"She was living in fear," private investigator Steve Fischer said of Doris Aguilar. Family members in Honduras told Fischer that Aguilar would often speak about her stalker, and even share her fears that the man might do something drastic.
Doris Aguilar spent the past year trying to escape her stalker.
The man started stalking her at work and eventually lost his job as a result, according to Steven Fischer, a private investigator hired by her family.
Things only got worse from there, however, as the man joined Aguilar's gym. Each time she quit, he would follow her to the next gym, Fischer says.
Aguilar went missing in Arizona on July 1, and on July 7 her body was discovered alongside a man's in a rental car, according to a spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department.
Police identified the man as Juan Jose Velis Cuellar. Fischer tells Inside Edition Digital that Cuellar is the same man who had been stalking Aguilar for the past year.
Doris Aguilar's Final Days
"She was living in fear," Fischer says of Aguilar's final days.
Fischer says that family members in Honduras told him that Aguilar would speak about the stalker, and even share her fears that the man might do something drastic.
"She was constantly getting messages from this guy and they had become threatening," Fischer explains.
Aguilar found herself forced to take action yet again in May when she had to switch gyms, something that was a hassle for the fitness buff, according to Fischer.
"She is working out at EōS gym and each time she leaves the gym, he is waiting for her in the parking lot," Fischer says.
And so Aguilar decided to join Lifetime, a new fitness facility in the area.
Fischer says that just three days before Aguilar's death, a Facebook user by the name of Johnny Dallas posted a message that said: "Getting my Lifetime membership back. See you soon."
"We knew that Dallas was the stalker guy, but we didn't know his real name at that point," says Fischer, who now claims that he discovered Dallas was a fake account being used by Cuellar to mask his identity.
On July 1, police say that Aguilar went to get food at a local store. She never came home.
Fischer says that Aguilar's cellphone pinged that night and showed her signing into Facebook and a few other apps around 8 p.m.
He also says that the surveillance video he reviewed showed a car pulling up to her. That vehicle appeared to be the rental car that her body would be discovered in a week later. he says.
Doris Aguilar Investigation
On July 2, Aguilar's phone briefly showed activity in Peoria, approximately 15 miles northwest of Phoenix.
Then, there was no activity until July 7, when police discovered Aguilar's car outside a shopping center.
"The car is unlocked. Her wallet with all her credit cards and cash, her passport, her purse, it is all in there. So it is immediately clear that this cannot be a robbery," Fischer says.
That evening, police made another shocking discovery when they found two dead bodies in a car.
"I was not on that call, but they said that they weren't able to identify the bodies yet because they were in the heat so long," Fischer says, noting they were badly decomposed.
A few days later, Aguilar's family got her car back says Fischer and were surprised to find a sheet inside saying it had been searched by the homicide unit. Fischer says the family had been told that Aguilar's disappearance was only being created as a missing persons case at that time.
By that point, Fischer had been hired by Aguilar's family to help with the search effort. He also served as a liaison between the police and her family in Honduras.
He says that he wishes police had been more transparent about the investigation with the family given their limited resources, and the tragic hope they had harbored in the days after police had already found, but not identified, Aguilar's body.
"This family spent money that they did not have to in order to bring me over here when police could have said, 'Hey, we have this body,' but instead, they had no idea," Fischer says. "Not to mention that all these people were legitimately looking for her, thinking that police had found her car but her cellphone was not there, so there was still a lot of hope."
Then, on Thursday, the family learned the news that the woman in the car was Aguilar.
Fischer says that this identification came days after Cuellar's family learned about his death.
"What really upset us is that we found some of Cuellar's family members had posted online several days before, that he had died. And they were planning a memorial tournament for him, almost as if he was the victim," Fischer says.
A spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department does not dispute these claims and says that Cuellar's family learned first because he was identified first. After he was identified, the medical examiner notified his next of kin. The spokesperson also cited the extreme heat and the fact that the bodies were inside a car for five days as why there was a delay in identifying the remains of Aguilar and notifying her family that she was the woman in the rental vehicle.
Police would not elaborate on the circumstances behind the pair's deaths beyond saying that Cuellar died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound while Aguilar's death is being investigated as a homicide.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner has yet to reveal the cause or manner of death for Aguilar.
Fischer claims that Cuellar attempted to make it look as though Aguilar had killed herself by drafting a suicide note that was found in the car. He also says that evidence suggests Aguilar was not killed inside the car. Police declined to comment on these claims, citing the ongoing investigation
Cuellar is not accused by authorities of murdering Aguilar at this time and no suspect has been named in the case as the homicide investigation is ongoing.
"She was a bright. smart, young woman and this is such a tragedy for her family," Fischer says.
Aguilar is remembered as a "vibrant woman who touched the lives of everyone she met" who "was known for her dedication and passion for fitness, never missing a day at the gym," according to a GoFundMe created to help her family with funeral costs.
"She was a bright light in our lives, and her absence is deeply felt," says her family.
