February 17, 2025 • 53 mins
On this week’s episode of Wicked Words, we’re traveling to the Texas border town of Laredo. When four vulnerable women are murdered, police suspect that a well-respected U.S. Border Patrol agent has turned into a serial killer. Author Rick Jervis tells me the story behind his book, The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So now they got two women, both shot in the
back of the head with forty caliber bullets, and they
realize that now they have a serial color on their hands.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm also the co.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and
throughout my career, research for my many audio and book
projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words,
I sit down with the people I've met along the way,
amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and
reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the
(00:56):
choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a
deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. On
this week's episode of Wicked Words, we're traveling to the
Texas border town of Laredo, when four vulnerable women are murdered.
Police suspected that a well respected US Border Patrol agent
(01:17):
has turned into a serial killer. Author Rick Jervis tells
me the story behind his book The Devil Behind the Badge,
The Horrifying twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer.
Where does it make sense for you to start the story.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, it takes place right in Laredo, so we could
start there. And also San Bernando Avenue is a major
character like in the book also, so we could talk
about that as well and give a backdrop.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I mean, normally I say, what was Laredo like in
blah blah blah, But you know, whatever the year is,
but this is so recent. What is Laredo like now?
Unless things have dramatically changed since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Laredo's a really interesting place. You know, it's right on
the order. It has a lot of history. It was
founded in seventeen fifty five, first by Spain and then
later became part of Mexico, became part of the US
in eighteen forty eight, and it always had the sort
of reputation of being this kind of rough and tumble
outpost right because it was right on the border. So
it drew a lot of like bundidos and outlaws trying
(02:20):
to sort of run away from the actual law. It
had a lot of Apache Indian attacks early in the day.
And it's probably most known as as a sort of
backdrop of select Larry mcmultrie novels, you know, like Streets
of Laredo and so like Lunesome Dove, but more sort
of contemporarily. Today, it's a sort of bustling border city.
(02:43):
You know, it's home to about two hundred and sixty
thousand people. There's something like fifteen thousand trucks crisscrossing. It's
like port of entry every day. It's a major overland port, right.
It basically ferries some three hundred billion dollars worth of
gives every year, about half of all US Mexico trade
(03:03):
goes through Laredo. But it's also you know, it also
obviously draws drug cartels and human and drug smuggling, and
some of that product you know, unfortunately leaks out into
the streets of Laredo. Laredo has been kind of struggling
with a drug problem there for generations. You know, black
tar heroin basically made it appearance in the nineteen seventies
(03:25):
and it's like still a problem today. But it's also
a very safe town, you know, because you've got like
border patrol there, you got DEA operating there, you got
Homeland security investigators, so you got all of these sort
of law enforcement agents operating there, and like the cartels,
no better than to like set up shop and do
anything done there, So they tend to bypass with Laredo.
(03:47):
So it's it's like a relatively safe city, you know,
home to about. It basically has something like ten to
twelve homicides a year, so the murder rate is is
like relatively low compared to other Texas cities or even
across the US.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Who is the person do you think that is attracted
to being a border patrol agent? Why not be a
police officer in Laredo or work for DEA? Is there
kind of a type of person who would feel passionate
about this type of job.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Border patrol is kind of a coveted position there along
the border. First of all, like pays well, it pays,
it pays better, significantly better, like in some cases than
sheriff's deputies or local police, and so people along the border.
I've actually met people who are from Laredo who are
actually Border patrol agents who said that they basically came
(04:34):
up the ranks. Maybe they were like a police officer
for a couple of years, but their goal was always
to be border patrol agent. Because they have this long
history there. They're the ones who own like the really
nice houses down in Laredo, and so it draws a
lot of people who are interested in like law enforcement,
but are interested in kind of stepping up to the
(04:55):
sort of next level financially. It also draws a lot
of former like sort of military people, right, because there's
a lot of it's a lot of parallels there, right,
because you're basically asked to go out and sort of
patrol in these kind of remote areas. You're armed, there's
a sense of camaraderie with some of the other agents.
(05:16):
So more and more throughout the years, really, but recently,
you know, you're getting a lot of people coming from
conflicts in like Afghanistan and like Iraq who come back
to Stateside and are interested in border patrols.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Now, I know you said eight to twelve murders a year,
which seems very low for a city that size.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, tell me how active the sex work trade is
in Laredo in twenty eighteen, since that's sort of the
community we're focusing on, as well as the folks who
work at border patrol.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, the sex worker community is pretty active there and
it has been for for like a long time. So
like Laredo has its history of sex workers working there.
I found articles dating back to like the early nineteen
hundreds where kind of turned the century, prostitutes were working
in these in these like sort of bordellos along some
(06:11):
Bonanando Avenue. Since it's always drawn these these these type
of crowds of like rum runners and fugitive and lawmen
and so like bonitos bordellos brought it up to service
a lot of these folks. In twenty eighteen, it was
like pretty vibrant. You know, There's there's quite a number
of sex workers working along there, and they tend to
(06:33):
congregate along this one stretch called some Betanando Avenue, and
some Benando Avenue obviously plays like a really big role
in my book. It's it's where all these four victims
lived and worked and where a lot of the sex
workers congregate. But the sex workers that work in Laredo,
as far as I could tell, almost to a tea,
almost every single one that I met down there were
(06:56):
doing it because they also had these really sort of
like debilitating sub since abuse disorders. All of them were
struggling with drug addictions. Again mostly black tar heroin, but
also cracked cocaine and like a number of other different drugs.
But it was very vibrant down there. In twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
When I started learning about the Long Island serial case
Gilgo Beach case, I had not known that with some
escorts they will have drivers go with them for safety.
Is there any sort of safety with the women we're
talking about in this story or is this they're on
the street on San Fernando Avenue and people are stopping
(07:40):
and picking them up. Is there any level of safety
at all with them?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
No? That's like a really interesting part that I learned
about the sex trade there in downtown Laredo, especially around
Sambernando Avenue, is that they don't they don't really have
pimps per se, there is no sort of protection. For
the most part, sex workers, along asime bet now theo
are generally on their own. I did actually meet a
(08:06):
couple of folks. It was like a couple of guys
who I would describe more as kind of like hangers on,
just folks who who like to sort of orbit around
the sex trade down there, And they were looked at
as kind of like big brothers and like friends to
some of these sex workers. They basically helped them out
(08:27):
with scheduling or sort of connecting with different clients, and
they would do it for you know, just a party
with them, or to get a little bit of the
heroin from them. Later they call it chiva, so they
would do it just for like a hit or two
of like chiba later. For the most part, there's a
real lack of actual protection for any of these sex workers.
(08:49):
They're not generally escorted anywhere, and they're usually on their own.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, tell me now where we go. Do we talk
about the victims in a chronological order, or do we
talk about the we haven't named him yet, or do
you want to just sort of unfold it a little
bit like a mystery. It's kind of up to you
what your comfort level is.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Let's talk about the victims. I think that's actually a
good place.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Okay, So victim number one, let's talk about what you
know about her and then the circumstances that have her
meeting Juan David Ortiz, who is the offender in this case.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Melissa Ramidez was the first victim. She was twenty nine
years old when she was killed, so she's one of
the younger victims. I got to know her family first.
Christina Benavidez, so like Melissa's mom, and she lives in
a in a place called Rio Bravo, and that's sort
of a suburb of like downtown Laredo. It's just a
(09:42):
couple of miles outside. It's known as a colonia, which
is sort of really kind of like kind of poor
suburb of Laredo. And I went out there early on
and got to meet Christina, and she she really opened
up to me and told me about about like Melissa
growing up. She was one of four children and Christina
(10:04):
Benavidez was basically raising them like her own. And when
I interviewed her, it was about a week after Melissa
was found dead, and I was talking to like Christina,
she had these dark classes on and she would look
down and she told me these stories and like we
had to stop kind of repeatedly because she kept crying.
She told me about sort of Melissa growing up. She
(10:25):
was fiercely sort of protective of her younger brother Sasad,
and they were they basically went they went sort of
everywhere together. And then somewhere around middle school is when
she when sort of Melissa starts to stray, and she
starts staying out longer. She's hanging out with friends. Sometimes
overnight she begins popping pills, mostly his annex, which she takes,
(10:50):
which which she finds from other people, and like develops
this addiction to crack cocaine, and shortly after that basically
drops out of high school and starts doing sex work
to sort of support her habit. One thing Christina didn't
tell me because she either didn't know or was in
like denial over it, but that I was told by
(11:11):
several other people, including Melissa's sister in law, Gracie, who
was very close to her, that when she was around
middle school age, Melissa was sexually assaulted by an older
family member, and Gracie kind of points to that period
when everything starts to really fall apart for her. So
(11:32):
she's she's having trouble at school. Christina's called in one
day because she goes to the school and the school
counsil tells her that that so Melissa has been slicing
her arms, so she's hurting herself. Also, they take it
to a therapist and she's diagnosed with by polarism and
sort of prescribes pills. I think it was prozac at
(11:54):
that point, and like Christina comes home and like she
she actually told me later she was like really surprised
because she had no that Melissa was struggling with taking
pills and taking medication. And so they take it to
a doctor and she actually prescribes more more pills, and
she she kind of felt distinctively that that wasn't like
the right route for her, but she hopes that the
(12:15):
actual pills could get her better. Well, Melissa just gets
worse and worse, ends up dropping out of school and
joining other sex workers along alongside Better Nando, and just
lives from like hotel room to hotel room out there.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So how do we know that Melissa goes missing and
is in trouble as who finds out first the women
that she works alongside, or is it a family member
who reports her missing or what happens just a.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Couple of days before she's she's actually found dead. Christina Benavidez,
Melissa's mom, gets in the car with Melissa's two young children,
who Christina has has actual custody of, and drives along
time Better Now they're looking for her, like she's actually
looking for her. She really wants to go to the
movies with her. I think it was Labor Day. She's
(13:01):
actually driving around trying to find like sort of Melissa
to have this day at the movies with Melissa's children.
Drives around and cannot find her and this and so
and so she like starts to worry. Christina told me
she was always worrying, Like she was constantly worrying because
Melissa would would go missing and just be out of
pocket for days, sometimes weeks, and so it basically was
(13:23):
always troubling to her when she would just go kind
of like radio silence. So this was another instance of
so like Melissa not being found. And so one of
the people she was living with at the time, Emily
but Ela, who Melissa was was sort of roommates with
at the time, had a big fight with her like
(13:43):
the night before, doesn't doesn't actually hear from her the
following day or the following day after that, and so
she starts to get worried. Melissa's body is actually found
in this in this rural stretch of Webb County, like
northwest of Laredo's by a passerby who calls it in.
Calls in the actual Webb County sheriff's office who actually
(14:05):
goes out there and starts the investigation. And that's what
Melissa's bodies found. She had been shot several times at
like close range behind the head. But that's all they got, Like,
all they have is sort of Melissa's body and a
couple of forty caliber casings nearby.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Did they do a rape kit and all of that,
Were there signs of a sexual assault?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
There was not. That's something which the sort of medical
examiner looked at closely and basically determined that there wasn't
any of that. And so they were just going on
the sort of premise that she was taken out there
and shot twice in the head. The thing about Melissa too,
she was also known as kind of a hot head,
like she had hot temper where she basically displayed sometimes
(14:50):
two friends like she was known to get into fistfights
with friends over the smallest things, sometimes with just people
on the street and other times with clients also. So
the initial assumption, at least among some of her friends
and fellow sex workers was that she she basically had
a falling out with a client. They got into a
(15:11):
verbal spat and things went sideways, and that's why she
was shot and killed. So that was a sort of
wide spread assumption among some of her friends. But the
sheriff's office launches a investigation into it, and as is
protocol sometimes down there, with high profile cases or even
most sort of murder cases, the web County Sheriff's office
(15:34):
will call in somebody from the Texas Rangers to basically
assist them. And the Texas Rangers they have more resources,
they have more money, and they tend to be especially
trained for things like murder and cartail violence. So the
lead investigator to the Webbs County Sheriff's office, this person
by the name of Captain, got their own, got their own,
(15:55):
calls in EJ. Salinas, who is the main Texas Ranger
for that region, and together cut it on and Selena's
launched this this sort of investigation into who this person
is and why she was killed.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
So they're taking it seriously, which surprises me considering, you know,
we're talking awful lot about police officers not being particularly
interested in the murders of sex workers, but it sounds
like that wasn't the case here, So that's good. They're
taking the case seriously, and of course no one's picked
up on this yet that this will become the work
of a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I was sort of interested in that too, Like I
I was interested in how serious they actually took it
early on, and from everything that I found, like they
did take it, you know, extremely serious as soon as
it happened. There aren't a ton of murders in Laredo,
so this one would seems so so brutal, you know,
the sort of close range shots like in the head
(16:50):
kind of execution style, really like prompting them to take
it serious right away. And so they actually launched this
pretty intense of investigation into it right away. Obviously, like
they don't know that this is the work of a
serial killer who is planning on killing again, but they
like take it as serious as possible. They branch out
(17:12):
through the Samberternando corridor talking to folks. They basically find
out soon after who this person is. They're able to
actually identify her through fingerprints and other methods, and they
like learn early on that she's a sex worker working
along some better Nando avenue. They basically begin to spread
out throughout this corridor, talking to other sex workers, talking
(17:35):
to people who may have known her, people who have
seen them who have seen her last, trying to figure
out what exactly happened to her.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And I think he's say in the book that they
end up reaching out eventually to the next three victims
because they're all sex workers.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah? Early on, Clauding loydra is one of the top
people which they're interested in talking to. Clauding Loida was
really close with so like Melissa, they were known to
sort of hang out in the same sort of motels
along Samberanando Avenue. They were known to even share clients
now and then Claudine Lola was older. She's she's forty two,
(18:13):
so she's kind of looked at as a sort of older,
wiser sex worker out there. Melissa is kind of the younger,
like hot headed worker, and so Claudine kind of like
takes her under her her wing, and they were they
were actually pretty tight. So investigative zero in and like
Claudie Louila right away.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So they talked to Claudine.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
What does she say that you know, does she give
any insight on clients or any theories about what happened?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So they don't talk to actual Claudine. She's on their
their list of like people of interest, and they're actively
looking for her. They're they're they're like trying to locate her.
So you can imagine it's not the easiest thing to
like sort of locate somebody in this world because lots
of time, like they may not even have a smell phone.
They're very transient. They're bouncing around from my people's couch
(19:04):
to hotel rooms to somewhere else, and so they're like
actively trying to look at her. Claudine is one of
like four or five names that Captain Cardan has on
his list of people of interest, and they're actively trying
to find Claudine when Claudine also ends up as a victim.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Similar circumstances, gunshot, similar location.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Claudine Leuta's body is actually found just a couple of
miles from where Melissa's Body's found, also this sort of
rural stretch of northwest Webb County. Similarly, she's found like
on the side of the highway with a gunshot wound
to the back of the head. But what was different
about Claudine is that she was still alive somehow kind
(19:50):
of miraculously. So she was shot once in the back
of the head and she managed to crawl and drag
herself to the shoulder of the actual highway where she
could be better found, and sure enough, the truck driver
passes by, sees her stops and she's actually still alive,
like she's incoherent, like she's asking for water, saying she's
(20:13):
like really thirsty, and she's mumbling stuff. The truck driver
calls nine one one, and this ambulance comes out as
well as deputies come out, and then ambulance comes up,
scoops her on and raises her to the actual nearest hospital,
and she's still alive all the way to the hospital.
I actually interviewed the paramedic who took her, and she
said Clouding was actually being kind of combative, which is
(20:36):
which is somewhat natural, he said, for like these types
of victims, he sees it a lot, like they're really
confused and disoriented. And she was swinging in her arms
to the point that they had to like hold her
down and basically strap her down. And he's telling her,
you know, just to take it easy, that somebody's going
to take care of her, and they're still operating, like
under the assumption he assumed that she got hit by
(20:58):
a car and left them like he didn't know that
this was a gunshot until they take her to the hospital.
They wheel her into the hospital and the doctor comes
out maybe twenty thirty minutes later saying that Claudine passed away,
that she actually died, and that it wasn't a auto accident.
That they found a bullets lug in the back of
(21:20):
her head. So now this information is basically relayed to
Captain Goddown and E. J. Salinas, the Texas ranger, who
are at the scene looking at the crime scene, and
they noticed that there's a couple of casings there also
forty caliber, just just like the first incident. And so
now they got two women, both of them sex workers,
(21:43):
both of them shot in the back of the head
with forty caliber bullets. And they realized that now they
have a serial killer on their hands.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
And not just two sex workers. Two sex workers who
were intimate friends. I mean, they knew each other very well.
I don't know how big the industry is in Laredo
at the time, but you know, these are friends who
knew each other really well, and I'm sure they took
that into consideration absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And it's not only that, like they knew each other well,
but that that, like investigators were actively trying to find Claudine,
they also found that very very interesting that that this
is somebody that they were trying to find to interview
about about sort of Melissa's death, and now she also
ends up dead.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
When Claudine is waving her arms and you know, being
combative in the ambulance, is she saying anything that can
be at all useful to the Texas Rangers or the sheriff.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So that's what the Sheriff's office asked this paramedic later
ray He basically could understand what she was saying. She
was muttering something, but it didn't make any sense to him.
So nothing came out of what she said in those
in like those final moments. Unfortunately, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I was thinking when you were talking about the scene,
and you know, she's dragging herself to the shoulder and
trying to get attention, and she's bleeding and exhausted and thirsty,
and I was thinking, September, I mean, in Texas is awful.
It's sometimes the hottest, it can be hotter than August.
It must have been just her will to live must
have been incredible to be able to do that in
(23:20):
the desert.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I mean, gosh, how horrific for.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Her, especially on the border. You know, the border gets
really hot. It's like a solid ten fifteen degrees hotter
than what you feel in Austin or Dallas or Houston.
And so yeah, it was like really hot at the time,
and her will to live and how she fought it
all the way to the end was just remarkable. You know,
she gets shot in the back of the head and
(23:46):
just manages to kind of hang around until somebody picks
her up. The actual paramedic thought she actually had a
chance because he basically stopped the bleeding and brought it
to the hospital, but unfortunately she just expired soon after that.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Do they find that both Melissa and Claudeen have heroin
or some sort of drug in their system at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, the medical examiner finds out out later Melissa had
crack cocaine in her system and Claudine had had pretty
large amounts of opiate's mostly heroin in her system. Claudine
had a very sort of debilitating heroin addiction. It really
really was really strong with her and kept her on
(24:28):
the streets for like a long time.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Are their friends in industry. Are they able to say
who they thought they were last with? They have clients?
I mean, how did they even begin investigating who the
last person was with these two women?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
They had some fairly good leads. Melissa, like I said earlier,
was with Emily Varella last. And she's also pretty interesting.
She's a transgender woman who lived and worked on San Bernardo.
She was friends with like so like Melissa for you years,
for like a long time. They met in high school
(25:03):
and like stayed friends over the years. Emily and Melissa
were sharing a room at the Pan American Courts Motel
right on San Bernando, and so and so sheriff's deputies
and captain got that own quickly roll up to like
Emily and question her and like interview her. Emily tells
them everything she knew, which is that they were there
(25:26):
like the night before. She was kind of upset with
with sort of like Melissa because she she wasn't like
sort of earning her keep and she was really messy.
Emily was on sort of probation because she had been
arrested earlier, and I kind of needed to stay clean
and sort of Melissa was violating a lot of that
she was smoking crack in the actual room and stuff
(25:47):
that could really get sort of Emily like in trouble.
And so Emily was kind of upset with her and
had give her like a ton lashing like the night
before and felt obviously really bad about that later, but
that's all she knew that like the last time she
had seen her was when Melissa walked out of their
sort of motel room at like around like midnight the
(26:09):
day before she was found. Nobody had actually seen her
after that. And Claudine also had a couple of people
which investigators thought were really close to her, including like
an ex boyfriend of hers called Chong Cho N And
Chong was this person of interests early on. There's this
really interesting scene in my book where sheriff's deputies go
(26:32):
to Cholnes's house like to try to talk to him
about about some like Claudine's murder. Chong has a long
rap sheet he's been he's been in out of jail. Also,
he also has a very sort of debilitating substance abuse disorder.
There's a swarm of deputies waiting for him at like
Chones Choln's house, and Joan rows up in his car.
(26:54):
He has a Cadillac. He rows up, he sees all
of these deputies swarming outside of his house, panics, guns it,
and like speeds off basically, and so like all the
deputies hop in their car and speed off after him.
John manages to sort of elude them, like he just
he goes through a bunch of downtown streets and like
gets away, but then calls calls like a contact that
(27:16):
he has, like at the Laredo Police and saying, Hey,
why are all these cops at my house? Like he
has no idea, what's what's actually going on? I think
he had heard at that point that Ladine was like killed,
but he had but he had nothing to do with him.
So he panics and like takes off. He ends up
coming in and having an interview with Captain Gaddon and EJ.
Sealinas and they like go over everything, which he knows
(27:39):
he had seen her, I think a couple of days before,
but not the day before, and says he has like
he has no idea who may have killed him. Police
kind of check out his story. He's not completely crossed
off the list, but they also feel kind of strongly
that that like it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Him, tell me about the third victim, because now we
have to Texas Rangers in the Sheriff's department saying it
sounds like we've got the same person murdering these two
different women. Is Gizelda friends with both Claudine and Melissa.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
She is, she said, this nickname is like Chilli, and
she is also part of this sex worker sort of community.
They've been friends for like a long time. He said.
That is thirty five at the time, so she had
been out there for almost two decades. Also has an
extremely hardcore heroin addiction, which she operates in the sex
(28:31):
trade just to just to sort of feed that. And
she had a really rough sort of upbringing, you know.
Chlly is from a really kind of rough and tumble
part of Laredo. She was two years old when her
mother is murdered by like an ex boyfriend. The mother
was like a single mother raising her and her older brother, Joey,
(28:52):
And so Joey and Kelly go to live with a
grandmother and that's the one who basically raises them. But
they're it's still out to oversight and they're basically on
the streets a lot, and so they kind of succumb
to some of the vices of the actual street. Joey
joins a gang, ends up getting into trouble and goes
(29:12):
away to prison for twenty two years. Chilly gets into
drug habits and basically develops a really bad heroin addiction
and that's what gets her on the streets.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Also, how long after they discover Claudeine do they then
discover Chilly.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
So it's about a day and a half. But something
really pivotal happens in between that, And that's the case
of Ericapana and Erica Penna is also a sex worker.
She's also on the streets, and she's kind of a
repeat client, but she's the one who actually escapes and
alerts alerts police that she may know the actual identity
(29:51):
of this serial killer.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
This happens after Claudeine, but before Chilly.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Is it right?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That is correct? Yep?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he is he aware that this could turn on
him pretty quickly, and yet he then still decides to
pursue another victim.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, it's this really interesting thing like he up until
this point it was more or less calculated, like he
would target his victim, drive him off so really sort
of remote places, and then go back to work as
if nothing was happening right, and he was leading this
double life. Once Erica Panna basically escaped from him and
(30:28):
starts to alert police about this is the person who
probably killed some of my friends and he's aware of
that he or he basically assumes that. Once he assumes that,
like the actual police are after him, it kind of
becomes this almost like suicidal spasm of violence towards the end,
and his whole goal is just to pick up as
(30:50):
many sex workers as possible, shoot him, kill him before
police actually catch up with him.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Well, I guess we need to talk about him.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
So who does Erica and encounter the night where she
clearly saves her own life and escapes set up that
scenario because now we have somebody who can actually explain
what happens to these women.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
So his name is Juan David Ortiz, thirty five, like
at the time of the murders, he's a ten year
veteran of the US Vota Patrol. He's married with three
young young kids, and he's from Texas. You know, I
grew up like in Brownsville, Texas, raised by a single mom.
And for those who aren't really familiar with Brownsville, that's
(31:32):
the southern like it's literally like the southern most point
of Texas that's right on the border across the river
from Mantalmodos, Texas. David Ortiz grows up in Brownsville with
a single mom. He has three other sisters, all of
them younger, so he's the older. He's raised liked about
evangelical Pentecostal Christian, so he's very sort of religion focused.
(31:53):
Even in sort of high school, he basically leads like
the Bible study group. He's constantly leading Bible study is
like at home, he's on the swim team, and by
all accounts, he's a really focused, like kind of ambitious
student who knows who knows like what he wants to
do once he graduates, and that is to join the
(32:14):
actual military, which he does as soon as he actually graduates.
Just a couple of months after graduating. He basically joins
the Navy in two thousand and one. He's eighteen years old,
and this is two months before like the terrorist attacks
for like ninety eleven. So he's a Navy corman, which
is like a medic, and he's attached to like a
(32:35):
marine unit that is deployed out to Iraq. During Operation
Iraqi Freedom, and he's a Corman, so he is it's
basically like on the front lines, helping helping people who
get injured and get and get hurt out there. And
his unit starts in Basra to the south and goes
(32:55):
all the way up Iraq and ends up in Baghdad,
and they spent some time in Baghdad. I talked to
a couple of his sort of military buddies out there
who all say, you know, sort of comparatively like they
didn't see all that much action as some of the
other marine units out there, but they did see their
fair share of like really gruesome stuff, especially around Baghdad
(33:18):
and Baghdad things got We're just really chaotic and a
lot of bodies, a lot of dead people around, and
they sort of participate in like a lot of that.
He comes back to the US and he has really
high sort of accolades from his time in the military,
and in two thousand and nine joins Border Patrol again.
(33:40):
You know, this is a really coveted position. He has
an offer to join the San Antonio Police Department or
the Sheriff's office there, and he turns them down to
join Border Patrol, which is seen as a much more
coveted position, better pay, and he joined in two thousand
and nine. He's based first in Katy, which is halfway
(34:01):
between San Antonio and like downtown Laredo, and then later
is transferred to Laredo. In twenty seventeen. One of the
things which's up which he does like in Laredo, is
that he's basically assigned to join this unit called the
Targeted Enforcement Unit. And this is sort of like highly trained,
specialized unit that does things like raids stash houses and
(34:24):
goes out and like goes after cartel operatives. And this
is an important time for him because as part of
the Targeted Enforcement Unit, he is focusing and trying to
break up a lot of this sort of this sort
of like listed activity happening around the San Bernando Corridor.
So it's his introduction to this corridor and all the
(34:46):
different activities happening there. So he kind of repeatedly raids
some of the drug houses, he starts to know who,
like who the sex workers are working on there, and
so in twenty eighteen, like at the beginning of twenty
eight team, he's basically promoted to supervisory agent and is
assigned to the Joint Intel Center, which I mentioned earlier,
(35:07):
which is a center right there at the Vorder Patrol
headquarters in central Laredo where Vorder Patrol shares information with
the Sheriff's office and the DEA and DPS troopers and
they're all sharing information going after some of the biggest,
most sensitive cases there along the border.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
No red flax from Ortis at all, No disciplinary action
nowhere anywhere, not even a speeding ticket with this guy.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Nothing, And that's something that I really dug into trying
to figure out and trying to find out. Unfortunately, Customers
and Vorder Protection, which is the agency that oversees Vorder Patrol,
they weren't really cooperative with me and basically declined to
give any interviews for this book, much less share any
records or anything about RTS. I did actually manage to
(35:55):
get some of his personnel records through other sources. Everything
in his record was pretty scotch cleaning. There was nothing
like there were no former red flags. The only thing
in he had a minor incident back in Cotula with
one of the migrants, which he picked up that the
migrant claimed that David Ortiz took a cigarette away from him,
(36:16):
and that was the only only thing that I came
up in his whole file.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
What does eric Opinia say happened with Juan David Ortiz?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
How did they even meet?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So eric Openna is working along San Bernando Avenue, just
just like some of these other women, and she meets
him just the same way that he meets others. So
starting around twenty eighteen, early twenty eighteen one, David Ortiz
starts to start the cruise down outside Banado, and this
time he's like not working, he's he's actively engaging with
(36:48):
some of these sex workers and actually picking them up.
Eric Opena meets him right around then, early early twenty eighteen.
David Ortiz picks her up and they like drive off
and they kind of hit it off, like he first
of all. Erica Panna says later that he's kind of
an ideal client, that he has money, he pays cash
on time, he pays up right away, and she actually
(37:11):
knows early on that he's involved with border patrol. He
doesn't make a secret out of it, and that's an
ideal client because she knows that he doesn't want to
get caught with this that like it could be embarrassing
so he's like discreet, he has money, and he becomes
like a reliable client for her. So he picks her
up repeatedly half a dozen times or so over the
(37:33):
course of twenty eighteen, including taking her back to his
house on different occasions. His wife, His wife, Daniella, has
family both in San Antonio and don in Brownsville, and
she would take the kids like visit family, and Juan
David Ortiz will like take advantage of those times and
(37:54):
take Erica, Panna and other women back to his empty house.
So they really get to know each other. They create
this sort of rapport between each other. And so she
gets picked up on that day, September fourteenth, twenty eighteen,
after he has killed like sort of Melissa, after he's
killed Claudine, and he picks up eric Opania as just
(38:15):
another night in the town.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So what does she say changed, what made this night
different than the nights she was already used to spending
with Ortiz.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, so she says later that she gets in the
car and starts talking about the same topic that everybody
alongside Bernado is talking about at that point, which is
the actual murders of Claudine and Melissa and she like
brings that up, and he kind of plays it off like, oh, yeah,
you know, I think I heard about that, but I'm
not like really following it, and they talk about it.
(38:49):
It kind of comes up and goes. She does what
she usually does, which is like shoots up heroin, and
then he takes her back to his house. His wife
again is visiting family up in San Antonio, so so
like the house is empty, so he takes her back
to his house and then Erica claims that as they're
(39:11):
sitting down like in their living room, something comes over
him and that she noticeably sees something change in his
face and his and in his sort of demeanor, and
he starts telling her that he's really worried that the
police might think that he has something to do with
Melissa's death because he had been with her a couple
of days before she was found, and that they might
(39:33):
find his his sort of DNA on her. But that's
something drastically changes, like in his sort of demeanor, that
his mood just kind of darkens to the point that
she gets this this sort of revelation that's that something
is like really wrong and she and she kind of
excuses herself and runs out of the house, goes to
(39:54):
the front yard and throws up like on the sidewalk,
like she's so overwhelmed with his dark of him that
it just kind of like it just sort of possesses her.
So he actually drives her off and says, well, let's
just let's just get you something to eat. Maybe he
just needs something to eat. And at this point, through
her mind she's she's actually thinking, maybe this is the
(40:16):
guy who, like, who has actually killed my friends. And
again it's nothing which which he's actually sort of like
admitted to at this point. It's just it's just a
feeling she has. So he basically drives her to this
gas station nearby, and he drives around back and pulls
in the back, and it's a it's kind of it's
kind of a darkened lot in the back, and he's
(40:37):
reaching down and he's and and she's asking him, what
are you reaching for? And when he comes back up,
he has his gun drawn and if pointing right out
her chest, and of course everything just clicks there for her.
She she basically realizes, like in like in one second,
that this is a guy who has killed both of
her friends. And now the gun's pointed at her, so
(40:58):
she starts to freak out. She initially tells them please
don't kill me, and doesn't know what to do, but
then like instinct takes her over. And Erica had been
on the streets also for about a decade, and her
instinct in those situations is not till I cower into
her corner, but to kind of fight back, and so
she kind of lunges at the steering wheel trying to
(41:19):
like hunk the horn and kicks open the actual door.
David Ortiz grabs her with his right hand. He's actually
left handed, so he has the left hand pointed like
on the gun pointed at Erica, and with his right
hand grabs her by by like her shoulder, but he's
like grabbing more, he's grabbing more of the blouse, and
so she manages to like wiggle out of her blouse,
(41:41):
kicks open the door, and jumps out in just a
bra and runs off. You only help me, help me,
help me. And she's at a gas station where it
just so happens at that point in time that there's
a Texas State trooper pumping gas at one of the pumps,
and so she kind of darts towards him and tells
(42:01):
them everything which just happened, and that somebody pulled out
a gun on her and that she's pretty sure that
it's the same guy who has killed these two other women.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
And he takes it seriously, obviously he does.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
It's really interesting, like there's a couple of things that
if they don't happen, David Ortiz may have actually killed
again and again and again. One of which is that
Eric Apenna tells him like this whole story, and the
trooper does what he's supposed to do, which is called
the local life or the police. This all happened within
so like Loreto city limits, so he has to call
(42:36):
Lreto PD to basically report it. So he calls the
actual local police. Local police tell him, yeah, we'll send
somebody out soon, and so they basically wait five minutes,
ten minutes, fifteen minutes, It gets up to eighteen minutes
and still nobody has actually arrived. So he kind of
pivots and said, well, let me just call somebody who
(42:57):
I think is actually familiar with the case. So he
calls one of his colleagues, which is EJ. Selena's the
Texas Ranger, who's one of the lead investigators on the
other two murders. He basically explains that he has a
woman here who just came running up to him claiming
that someone pulled a gun on her and that she
thinks that he's involved with these other two murders, and
(43:19):
hej Selenas tells him bring it or me, and that's
what really launches this sort of manhunt for Kuan David Ortiz.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
But in the meantime, you said, he sort of responds
in a panic, and his way of panicking is to
kill two more women, to kill Chilly and to kill
Janelle Ortiz.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
That's right? So what So what he does is that
he goes back to his house, right, So, he basically
sees Eric Apana run up to the trooper and knows that, okay,
the gig's up. The actual police are probably going to
be knocking on my door like any minute. So he
goes back to his house and basically what does he do.
He gathers every single piece of weaponry which he has
(44:02):
in his house, including like a sort of like AR
fifteen rifle, his forty caliber gun, his nine sort of
millimeter pistol, lays them all like on his kitchen island,
and he's basically waiting for like police to knock on
his door and come and get him, because because in
his mind, he's just going to shoot it out with
them and die by a shootout basically. But he waits
(44:24):
there for like thirty minutes, forty five minutes, it's it's
like over an hour, and nobody shows up. So he goes, well,
maybe she didn't tell me, And so he gets back
in his truck and he like decides, well, I'm just
going to go back to San Bernando and now I'm
just going to start killing more of them.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
What is his mentality?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I mean, you had mentioned this quite a while ago
that he's hoping to murder as many sex workers as possible.
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Do you think? I mean, what do you make of that?
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, that's a that's a tough nut to crack, and
it's one that I kind of sort of dug in
to quite a bit during my research trying to figure
out not just why he would do it, but where
was that moment, Like, was there anything that really turned
him towards that? And there was very little evidence anywhere
that pointing to anything. The clearest insight we have is
(45:16):
this nine hour videotape confession that he later gives to
like investigators, where he basically talks about each of the murders.
He talks about doing it and like the only reason
that he actually gives is that he just wanted to
clean up the streets of these like undesirables. I mean,
this is his this is his words, and he used
(45:37):
harsher terms in that he called them mietadas like pieces
of crap. But it's unclear where like where that comes from.
It's unclear if that was truly his actual motive or
if he was just kind of responding to these really
evil instincts inside of him. Also, he was taken at
the time quite a bit of sort of medication. He
was really struggling with PTSD and like anxiety. He was
(46:00):
was actually diagnosed with PTSD and was given this sort
of concoction of I think it was eight psychotropic medications
which she was taken every day. But he also was
sort of abusing them too, like had friends. Friends actually
told me later that they would see him popping pills
but then drinking copious amounts of beer and alcohol and
that all that stuff made him like a different person
(46:22):
like he was more like aggressive he was, he just
wasn't like the same person after taking all these pills.
Did that player role, you know, possibly, but it's really
unclear how or why he basically took it upon himself
to start targeting all of these sex workers.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
He ends up killing Shelley, he ends up killing Janelle,
and then you know he had had Erica escape. How
does he eventually get caught? And this is a twelve
day period, right, it finally ends after twelve.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Days, correct, it's only twelve days, and he's finally caught.
He's caught only because so once Erica basically talks with
like investigators, they're able to basically identify him. So so
they have his name, they have his picture, they have
his sort of description of of like his white truck,
and they put out a bolo be on the lookout
(47:14):
basically alert to all sort of law enforcement like in
the area. And after David Ortiz kills Shelley and then
then like Janelle, he goes through a gas station because
he has to he has to use the actual restroom,
and so he's on he's on some Bernando and his
plan is to like keep is to keep on killing
is to just pick up one after another and just
(47:36):
keep on killing sex workers. But he stops out of
Stripe's gas station to like use the bathroom and Texas
State Trooper uh sees his sees his truck, spots his truck,
realizes that there's a bolo off for it, and him
and another trooper basically confront him at this gas station.
They basically have guns drawn on him that they're like
(47:56):
tolding him to like put his hands up, to turn
around to get on the floor. And what does David
Etz do? He has his hands up, He runs off.
He speeds off, and these troopers chase after him, but
they end up losing him here. He runs like a
couple of blocks, ends up at the parking lot of
a sort of nearby hotel. He jumps in the back
of a pickup truck and basically hides out there. It
(48:18):
takes police, you know, the Webb County SWAT team shows up,
Border patrol agents show up, a bunch of other people.
The place is swarming with like sort of law enforcement agents.
Takes him over an hour to like find him, but
they finally find him. They like pull him out of
the truck and then they arrest him, so.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
To shorthand the rest of this.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
He goes on trial and is convicted, of course, and
he is given a life sentence without parole. This being Texas,
how is this not a capital case? How is he
not on death row?
Speaker 1 (48:51):
At this point?
Speaker 2 (48:51):
It's actually a really good question. It's up to the
actual district attorney to ask for the death penalty or not. Initially,
he like he had played and to ask for the
death penalty, but he told me later, the district attorney
told me later that he has to have like the
buy in of all the victim's families, Like all the
victim's families have to agree that they all also want
(49:12):
the death penalty. Like, he can't be in a courtroom
asking for the death penalty and then having victim's families
giving TV interviews saying that they're against capital punishment. It
just like doesn't work that way, And so he has
to He basically pulled all of the families, and they
were like mostly split. Some of them wanted the actual
death penalty, some of them didn't really believe in it,
(49:33):
and so the families were fairly split. But there's this
real interesting scene that I have in the book where
Joey khon Too, Shelley's older brother, who had just spent
twenty two years in a Texas State prison, stands up
during one of the meetings where like the district attorney
is meeting with some of the victim's families talking about
penalty phase. He stands up and he says, you know,
(49:53):
you all don't really know me, but I just spent
twenty two years in a prison. And he goes on
to sort of describe how bad it is in these
Texas State prisons and that he has seen grown men
crumble mentally and it's just a really hard existence day
in day out, and that he would rather see David
Ortiz spend the rest of his life in that situation
(50:13):
than take the death penalty. To him, he felt like
the death penalty was the sort of easy way out,
and he basically convinces the rest of the families that
that's the way to go. And so the district attorney
polls all of the family members and all of them
basically agree that he should pursue life in prison and
not the death penalty, and that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
What is your takeaway from all of this? There are
so many victims here survivors. His wife, Daniella, and their
three children are victims. You know, this is just the
wake of misery this man left behind, with the women
and the lives that were already difficult to begin with.
What is your takeaway from your book when by the
(50:55):
time you were done writing.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
It, Well, that's actually one of the things that I
wanted to show throughout the book is that there were
more than just four victims here, that the level of
pain and sort of destruction just kind of like ripples out.
The families are like still going through some really hard times,
missing a lot of the victims. Eric Opanna, who actually
escapes and lives to tell about it, also goes through
(51:19):
really hard time and relapses and is back into like
heroin addiction. She has like severe PTSD over it. I
actually chose to end my book with Lubita Rocha, who
is David Ortiz's mother, crying alone in this courtroom after
he's basically found guilty and is likely going to have
(51:40):
life in prison. It's actually automatically life in prison with
no parole. I kind of end the book with a
real touching moment that I thought was just her crying
the courtroom's empty and she's just heaving through these uncontrollable sobs,
and it just shows that there's victims on his day too,
like that family's ruined too. His wife and kids are
(52:03):
probably going through incredible hardship also. So these acts really
impacted so many people on so many different levels, and
I really wanted to show that throughout the book.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget. There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi.
(52:49):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer, artwork by
Nick Toga, executiveduced by Georgia Hardstark.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and
on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
So now they got two women, both shot in the
back of the head with forty caliber bullets, and they
realize that now they have a serial color on their hands.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm also the co.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and
throughout my career, research for my many audio and book
projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words,
I sit down with the people I've met along the way,
amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and
reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the
(00:56):
choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a
deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. On
this week's episode of Wicked Words, we're traveling to the
Texas border town of Laredo, when four vulnerable women are murdered.
Police suspected that a well respected US Border Patrol agent
(01:17):
has turned into a serial killer. Author Rick Jervis tells
me the story behind his book The Devil Behind the Badge,
The Horrifying twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer.
Where does it make sense for you to start the story.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, it takes place right in Laredo, so we could
start there. And also San Bernando Avenue is a major
character like in the book also, so we could talk
about that as well and give a backdrop.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
I mean, normally I say, what was Laredo like in
blah blah blah, But you know, whatever the year is,
but this is so recent. What is Laredo like now?
Unless things have dramatically changed since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Laredo's a really interesting place. You know, it's right on
the order. It has a lot of history. It was
founded in seventeen fifty five, first by Spain and then
later became part of Mexico, became part of the US
in eighteen forty eight, and it always had the sort
of reputation of being this kind of rough and tumble
outpost right because it was right on the border. So
it drew a lot of like bundidos and outlaws trying
(02:20):
to sort of run away from the actual law. It
had a lot of Apache Indian attacks early in the day.
And it's probably most known as as a sort of
backdrop of select Larry mcmultrie novels, you know, like Streets
of Laredo and so like Lunesome Dove, but more sort
of contemporarily. Today, it's a sort of bustling border city.
(02:43):
You know, it's home to about two hundred and sixty
thousand people. There's something like fifteen thousand trucks crisscrossing. It's
like port of entry every day. It's a major overland port, right.
It basically ferries some three hundred billion dollars worth of
gives every year, about half of all US Mexico trade
(03:03):
goes through Laredo. But it's also you know, it also
obviously draws drug cartels and human and drug smuggling, and
some of that product you know, unfortunately leaks out into
the streets of Laredo. Laredo has been kind of struggling
with a drug problem there for generations. You know, black
tar heroin basically made it appearance in the nineteen seventies
(03:25):
and it's like still a problem today. But it's also
a very safe town, you know, because you've got like
border patrol there, you got DEA operating there, you got
Homeland security investigators, so you got all of these sort
of law enforcement agents operating there, and like the cartels,
no better than to like set up shop and do
anything done there, So they tend to bypass with Laredo.
(03:47):
So it's it's like a relatively safe city, you know,
home to about. It basically has something like ten to
twelve homicides a year, so the murder rate is is
like relatively low compared to other Texas cities or even
across the US.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Who is the person do you think that is attracted
to being a border patrol agent? Why not be a
police officer in Laredo or work for DEA? Is there
kind of a type of person who would feel passionate
about this type of job.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Border patrol is kind of a coveted position there along
the border. First of all, like pays well, it pays,
it pays better, significantly better, like in some cases than
sheriff's deputies or local police, and so people along the border.
I've actually met people who are from Laredo who are
actually Border patrol agents who said that they basically came
(04:34):
up the ranks. Maybe they were like a police officer
for a couple of years, but their goal was always
to be border patrol agent. Because they have this long
history there. They're the ones who own like the really
nice houses down in Laredo, and so it draws a
lot of people who are interested in like law enforcement,
but are interested in kind of stepping up to the
(04:55):
sort of next level financially. It also draws a lot
of former like sort of military people, right, because there's
a lot of it's a lot of parallels there, right,
because you're basically asked to go out and sort of
patrol in these kind of remote areas. You're armed, there's
a sense of camaraderie with some of the other agents.
(05:16):
So more and more throughout the years, really, but recently,
you know, you're getting a lot of people coming from
conflicts in like Afghanistan and like Iraq who come back
to Stateside and are interested in border patrols.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Now, I know you said eight to twelve murders a year,
which seems very low for a city that size.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Correct.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, tell me how active the sex work trade is
in Laredo in twenty eighteen, since that's sort of the
community we're focusing on, as well as the folks who
work at border patrol.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, the sex worker community is pretty active there and
it has been for for like a long time. So
like Laredo has its history of sex workers working there.
I found articles dating back to like the early nineteen
hundreds where kind of turned the century, prostitutes were working
in these in these like sort of bordellos along some
(06:11):
Bonanando Avenue. Since it's always drawn these these these type
of crowds of like rum runners and fugitive and lawmen
and so like bonitos bordellos brought it up to service
a lot of these folks. In twenty eighteen, it was
like pretty vibrant. You know, There's there's quite a number
of sex workers working along there, and they tend to
(06:33):
congregate along this one stretch called some Betanando Avenue, and
some Benando Avenue obviously plays like a really big role
in my book. It's it's where all these four victims
lived and worked and where a lot of the sex
workers congregate. But the sex workers that work in Laredo,
as far as I could tell, almost to a tea,
almost every single one that I met down there were
(06:56):
doing it because they also had these really sort of
like debilitating sub since abuse disorders. All of them were
struggling with drug addictions. Again mostly black tar heroin, but
also cracked cocaine and like a number of other different drugs.
But it was very vibrant down there. In twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
When I started learning about the Long Island serial case
Gilgo Beach case, I had not known that with some
escorts they will have drivers go with them for safety.
Is there any sort of safety with the women we're
talking about in this story or is this they're on
the street on San Fernando Avenue and people are stopping
(07:40):
and picking them up. Is there any level of safety
at all with them?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
No? That's like a really interesting part that I learned
about the sex trade there in downtown Laredo, especially around
Sambernando Avenue, is that they don't they don't really have
pimps per se, there is no sort of protection. For
the most part, sex workers, along asime bet now theo
are generally on their own. I did actually meet a
(08:06):
couple of folks. It was like a couple of guys
who I would describe more as kind of like hangers on,
just folks who who like to sort of orbit around
the sex trade down there, And they were looked at
as kind of like big brothers and like friends to
some of these sex workers. They basically helped them out
(08:27):
with scheduling or sort of connecting with different clients, and
they would do it for you know, just a party
with them, or to get a little bit of the
heroin from them. Later they call it chiva, so they
would do it just for like a hit or two
of like chiba later. For the most part, there's a
real lack of actual protection for any of these sex workers.
(08:49):
They're not generally escorted anywhere, and they're usually on their own.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Well, tell me now where we go. Do we talk
about the victims in a chronological order, or do we
talk about the we haven't named him yet, or do
you want to just sort of unfold it a little
bit like a mystery. It's kind of up to you
what your comfort level is.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Let's talk about the victims. I think that's actually a
good place.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Okay, So victim number one, let's talk about what you
know about her and then the circumstances that have her
meeting Juan David Ortiz, who is the offender in this case.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Melissa Ramidez was the first victim. She was twenty nine
years old when she was killed, so she's one of
the younger victims. I got to know her family first.
Christina Benavidez, so like Melissa's mom, and she lives in
a in a place called Rio Bravo, and that's sort
of a suburb of like downtown Laredo. It's just a
(09:42):
couple of miles outside. It's known as a colonia, which
is sort of really kind of like kind of poor
suburb of Laredo. And I went out there early on
and got to meet Christina, and she she really opened
up to me and told me about about like Melissa
growing up. She was one of four children and Christina
(10:04):
Benavidez was basically raising them like her own. And when
I interviewed her, it was about a week after Melissa
was found dead, and I was talking to like Christina,
she had these dark classes on and she would look
down and she told me these stories and like we
had to stop kind of repeatedly because she kept crying.
She told me about sort of Melissa growing up. She
(10:25):
was fiercely sort of protective of her younger brother Sasad,
and they were they basically went they went sort of
everywhere together. And then somewhere around middle school is when
she when sort of Melissa starts to stray, and she
starts staying out longer. She's hanging out with friends. Sometimes
overnight she begins popping pills, mostly his annex, which she takes,
(10:50):
which which she finds from other people, and like develops
this addiction to crack cocaine, and shortly after that basically
drops out of high school and starts doing sex work
to sort of support her habit. One thing Christina didn't
tell me because she either didn't know or was in
like denial over it, but that I was told by
(11:11):
several other people, including Melissa's sister in law, Gracie, who
was very close to her, that when she was around
middle school age, Melissa was sexually assaulted by an older
family member, and Gracie kind of points to that period
when everything starts to really fall apart for her. So
(11:32):
she's she's having trouble at school. Christina's called in one
day because she goes to the school and the school
counsil tells her that that so Melissa has been slicing
her arms, so she's hurting herself. Also, they take it
to a therapist and she's diagnosed with by polarism and
sort of prescribes pills. I think it was prozac at
(11:54):
that point, and like Christina comes home and like she
she actually told me later she was like really surprised
because she had no that Melissa was struggling with taking
pills and taking medication. And so they take it to
a doctor and she actually prescribes more more pills, and
she she kind of felt distinctively that that wasn't like
the right route for her, but she hopes that the
(12:15):
actual pills could get her better. Well, Melissa just gets
worse and worse, ends up dropping out of school and
joining other sex workers along alongside Better Nando, and just
lives from like hotel room to hotel room out there.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So how do we know that Melissa goes missing and
is in trouble as who finds out first the women
that she works alongside, or is it a family member
who reports her missing or what happens just a.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Couple of days before she's she's actually found dead. Christina Benavidez,
Melissa's mom, gets in the car with Melissa's two young children,
who Christina has has actual custody of, and drives along
time Better Now they're looking for her, like she's actually
looking for her. She really wants to go to the
movies with her. I think it was Labor Day. She's
(13:01):
actually driving around trying to find like sort of Melissa
to have this day at the movies with Melissa's children.
Drives around and cannot find her and this and so
and so she like starts to worry. Christina told me
she was always worrying, Like she was constantly worrying because
Melissa would would go missing and just be out of
pocket for days, sometimes weeks, and so it basically was
(13:23):
always troubling to her when she would just go kind
of like radio silence. So this was another instance of
so like Melissa not being found. And so one of
the people she was living with at the time, Emily
but Ela, who Melissa was was sort of roommates with
at the time, had a big fight with her like
(13:43):
the night before, doesn't doesn't actually hear from her the
following day or the following day after that, and so
she starts to get worried. Melissa's body is actually found
in this in this rural stretch of Webb County, like
northwest of Laredo's by a passerby who calls it in.
Calls in the actual Webb County sheriff's office who actually
(14:05):
goes out there and starts the investigation. And that's what
Melissa's bodies found. She had been shot several times at
like close range behind the head. But that's all they got, Like,
all they have is sort of Melissa's body and a
couple of forty caliber casings nearby.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Did they do a rape kit and all of that,
Were there signs of a sexual assault?
Speaker 2 (14:26):
There was not. That's something which the sort of medical
examiner looked at closely and basically determined that there wasn't
any of that. And so they were just going on
the sort of premise that she was taken out there
and shot twice in the head. The thing about Melissa too,
she was also known as kind of a hot head,
like she had hot temper where she basically displayed sometimes
(14:50):
two friends like she was known to get into fistfights
with friends over the smallest things, sometimes with just people
on the street and other times with clients also. So
the initial assumption, at least among some of her friends
and fellow sex workers was that she she basically had
a falling out with a client. They got into a
(15:11):
verbal spat and things went sideways, and that's why she
was shot and killed. So that was a sort of
wide spread assumption among some of her friends. But the
sheriff's office launches a investigation into it, and as is
protocol sometimes down there, with high profile cases or even
most sort of murder cases, the web County Sheriff's office
(15:34):
will call in somebody from the Texas Rangers to basically
assist them. And the Texas Rangers they have more resources,
they have more money, and they tend to be especially
trained for things like murder and cartail violence. So the
lead investigator to the Webbs County Sheriff's office, this person
by the name of Captain, got their own, got their own,
(15:55):
calls in EJ. Salinas, who is the main Texas Ranger
for that region, and together cut it on and Selena's
launched this this sort of investigation into who this person
is and why she was killed.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
So they're taking it seriously, which surprises me considering, you know,
we're talking awful lot about police officers not being particularly
interested in the murders of sex workers, but it sounds
like that wasn't the case here, So that's good. They're
taking the case seriously, and of course no one's picked
up on this yet that this will become the work
of a serial killer.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I was sort of interested in that too, Like I
I was interested in how serious they actually took it
early on, and from everything that I found, like they
did take it, you know, extremely serious as soon as
it happened. There aren't a ton of murders in Laredo,
so this one would seems so so brutal, you know,
the sort of close range shots like in the head
(16:50):
kind of execution style, really like prompting them to take
it serious right away. And so they actually launched this
pretty intense of investigation into it right away. Obviously, like
they don't know that this is the work of a
serial killer who is planning on killing again, but they
like take it as serious as possible. They branch out
(17:12):
through the Samberternando corridor talking to folks. They basically find
out soon after who this person is. They're able to
actually identify her through fingerprints and other methods, and they
like learn early on that she's a sex worker working
along some better Nando avenue. They basically begin to spread
out throughout this corridor, talking to other sex workers, talking
(17:35):
to people who may have known her, people who have
seen them who have seen her last, trying to figure
out what exactly happened to her.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And I think he's say in the book that they
end up reaching out eventually to the next three victims
because they're all sex workers.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah? Early on, Clauding loydra is one of the top
people which they're interested in talking to. Clauding Loida was
really close with so like Melissa, they were known to
sort of hang out in the same sort of motels
along Samberanando Avenue. They were known to even share clients
now and then Claudine Lola was older. She's she's forty two,
(18:13):
so she's kind of looked at as a sort of older,
wiser sex worker out there. Melissa is kind of the younger,
like hot headed worker, and so Claudine kind of like
takes her under her her wing, and they were they
were actually pretty tight. So investigative zero in and like
Claudie Louila right away.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
So they talked to Claudine.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
What does she say that you know, does she give
any insight on clients or any theories about what happened?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So they don't talk to actual Claudine. She's on their
their list of like people of interest, and they're actively
looking for her. They're they're they're like trying to locate her.
So you can imagine it's not the easiest thing to
like sort of locate somebody in this world because lots
of time, like they may not even have a smell phone.
They're very transient. They're bouncing around from my people's couch
(19:04):
to hotel rooms to somewhere else, and so they're like
actively trying to look at her. Claudine is one of
like four or five names that Captain Cardan has on
his list of people of interest, and they're actively trying
to find Claudine when Claudine also ends up as a victim.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Similar circumstances, gunshot, similar location.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Claudine Leuta's body is actually found just a couple of
miles from where Melissa's Body's found, also this sort of
rural stretch of northwest Webb County. Similarly, she's found like
on the side of the highway with a gunshot wound
to the back of the head. But what was different
about Claudine is that she was still alive somehow kind
(19:50):
of miraculously. So she was shot once in the back
of the head and she managed to crawl and drag
herself to the shoulder of the actual highway where she
could be better found, and sure enough, the truck driver
passes by, sees her stops and she's actually still alive,
like she's incoherent, like she's asking for water, saying she's
(20:13):
like really thirsty, and she's mumbling stuff. The truck driver
calls nine one one, and this ambulance comes out as
well as deputies come out, and then ambulance comes up,
scoops her on and raises her to the actual nearest hospital,
and she's still alive all the way to the hospital.
I actually interviewed the paramedic who took her, and she
said Clouding was actually being kind of combative, which is
(20:36):
which is somewhat natural, he said, for like these types
of victims, he sees it a lot, like they're really
confused and disoriented. And she was swinging in her arms
to the point that they had to like hold her
down and basically strap her down. And he's telling her,
you know, just to take it easy, that somebody's going
to take care of her, and they're still operating, like
under the assumption he assumed that she got hit by
(20:58):
a car and left them like he didn't know that
this was a gunshot until they take her to the hospital.
They wheel her into the hospital and the doctor comes
out maybe twenty thirty minutes later saying that Claudine passed away,
that she actually died, and that it wasn't a auto accident.
That they found a bullets lug in the back of
(21:20):
her head. So now this information is basically relayed to
Captain Goddown and E. J. Salinas, the Texas ranger, who
are at the scene looking at the crime scene, and
they noticed that there's a couple of casings there also
forty caliber, just just like the first incident. And so
now they got two women, both of them sex workers,
(21:43):
both of them shot in the back of the head
with forty caliber bullets. And they realized that now they
have a serial killer on their hands.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
And not just two sex workers. Two sex workers who
were intimate friends. I mean, they knew each other very well.
I don't know how big the industry is in Laredo
at the time, but you know, these are friends who
knew each other really well, and I'm sure they took
that into consideration absolutely.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And it's not only that, like they knew each other well,
but that that, like investigators were actively trying to find Claudine,
they also found that very very interesting that that this
is somebody that they were trying to find to interview
about about sort of Melissa's death, and now she also
ends up dead.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
When Claudine is waving her arms and you know, being
combative in the ambulance, is she saying anything that can
be at all useful to the Texas Rangers or the sheriff.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So that's what the Sheriff's office asked this paramedic later
ray He basically could understand what she was saying. She
was muttering something, but it didn't make any sense to him.
So nothing came out of what she said in those
in like those final moments. Unfortunately, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I was thinking when you were talking about the scene,
and you know, she's dragging herself to the shoulder and
trying to get attention, and she's bleeding and exhausted and thirsty,
and I was thinking, September, I mean, in Texas is awful.
It's sometimes the hottest, it can be hotter than August.
It must have been just her will to live must
have been incredible to be able to do that in
(23:20):
the desert.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
I mean, gosh, how horrific for.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Her, especially on the border. You know, the border gets
really hot. It's like a solid ten fifteen degrees hotter
than what you feel in Austin or Dallas or Houston.
And so yeah, it was like really hot at the time,
and her will to live and how she fought it
all the way to the end was just remarkable. You know,
she gets shot in the back of the head and
(23:46):
just manages to kind of hang around until somebody picks
her up. The actual paramedic thought she actually had a
chance because he basically stopped the bleeding and brought it
to the hospital, but unfortunately she just expired soon after that.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Do they find that both Melissa and Claudeen have heroin
or some sort of drug in their system at the time.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah, the medical examiner finds out out later Melissa had
crack cocaine in her system and Claudine had had pretty
large amounts of opiate's mostly heroin in her system. Claudine
had a very sort of debilitating heroin addiction. It really
really was really strong with her and kept her on
(24:28):
the streets for like a long time.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Are their friends in industry. Are they able to say
who they thought they were last with? They have clients?
I mean, how did they even begin investigating who the
last person was with these two women?
Speaker 2 (24:43):
They had some fairly good leads. Melissa, like I said earlier,
was with Emily Varella last. And she's also pretty interesting.
She's a transgender woman who lived and worked on San Bernardo.
She was friends with like so like Melissa for you years,
for like a long time. They met in high school
(25:03):
and like stayed friends over the years. Emily and Melissa
were sharing a room at the Pan American Courts Motel
right on San Bernando, and so and so sheriff's deputies
and captain got that own quickly roll up to like
Emily and question her and like interview her. Emily tells
them everything she knew, which is that they were there
(25:26):
like the night before. She was kind of upset with
with sort of like Melissa because she she wasn't like
sort of earning her keep and she was really messy.
Emily was on sort of probation because she had been
arrested earlier, and I kind of needed to stay clean
and sort of Melissa was violating a lot of that
she was smoking crack in the actual room and stuff
(25:47):
that could really get sort of Emily like in trouble.
And so Emily was kind of upset with her and
had give her like a ton lashing like the night
before and felt obviously really bad about that later, but
that's all she knew that like the last time she
had seen her was when Melissa walked out of their
sort of motel room at like around like midnight the
(26:09):
day before she was found. Nobody had actually seen her
after that. And Claudine also had a couple of people
which investigators thought were really close to her, including like
an ex boyfriend of hers called Chong Cho N And
Chong was this person of interests early on. There's this
really interesting scene in my book where sheriff's deputies go
(26:32):
to Cholnes's house like to try to talk to him
about about some like Claudine's murder. Chong has a long
rap sheet he's been he's been in out of jail. Also,
he also has a very sort of debilitating substance abuse disorder.
There's a swarm of deputies waiting for him at like
Chones Choln's house, and Joan rows up in his car.
(26:54):
He has a Cadillac. He rows up, he sees all
of these deputies swarming outside of his house, panics, guns it,
and like speeds off basically, and so like all the
deputies hop in their car and speed off after him.
John manages to sort of elude them, like he just
he goes through a bunch of downtown streets and like
gets away, but then calls calls like a contact that
(27:16):
he has, like at the Laredo Police and saying, Hey,
why are all these cops at my house? Like he
has no idea, what's what's actually going on? I think
he had heard at that point that Ladine was like killed,
but he had but he had nothing to do with him.
So he panics and like takes off. He ends up
coming in and having an interview with Captain Gaddon and EJ.
Sealinas and they like go over everything, which he knows
(27:39):
he had seen her, I think a couple of days before,
but not the day before, and says he has like
he has no idea who may have killed him. Police
kind of check out his story. He's not completely crossed
off the list, but they also feel kind of strongly
that that like it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
Him, tell me about the third victim, because now we
have to Texas Rangers in the Sheriff's department saying it
sounds like we've got the same person murdering these two
different women. Is Gizelda friends with both Claudine and Melissa.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
She is, she said, this nickname is like Chilli, and
she is also part of this sex worker sort of community.
They've been friends for like a long time. He said.
That is thirty five at the time, so she had
been out there for almost two decades. Also has an
extremely hardcore heroin addiction, which she operates in the sex
(28:31):
trade just to just to sort of feed that. And
she had a really rough sort of upbringing, you know.
Chlly is from a really kind of rough and tumble
part of Laredo. She was two years old when her
mother is murdered by like an ex boyfriend. The mother
was like a single mother raising her and her older brother, Joey,
(28:52):
And so Joey and Kelly go to live with a
grandmother and that's the one who basically raises them. But
they're it's still out to oversight and they're basically on
the streets a lot, and so they kind of succumb
to some of the vices of the actual street. Joey
joins a gang, ends up getting into trouble and goes
(29:12):
away to prison for twenty two years. Chilly gets into
drug habits and basically develops a really bad heroin addiction
and that's what gets her on the streets.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Also, how long after they discover Claudeine do they then
discover Chilly.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
So it's about a day and a half. But something
really pivotal happens in between that, And that's the case
of Ericapana and Erica Penna is also a sex worker.
She's also on the streets, and she's kind of a
repeat client, but she's the one who actually escapes and
alerts alerts police that she may know the actual identity
(29:51):
of this serial killer.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
This happens after Claudeine, but before Chilly.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Is it right?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
That is correct? Yep?
Speaker 3 (30:00):
So he is he aware that this could turn on
him pretty quickly, and yet he then still decides to
pursue another victim.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Yeah, it's this really interesting thing like he up until
this point it was more or less calculated, like he
would target his victim, drive him off so really sort
of remote places, and then go back to work as
if nothing was happening right, and he was leading this
double life. Once Erica Panna basically escaped from him and
(30:28):
starts to alert police about this is the person who
probably killed some of my friends and he's aware of
that he or he basically assumes that. Once he assumes that,
like the actual police are after him, it kind of
becomes this almost like suicidal spasm of violence towards the end,
and his whole goal is just to pick up as
(30:50):
many sex workers as possible, shoot him, kill him before
police actually catch up with him.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Well, I guess we need to talk about him.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
So who does Erica and encounter the night where she
clearly saves her own life and escapes set up that
scenario because now we have somebody who can actually explain
what happens to these women.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
So his name is Juan David Ortiz, thirty five, like
at the time of the murders, he's a ten year
veteran of the US Vota Patrol. He's married with three
young young kids, and he's from Texas. You know, I
grew up like in Brownsville, Texas, raised by a single mom.
And for those who aren't really familiar with Brownsville, that's
(31:32):
the southern like it's literally like the southern most point
of Texas that's right on the border across the river
from Mantalmodos, Texas. David Ortiz grows up in Brownsville with
a single mom. He has three other sisters, all of
them younger, so he's the older. He's raised liked about
evangelical Pentecostal Christian, so he's very sort of religion focused.
(31:53):
Even in sort of high school, he basically leads like
the Bible study group. He's constantly leading Bible study is
like at home, he's on the swim team, and by
all accounts, he's a really focused, like kind of ambitious
student who knows who knows like what he wants to
do once he graduates, and that is to join the
(32:14):
actual military, which he does as soon as he actually graduates.
Just a couple of months after graduating. He basically joins
the Navy in two thousand and one. He's eighteen years old,
and this is two months before like the terrorist attacks
for like ninety eleven. So he's a Navy corman, which
is like a medic, and he's attached to like a
(32:35):
marine unit that is deployed out to Iraq. During Operation
Iraqi Freedom, and he's a Corman, so he is it's
basically like on the front lines, helping helping people who
get injured and get and get hurt out there. And
his unit starts in Basra to the south and goes
(32:55):
all the way up Iraq and ends up in Baghdad,
and they spent some time in Baghdad. I talked to
a couple of his sort of military buddies out there
who all say, you know, sort of comparatively like they
didn't see all that much action as some of the
other marine units out there, but they did see their
fair share of like really gruesome stuff, especially around Baghdad
(33:18):
and Baghdad things got We're just really chaotic and a
lot of bodies, a lot of dead people around, and
they sort of participate in like a lot of that.
He comes back to the US and he has really
high sort of accolades from his time in the military,
and in two thousand and nine joins Border Patrol again.
(33:40):
You know, this is a really coveted position. He has
an offer to join the San Antonio Police Department or
the Sheriff's office there, and he turns them down to
join Border Patrol, which is seen as a much more
coveted position, better pay, and he joined in two thousand
and nine. He's based first in Katy, which is halfway
(34:01):
between San Antonio and like downtown Laredo, and then later
is transferred to Laredo. In twenty seventeen. One of the
things which's up which he does like in Laredo, is
that he's basically assigned to join this unit called the
Targeted Enforcement Unit. And this is sort of like highly trained,
specialized unit that does things like raids stash houses and
(34:24):
goes out and like goes after cartel operatives. And this
is an important time for him because as part of
the Targeted Enforcement Unit, he is focusing and trying to
break up a lot of this sort of this sort
of like listed activity happening around the San Bernando Corridor.
So it's his introduction to this corridor and all the
(34:46):
different activities happening there. So he kind of repeatedly raids
some of the drug houses, he starts to know who,
like who the sex workers are working on there, and
so in twenty eighteen, like at the beginning of twenty
eight team, he's basically promoted to supervisory agent and is
assigned to the Joint Intel Center, which I mentioned earlier,
(35:07):
which is a center right there at the Vorder Patrol
headquarters in central Laredo where Vorder Patrol shares information with
the Sheriff's office and the DEA and DPS troopers and
they're all sharing information going after some of the biggest,
most sensitive cases there along the border.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
No red flax from Ortis at all, No disciplinary action
nowhere anywhere, not even a speeding ticket with this guy.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Nothing, And that's something that I really dug into trying
to figure out and trying to find out. Unfortunately, Customers
and Vorder Protection, which is the agency that oversees Vorder Patrol,
they weren't really cooperative with me and basically declined to
give any interviews for this book, much less share any
records or anything about RTS. I did actually manage to
(35:55):
get some of his personnel records through other sources. Everything
in his record was pretty scotch cleaning. There was nothing
like there were no former red flags. The only thing
in he had a minor incident back in Cotula with
one of the migrants, which he picked up that the
migrant claimed that David Ortiz took a cigarette away from him,
(36:16):
and that was the only only thing that I came
up in his whole file.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
What does eric Opinia say happened with Juan David Ortiz?
Speaker 1 (36:25):
How did they even meet?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
So eric Openna is working along San Bernando Avenue, just
just like some of these other women, and she meets
him just the same way that he meets others. So
starting around twenty eighteen, early twenty eighteen one, David Ortiz
starts to start the cruise down outside Banado, and this
time he's like not working, he's he's actively engaging with
(36:48):
some of these sex workers and actually picking them up.
Eric Opena meets him right around then, early early twenty eighteen.
David Ortiz picks her up and they like drive off
and they kind of hit it off, like he first
of all. Erica Panna says later that he's kind of
an ideal client, that he has money, he pays cash
on time, he pays up right away, and she actually
(37:11):
knows early on that he's involved with border patrol. He
doesn't make a secret out of it, and that's an
ideal client because she knows that he doesn't want to
get caught with this that like it could be embarrassing
so he's like discreet, he has money, and he becomes
like a reliable client for her. So he picks her
up repeatedly half a dozen times or so over the
(37:33):
course of twenty eighteen, including taking her back to his
house on different occasions. His wife, His wife, Daniella, has
family both in San Antonio and don in Brownsville, and
she would take the kids like visit family, and Juan
David Ortiz will like take advantage of those times and
(37:54):
take Erica, Panna and other women back to his empty house.
So they really get to know each other. They create
this sort of rapport between each other. And so she
gets picked up on that day, September fourteenth, twenty eighteen,
after he has killed like sort of Melissa, after he's
killed Claudine, and he picks up eric Opania as just
(38:15):
another night in the town.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
So what does she say changed, what made this night
different than the nights she was already used to spending
with Ortiz.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, so she says later that she gets in the
car and starts talking about the same topic that everybody
alongside Bernado is talking about at that point, which is
the actual murders of Claudine and Melissa and she like
brings that up, and he kind of plays it off like, oh, yeah,
you know, I think I heard about that, but I'm
not like really following it, and they talk about it.
(38:49):
It kind of comes up and goes. She does what
she usually does, which is like shoots up heroin, and
then he takes her back to his house. His wife
again is visiting family up in San Antonio, so so
like the house is empty, so he takes her back
to his house and then Erica claims that as they're
(39:11):
sitting down like in their living room, something comes over
him and that she noticeably sees something change in his
face and his and in his sort of demeanor, and
he starts telling her that he's really worried that the
police might think that he has something to do with
Melissa's death because he had been with her a couple
of days before she was found, and that they might
(39:33):
find his his sort of DNA on her. But that's
something drastically changes, like in his sort of demeanor, that
his mood just kind of darkens to the point that
she gets this this sort of revelation that's that something
is like really wrong and she and she kind of
excuses herself and runs out of the house, goes to
(39:54):
the front yard and throws up like on the sidewalk,
like she's so overwhelmed with his dark of him that
it just kind of like it just sort of possesses her.
So he actually drives her off and says, well, let's
just let's just get you something to eat. Maybe he
just needs something to eat. And at this point, through
her mind she's she's actually thinking, maybe this is the
(40:16):
guy who, like, who has actually killed my friends. And
again it's nothing which which he's actually sort of like
admitted to at this point. It's just it's just a
feeling she has. So he basically drives her to this
gas station nearby, and he drives around back and pulls
in the back, and it's a it's kind of it's
kind of a darkened lot in the back, and he's
(40:37):
reaching down and he's and and she's asking him, what
are you reaching for? And when he comes back up,
he has his gun drawn and if pointing right out
her chest, and of course everything just clicks there for her.
She she basically realizes, like in like in one second,
that this is a guy who has killed both of
her friends. And now the gun's pointed at her, so
(40:58):
she starts to freak out. She initially tells them please
don't kill me, and doesn't know what to do, but
then like instinct takes her over. And Erica had been
on the streets also for about a decade, and her
instinct in those situations is not till I cower into
her corner, but to kind of fight back, and so
she kind of lunges at the steering wheel trying to
(41:19):
like hunk the horn and kicks open the actual door.
David Ortiz grabs her with his right hand. He's actually
left handed, so he has the left hand pointed like
on the gun pointed at Erica, and with his right
hand grabs her by by like her shoulder, but he's
like grabbing more, he's grabbing more of the blouse, and
so she manages to like wiggle out of her blouse,
(41:41):
kicks open the door, and jumps out in just a
bra and runs off. You only help me, help me,
help me. And she's at a gas station where it
just so happens at that point in time that there's
a Texas State trooper pumping gas at one of the pumps,
and so she kind of darts towards him and tells
(42:01):
them everything which just happened, and that somebody pulled out
a gun on her and that she's pretty sure that
it's the same guy who has killed these two other women.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
And he takes it seriously, obviously he does.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
It's really interesting, like there's a couple of things that
if they don't happen, David Ortiz may have actually killed
again and again and again. One of which is that
Eric Apenna tells him like this whole story, and the
trooper does what he's supposed to do, which is called
the local life or the police. This all happened within
so like Loreto city limits, so he has to call
(42:36):
Lreto PD to basically report it. So he calls the
actual local police. Local police tell him, yeah, we'll send
somebody out soon, and so they basically wait five minutes,
ten minutes, fifteen minutes, It gets up to eighteen minutes
and still nobody has actually arrived. So he kind of
pivots and said, well, let me just call somebody who
(42:57):
I think is actually familiar with the case. So he
calls one of his colleagues, which is EJ. Selena's the
Texas Ranger, who's one of the lead investigators on the
other two murders. He basically explains that he has a
woman here who just came running up to him claiming
that someone pulled a gun on her and that she
thinks that he's involved with these other two murders, and
(43:19):
hej Selenas tells him bring it or me, and that's
what really launches this sort of manhunt for Kuan David Ortiz.
Speaker 3 (43:27):
But in the meantime, you said, he sort of responds
in a panic, and his way of panicking is to
kill two more women, to kill Chilly and to kill
Janelle Ortiz.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
That's right? So what So what he does is that
he goes back to his house, right, So, he basically
sees Eric Apana run up to the trooper and knows that, okay,
the gig's up. The actual police are probably going to
be knocking on my door like any minute. So he
goes back to his house and basically what does he do.
He gathers every single piece of weaponry which he has
(44:02):
in his house, including like a sort of like AR
fifteen rifle, his forty caliber gun, his nine sort of
millimeter pistol, lays them all like on his kitchen island,
and he's basically waiting for like police to knock on
his door and come and get him, because because in
his mind, he's just going to shoot it out with
them and die by a shootout basically. But he waits
(44:24):
there for like thirty minutes, forty five minutes, it's it's
like over an hour, and nobody shows up. So he goes, well,
maybe she didn't tell me, And so he gets back
in his truck and he like decides, well, I'm just
going to go back to San Bernando and now I'm
just going to start killing more of them.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
What is his mentality?
Speaker 3 (44:42):
I mean, you had mentioned this quite a while ago
that he's hoping to murder as many sex workers as possible.
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Do you think? I mean, what do you make of that?
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Yeah, that's a that's a tough nut to crack, and
it's one that I kind of sort of dug in
to quite a bit during my research trying to figure
out not just why he would do it, but where
was that moment, Like, was there anything that really turned
him towards that? And there was very little evidence anywhere
that pointing to anything. The clearest insight we have is
(45:16):
this nine hour videotape confession that he later gives to
like investigators, where he basically talks about each of the murders.
He talks about doing it and like the only reason
that he actually gives is that he just wanted to
clean up the streets of these like undesirables. I mean,
this is his this is his words, and he used
(45:37):
harsher terms in that he called them mietadas like pieces
of crap. But it's unclear where like where that comes from.
It's unclear if that was truly his actual motive or
if he was just kind of responding to these really
evil instincts inside of him. Also, he was taken at
the time quite a bit of sort of medication. He
was really struggling with PTSD and like anxiety. He was
(46:00):
was actually diagnosed with PTSD and was given this sort
of concoction of I think it was eight psychotropic medications
which she was taken every day. But he also was
sort of abusing them too, like had friends. Friends actually
told me later that they would see him popping pills
but then drinking copious amounts of beer and alcohol and
that all that stuff made him like a different person
(46:22):
like he was more like aggressive he was, he just
wasn't like the same person after taking all these pills.
Did that player role, you know, possibly, but it's really
unclear how or why he basically took it upon himself
to start targeting all of these sex workers.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
He ends up killing Shelley, he ends up killing Janelle,
and then you know he had had Erica escape. How
does he eventually get caught? And this is a twelve
day period, right, it finally ends after twelve.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
Days, correct, it's only twelve days, and he's finally caught.
He's caught only because so once Erica basically talks with
like investigators, they're able to basically identify him. So so
they have his name, they have his picture, they have
his sort of description of of like his white truck,
and they put out a bolo be on the lookout
(47:14):
basically alert to all sort of law enforcement like in
the area. And after David Ortiz kills Shelley and then
then like Janelle, he goes through a gas station because
he has to he has to use the actual restroom,
and so he's on he's on some Bernando and his
plan is to like keep is to keep on killing
is to just pick up one after another and just
(47:36):
keep on killing sex workers. But he stops out of
Stripe's gas station to like use the bathroom and Texas
State Trooper uh sees his sees his truck, spots his truck,
realizes that there's a bolo off for it, and him
and another trooper basically confront him at this gas station.
They basically have guns drawn on him that they're like
(47:56):
tolding him to like put his hands up, to turn
around to get on the floor. And what does David
Etz do? He has his hands up, He runs off.
He speeds off, and these troopers chase after him, but
they end up losing him here. He runs like a
couple of blocks, ends up at the parking lot of
a sort of nearby hotel. He jumps in the back
of a pickup truck and basically hides out there. It
(48:18):
takes police, you know, the Webb County SWAT team shows up,
Border patrol agents show up, a bunch of other people.
The place is swarming with like sort of law enforcement agents.
Takes him over an hour to like find him, but
they finally find him. They like pull him out of
the truck and then they arrest him, so.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
To shorthand the rest of this.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
He goes on trial and is convicted, of course, and
he is given a life sentence without parole. This being Texas,
how is this not a capital case? How is he
not on death row?
Speaker 1 (48:51):
At this point?
Speaker 2 (48:51):
It's actually a really good question. It's up to the
actual district attorney to ask for the death penalty or not. Initially,
he like he had played and to ask for the
death penalty, but he told me later, the district attorney
told me later that he has to have like the
buy in of all the victim's families, Like all the
victim's families have to agree that they all also want
(49:12):
the death penalty. Like, he can't be in a courtroom
asking for the death penalty and then having victim's families
giving TV interviews saying that they're against capital punishment. It
just like doesn't work that way, And so he has
to He basically pulled all of the families, and they
were like mostly split. Some of them wanted the actual
death penalty, some of them didn't really believe in it,
(49:33):
and so the families were fairly split. But there's this
real interesting scene that I have in the book where
Joey khon Too, Shelley's older brother, who had just spent
twenty two years in a Texas State prison, stands up
during one of the meetings where like the district attorney
is meeting with some of the victim's families talking about
penalty phase. He stands up and he says, you know,
(49:53):
you all don't really know me, but I just spent
twenty two years in a prison. And he goes on
to sort of describe how bad it is in these
Texas State prisons and that he has seen grown men
crumble mentally and it's just a really hard existence day
in day out, and that he would rather see David
Ortiz spend the rest of his life in that situation
(50:13):
than take the death penalty. To him, he felt like
the death penalty was the sort of easy way out,
and he basically convinces the rest of the families that
that's the way to go. And so the district attorney
polls all of the family members and all of them
basically agree that he should pursue life in prison and
not the death penalty, and that's what happens.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
What is your takeaway from all of this? There are
so many victims here survivors. His wife, Daniella, and their
three children are victims. You know, this is just the
wake of misery this man left behind, with the women
and the lives that were already difficult to begin with.
What is your takeaway from your book when by the
(50:55):
time you were done writing.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
It, Well, that's actually one of the things that I
wanted to show throughout the book is that there were
more than just four victims here, that the level of
pain and sort of destruction just kind of like ripples out.
The families are like still going through some really hard times,
missing a lot of the victims. Eric Opanna, who actually
escapes and lives to tell about it, also goes through
(51:19):
really hard time and relapses and is back into like
heroin addiction. She has like severe PTSD over it. I
actually chose to end my book with Lubita Rocha, who
is David Ortiz's mother, crying alone in this courtroom after
he's basically found guilty and is likely going to have
(51:40):
life in prison. It's actually automatically life in prison with
no parole. I kind of end the book with a
real touching moment that I thought was just her crying
the courtroom's empty and she's just heaving through these uncontrollable sobs,
and it just shows that there's victims on his day too,
like that family's ruined too. His wife and kids are
(52:03):
probably going through incredible hardship also. So these acts really
impacted so many people on so many different levels, and
I really wanted to show that throughout the book.
Speaker 3 (52:25):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and Don't Forget. There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi.
(52:49):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer, artwork by
Nick Toga, executiveduced by Georgia Hardstark.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 3 (53:04):
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and
on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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