Laredo, Texas is the busiest border crossing in the United States’s border with Mexico. On Sep 3, 2018, a rancher mending fences sees a black pickup with tinted windows idling on his property. As he approaches, the pickup drives off, leaving a dead body behind.
Captain Federico Calderon of the Webb County Sheriff’s Office has 18 and a half years of experience. He knows the area. This is a rural farm road. The dead body is a female with no ID, lying face down, with a gunshot wound to the head. There are three expended pistol casings, premium brass 40 caliber Smith and Wesson. This type of bullet is used almost exclusively by law enforcement because it’s expensive. To Calderon’s surprise, the rancher gives an accurate description of the pickup and has the license plate number. Texas plates.
The autopsy on the body reveals three gunshot wounds to the head and neck at close range. She also has a gunshot wound to the wrist and M&Ms were found in her hand. So she was eating M&Ms when she was shot and while her wrist was near her mouth, she was shot in the back of the head. That bullet went through her head then her wrist. The woman is identified as Melissa Ramirez, a drug user and prostitute. In Laredo, it is not uncommon for young women to become addicted to drugs then turn to prostitution as a means of paying for those drugs. Most of the prostitutes gather on San Bernardo Avenue.
The black pickup belongs to a local police officer, Gustavo Lopez. He says he took his kids on a ride to show them a property he was thinking of buying that was adjacent to the rancher’s property. Police confirm with the real estate agent that he was indeed looking into buying that property. He claims he never saw the body.
Police speak to Melissa’s family looking for suspects. They claim she told them drug dealers were going to kill her.
Without a specific suspect, the police turn to San Bernardo Avenue where the prostitutes hang out. Calderon speaks to several prostitutes. They tell him that Claudine Luera was her best friend. Claudine is another drug user and prostitute who works on San Bernardo.
Calderon gathers up a john list and presents them to the supervisor of surveillance at Border Control, Juan David Ortiz. Border Control surveillance has monitors and CCTV for 32 square miles around Laredo. But Ortiz comes back with nothing. Ortiz does tell Calderon that Melissa was seen with Dominic Ortega the night she disappeared. Ortega lives less than a mile from the body dump site.
Police speak to Ortega. He was seeing Melissa as a prostitute which he called “dating”. That night he picked her up, got her drugs, she got high, and passed out. When she woke up, he’d changed his mind and drove her home.
On Sep 13 a female body is found off highway 255. She’s been shot in the head just like Melissa, but she’s still breathing. An ambulance rushes her to the hospital while police comb the area. They find her things scattered everywhere. There are drag marks and crawl marks where she put up a fight, tried crawling away, and was dragged back. Claudine Luera‘s ID is in the purse. She’s Melissa’s best friend. She has a prepaid Tracfone in her purse. Unfortunately, she dies at the hospital.
Claudine has five kids, including two sets of twins. When the first set of twins was diagnosed with autism she started using drugs and lost custody of her kids. She began a downward spiral of drugs and prostitution. The night before she died she spent with her daughter as if she knew her life was coming to an end.
On Claudine’s phone are texts with Hector Vega that night. She also has recent pictures of herself with a man. Vega has a criminal history. When police go to his home, he runs. He disappears. The next day he walks into the police station. He had drugs on him and thought the police were after him for that. He had nothing to do with Claudine’s murder. He “dated” her that night then took her back to San Bernardo.
Police stake out San Bernardo Avenue since that’s where the killer is picking up his victims. They pass the plate numbers of these johns to Ortiz at Border Control. He comes up with nothing.
On Sep 14, a Texas state trooper is getting gas when a young female missing her blouse approaches him, telling him the killer just tried killing her. Her name is Erika Selma-Pena and she is a prostitute working on San Bernardo Avenue. The trooper calls Calderon who immediately comes to interview her. She says the client’s name is “David” and she can identify his house.
The killer picked up Erika on San Bernardo and took her to his home. She started talking about Melissa and Claudia and he got really nervous. She got scared and stepped outside to puke. She somehow convinced him to take her to a gas station for food. Once there, he held a pistol to her head and told her he was going to kill her. He grabbed her shirt as she fled from the vehicle. Her shirt slid right off allowing her to escape. She ran right up to the state trooper getting gas. The killer drives a white pickup.
Calderon takes Erika to that neighborhood and she identifies the house. Her vomit is still on the sidewalk. It belongs to Juan David Ortiz, the supervisor in surveillance at Border Patrol who has been helping Calderon with the investigation. He’s 35 years old with an impeccable record.
At 12:07 am on Sep 15, 2018, two hours after Erika’s escape, a trooper off San Bernardo sees Ortiz’s white pickup at a gas station. Ortiz is inside. Two troopers attempt to arrest him when he comes out. He runs to a nearby parking garage. Police block the exits and call SWAT.
Meanwhile there’s another 911 call with another dead female. This one is also face down with 40 caliber Smith and Wesson brass casings. Her name is Guiselda Cantu and she also is a prostitute who works on San Bernardo Avenue.
SWAT clears one level of the parking garage at a time, driving him up. While they are pursuing him, he is posting goodbyes to his family on FaceBook. They find him in a black truck and arrest him.
At 2:48 am on Sep 15, 2018, Calderon and another agent interview Ortiz. He’s laughing and bragging about how he outran state troopers. They show him photos of the victims. He denies knowing them.
In his truck they find a heroin syringe, a condom, bloody boots, casings, bullets, and his pistol. They confront him with this. He tells them how he killed Melissa. He bought her heroin. She got high and fell asleep. She woke up angry and insulted him so he told her he’d drive her back to San Bernardo. On the way, he pulled over so she could pee and shot her in the head. He went home, showered, and kissed his wife and kids.
He goes on to tell them about the others. He picks up Claudia, buyers her heroin. She won’t shut up. She takes him to Melissa’s crime scene then freaks out and says it’s him. She jumps from the truck and runs. He shoots her. It sounds like she gave him vague directions on getting to the crime scene and Ortiz drove straight there. That would freak anyone out.
The next day he tried killing Erika, but she got away. So he went home and waited for the police to come arrest him. No one came. So he went hunting again, to “clean up the streets”. He picked up Guiselda and killed her next.
Ortiz tells them there’s a fifth girl they don’t know about. She’s 13 miles north of Laredo and her name is Janelle Ortiz. She’s transgender. He shot her in the head too, killing two women in two hours.
Of course killers always tell lies about their victims trying to justify killing them. The point is that they admit to killing them.
Ortiz is sentenced to life without parole. He murdered four women in twelve days.
Bibliography
Homicide Hunter: American Detective, Season 4, Episode 1: It Begins with One
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