photos of Isabella.

8:03 Many people even suggested that you me must have done something to Isabella to result in the crime, or that Isabella's actions had been completely out of character for her, a sentiment that was partially shared by Isabella's biological father, Robert Guzman. Robert had previously told the media, quote, Isabella's a good kid. She's good hearted. But I don't know what could have happened, honestly to provoke this kind of reaction. Isabella's aunt, Melanie Guzman, also believed that there was something more to the case. She visited Isabella a month or so before the murders and thought that she appeared to be a completely normal teenage girl. Quote. Her demeanor was sweet, Melanie said, describing Isabella.

8:48 She's very coquette, and I can see her yelling, screaming, storming off and locking herself in a room, but not being violent like that. During her time at the Colorado Mental Health Instant, she claimed that her outbursts of anger were a response to the abuse that she suffered from you me. She claimed that while both of her parents were Jehovah's witnesses, she made the decision to leave the religion as a young teenager, causing her mother to treat her very poorly. But she also said that if she could change what happened that day or take it back, she would quote. I was not myself when I did that, she said in an interview with CBS four Denver, and I have since been restored to full health. I'm not mentally ill anymore.

9:33 I'm not a danger to myself or others. In mid twenty twenty one, a judge approved Isabella's request to leave the institute to go to external therapy sessions, but her request to be discharged from psychiatric care was denied. That's ten Minute Murder Today, brief and binge able true crime. My name's Joe. I'm the host, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen to ten Minute Murder Today. If you're new, make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now, and that will more easily allow you to catch up on all the back episodes of Ten Minute Murder. Also, if you've got social media, connect with me there and see the pictures of what we talk about here in the podcast. It's never gross and graphic though. Quick email from one of you that listens. Hello Joe, greetings from Wyoming.

10:31 I was wondering if you could cover this case I heard about. Then she goes in to talk about this case, which, by the way, is very interesting. Also, I wanted to ask if there is any chance of you doing another podcast of longer episodes or even interviewing people. I love the brief ones that you do so much, but sometimes I have a want to listen to longer ones and wish you did that. Also, if you read this on the podcast, please use only my initials HB. Thank you for doing ten Minute Murder. I will say her name HB. Thank you for the email, HB. And the answer is yes, I'd like to do longer episodes, even though the reason I started this podcast was for people like me who have a shorter attention span and only can take it in small doses.

11:16 Before you know, you kind of lose focus a little bit, but I also do listen to longer podcasts myself, so I'm capable of doing that, and I do like longer ones. But yeah, I've done longer episodes for ten Minute Murder also, so there's some sprinkled in back there. But I've thought about creating a new podcast where I do longer episodes and also coincidentally interviewing people as well, but there are no immediate plans to do that because it just doing this one takes a lot of time and effort, so I don't currently have that bandwidth to do that, but hopefully one day, pretty soon that I will be able to do that. That's my ultimate plan anyway, to have this, to keep this podcast, but also expand and do more and more. All right, that's going to do it. Thank you so much for listening to ten Minute Murder. Have a good night or morning or day, whatever you're doing.