The Streets of Laredo

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Speaker 4 We were like sisters. She said, I need to say something.
I'm not going to be here for long.

Speaker 4 Someone's going to kill me.

Speaker 1 Who'd want Melissa that?

Speaker 4 I have no idea.

Speaker 5 A female was found deceased in a ranch area.

Speaker 6 It looked like she had been executed. She has kids.
She has a family.

Speaker 7 The second victim is from the rado, comes from a very good family.

Speaker 4 I think my whole block heard me scream. We were all scared.
We were like, what is going on?

Speaker 5 We might have a serial killer in our hands.

Speaker 9 He was trying to grab you?

Speaker 10 He was trying to grab me.

Speaker 8 You're afraid.

Speaker 6 She's frantic. She's scared.
She says that somebody tried to kill her.

Speaker 7 She realizes, oh my god, he killed Melissa. He killed Claudine.

Speaker 7 And I'm sitting in his house.

Speaker 1 These are the streets of Laredo, Texas.

Speaker 1 And these are also the streets of Laredo. They're named after famous mystery writers, men and women who created frightening, intriguing stories full of twists.

Speaker 1 Stories that often deal with the wealthy, the powerful, the privileged, and the damage they can do. We cover a lot of that on Dateline too.

Speaker 1 This story is different.

Speaker 1 It's a visit to the Underbelly, a four-block stretch of Laredo called San Bernardo Avenue. It is the wrong side of the tracks, known for prostitution, drug deals, and everything that comes with that.

Speaker 1 In the late summer of 2018, these blocks were even more dangerous. That's when someone was hunting the women of San Bernardo like prey.

Speaker 1 On these sidewalks, you find people who rarely have their stories told.

Speaker 1 It began on September 3rd when a woman's body was found on a secluded road 25 miles from downtown.

Speaker 1 Now, despite its frontier reputation, the border town of Laredo is consistently ranked among the safest cities in the country.

Speaker 1 Isidro Alaniz is Webb County District Attorney. Usually when a body turns up, it's not a murder, it's somebody who was crossing the border who died from the heat.
That's exactly true.

Speaker 1 This wasn't that. No, not at all.

Speaker 7 Not at all.

Speaker 1 Webb County Sheriff's Captain Federico Calderon was called to the scene. A young woman shot in the head.

Speaker 6 From a distance, it looked like she might have been dumped there, but, you know, upon closer inspection, it looked like she had been executed at that spot. There were shell casings.

Speaker 1 The ammo came from a.40 caliber handgun and the brand Federal, a leading ammunition supplier that also sells to a lot of law enforcement agencies. The medical examiner made the ID off her prints.

Speaker 1 The victim was 29-year-old Melissa Ramirez.

Speaker 6 She has kids. She has a family that lives in Rio Rabo.

Speaker 6 which is a municipality just south of Laredo.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement knew Melissa as a drug user and sex worker. To her family, she was something else entirely.

Speaker 4 Every time we would hang out with each other, we would just laugh. It was very fun to be around with her.

Speaker 1 Gracie Ramirez was Melissa's sister-in-law.

Speaker 4 We were like sisters. We were

Speaker 4 super close to each other.

Speaker 1 Melissa's mom likes to remember her daughter as she was.

Speaker 11 She got good grades.

Speaker 11 I never struggled with her.

Speaker 11 I never had problems with her.

Speaker 1 That was before her early teens, before a bipolar diagnosis that went untreated. Gracie says Melissa never let on to her family, that she'd turn to drugs and then sex work.

Speaker 1 She really kept her life split in two, didn't she?

Speaker 4 She was very private to her life.

Speaker 1 Still, when Melissa would leave for days at a time, Her family knew it couldn't be for anything good.

Speaker 4 So she would come visit me. I would beg her to stay with me.
I would feed her. I would give her everything she needed.

Speaker 4 But she just insisted that she needed to head out.

Speaker 1 But she wouldn't say where?

Speaker 4 No, she would never tell me where, nor her, her brother. She wouldn't tell anybody.

Speaker 1 Now Melissa had met a brutal end.

Speaker 5 A female was found deceased.

Speaker 1 When it comes to news about the underserved and undercovered, people in Laredo usually turn to Priscilla Villareal.

Speaker 1 We're live FYI.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're live.

Speaker 5 Anyone want to say hi?

Speaker 1 Hi, everybody.

Speaker 1 To her more than 200,000 followers, Priscilla is known as La Gordiloca.

Speaker 1 La Gordiloca, the big crazy woman.

Speaker 12 Thank you.

Speaker 13 Everybody says the fat crazy to everybody.

Speaker 1 She deals mostly in crime, but unlike traditional news outlets, her reporting is done off the cuff via Facebook live streams as events are unfolding.

Speaker 1 And so, if something's going down in Laredo, LaGordiloca usually knows about it.

Speaker 5 They call me and say, hey, there's a chase here by, you know, central Laredo.

Speaker 1 And you can get to it.

Speaker 5 I'm up and going.

Speaker 1 That rawness and immediacy seems to keep Laredo clicking on her.

Speaker 1 Now, LaGordi Loca was asking the same questions as Melissa's family. Who'd want Melissa dead?

Speaker 1 I...

Speaker 6 I have no idea.

Speaker 1 She didn't, but maybe Melissa did. Investigators heard that about three weeks before her murder, Melissa had some kind of premonition.

Speaker 4 We were at the kitchen table. She said, I need to say something.
We just stopped what we were doing.

Speaker 1 And she said, I'm not going to be here for long.

Speaker 4 Someone's going to kill me.

Speaker 1 She didn't tell you who that was.

Speaker 4 She never said who it was. She just said, someone's going to point me with a gun like this.

Speaker 1 She said somebody was going to shoot her in the head. Yes.

Speaker 1 And prosecutor Alanese, who was on this from the start, says forensics back up the story Melissa so chillingly foretold.

Speaker 7 She did have a gunshot wound to around her wrist area, one by her jaw and one to her head.

Speaker 1 It feels like she's putting her her hand up.

Speaker 7 That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 Melissa's premonition came true. Soon, police had more than just a sense that they were headed in the right direction.

Speaker 5 And at this moment, police and other agencies are surrounding a home in Las Cuestas subdivision.

Speaker 1 An early lead. And it's a big one.
You go through his house and his truck.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 1 Anything?

Speaker 7 Weapons were recovered from his house.

Speaker 1 Investigators in Laredo, Texas were working the murder of Melissa Ramirez, found dead on the side of a desolate road.

Speaker 1 The murders of sex workers can be problematic for investigators. Victims often don't keep regular hours, making their movements difficult to track.

Speaker 1 They may not know their customers' real names, and often their families and friends don't want to speak with police.

Speaker 1 Over the years, a number of law enforcement agencies faced criticism that they just didn't work hard enough to solve the murders of sex workers.

Speaker 1 And if the Laredo killer was counting on that, then he made a mistake because investigators pursued this case aggressively.

Speaker 1 Sheriff's Captain Federico Calderón knew he'd need help, so he called in the Texas Rangers, the Department of Public Safety, and the U.S. Border Patrol.
And early on came a lead, a big one.

Speaker 1 The residents who'd discovered Melissa's body told of a dark-colored pickup truck parked nearby. As they approached the truck to see who was inside, it sped off.

Speaker 6 And when they saw the truck leave, they noticed that there was a body next to where the truck was parked.

Speaker 1 One of the group was close enough to jot down a a plate number.

Speaker 1 A computer search later, investigators were able to track down the truck's owner that same evening. And it wasn't at all who they were expecting.
And that person of interest is one of yours.

Speaker 9 That's right.

Speaker 5 At this time, the Sheriff Department and Texas Rangers are investigating a murder.

Speaker 1 Investigators in Laredo, Texas were not talking publicly about Melissa Ramirez's killing. LaGordi Loca wasn't talking about anything else.

Speaker 5 And at this moment,

Speaker 5 the police and other agencies are surrounding a home in Las Cuestas subdivision.

Speaker 1 She was live on Facebook as Laredo PD staked out the house of a man whose truck had been seen next to Melissa's body. It had to have been a little surreal for those officers.

Speaker 1 Because the truck's owner, 32-year-old Renee Arce,

Speaker 1 was himself a Laredo police officer. Even so, as soon as he stepped out his front door, he was cuffed and brought in for questioning.

Speaker 5 A male police officer is either detained or has not been detained yet, but it's being said he is responsible for the murder of this female.

Speaker 1 Law enforcement didn't know if that last part was actually true. It's one of the things they asked Officer Arce about.
This is what we have.

Speaker 14 We have some people that came up on the dead body

Speaker 14 and then we have your truck at the scene you pause apparently the people are trying to wave you down into the mash taranka

Speaker 1 arce said he was in the area that day but had nothing to do with any murder he was just checking out real estate i was looking to buy the property i'm not gonna buy booking

Speaker 14 investigators kept at him Did you take a gun with you out there when you went to Booking? Yeah, I take my concealer.

Speaker 1 What do you carry?

Speaker 14 the 9mm p320

Speaker 1 so not the caliber of weapon that killed melissa of course plenty of officers own more than one gun

Speaker 1 it can't be lost on you that the laredo police officer will have access to 40 caliber federal ammunition that's a reasonable conclusion arce insisted it wasn't him You go through his house and his truck.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 1 Anything?

Speaker 7 Weapons were recovered from his house.

Speaker 1 Yes, except none matched the murder weapon or the ammo.

Speaker 1 Still, it was strange.

Speaker 1 He's parked right next to a body and he doesn't see it?

Speaker 6 That's what he said.

Speaker 1 And with no probable cause, they let him go.

Speaker 1 Soon, investigators were following a new lead. Melissa's mom mentioned a suspicious man who'd been with her daughter the week before.

Speaker 11 She came with a man.

Speaker 11 I didn't know him.

Speaker 1 She was unnerved enough that she told Gracie about the encounter.

Speaker 4 She said that he had this

Speaker 4 weird look on his eyes whenever he would see Melissa, like

Speaker 4 an evil look.

Speaker 1 That to me sounds like somebody who at least is a sort of potential suspect.

Speaker 8 Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 6 He was on our list.

Speaker 1 Investigators tracked him down. And it turned out the man was a John, a customer of Melissa's.

Speaker 6 It happens to be that while the timeframe of the murder occurred, he was in another location on the road. He was driving a truck somewhere.

Speaker 1 Now you've looked at two specific guys, the police officer who parked almost right on top of Melissa's body, and the guy who'd been a customer of hers.

Speaker 1 You don't get a good hit of either one of those guys.

Speaker 6 We're nowhere closer than we were the day of the actual murder. And we resorted to

Speaker 6 what cops do best, and that's being nosy and talking to people.

Speaker 1 That meant scouring the corners of San Bernardo. One of the names you hear when you're building a profile of who Melissa was is Claudine Luera.

Speaker 6 Correct. They worked in the same area.

Speaker 6 They were acquainted. They knew each other.

Speaker 1 Both prostitutes, both on drugs.

Speaker 6 Correct.

Speaker 1 Investigators thought Claudine might know who it was that Melissa so feared, except she was nowhere to be found.

Speaker 1 They put out the word among other law enforcement agencies, but Claudine didn't turn up.

Speaker 1 Possible that she heard you guys were looking for her and was keeping her head down?

Speaker 6 That is a possibility, for sure.

Speaker 1 Ten days after Melissa's murder, they finally found Claudine Luera. She wasn't talking.
She's been shot.

Speaker 6 She's been shot?

Speaker 1 It was about two miles from where Melissa's body was found, also by the side of the road. Nearby, the same.40 caliber federal ammunition.
Claudine was taken to a hospital. She did not survive.

Speaker 6 It's starting to smell like it's the same guy, and we have the strong inclination after processing that crime scene that we're probably dealing with the same person.

Speaker 1 Someone's killing prostitutes.

Speaker 6 Someone's killing prostitutes with a.40 caliber handgun.

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Speaker 1 It was a hot end to the summer of 2018, and Laredo was simmering. Within 10 days, two women had been found executed, and investigators thought it was the work of one killer.

Speaker 1 They'd focused on two potential suspects. Neither panned out.

Speaker 7 People were worried, people were scared. Now, this was real, and you can feel the tension.

Speaker 4 So I would just order everything to get it delivered rather going to the store. We were all scared.
We were like, what is going on?

Speaker 1 Law enforcement had been looking for Claudine Luera. Now she was gone too.

Speaker 4 It wasn't until Thursday that I heard of another female being found.

Speaker 13 The victim was found in the middle.

Speaker 1 Claudine's sister Colette heard about the second murder from NBC affiliate KGNS News.

Speaker 13 She was alive when deputies arrived, but later died at the hospital.

Speaker 4 And I kept thinking, man, poor lady, she must have suffered a lot.

Speaker 8 I go, poor family.

Speaker 1 She had no way of knowing it was Claudine. And when she found out, it hit her hard.

Speaker 4 I think my whole block heard me scream. And just to think, you know, here I am feeling sorry for this person the day before, saying, you know,

Speaker 8 how sad for the family. She must have suffered.
And next thing you know, we're that family.

Speaker 1 She rushed to tell Claudine's daughter, Siara, at work, but didn't have to say a word.

Speaker 8 And I could just see the look on their face.

Speaker 8 I knew my mom was gone.

Speaker 1 Colette remembered how close she and Claudine were growing up in Laredo.

Speaker 4 She would help me sneak in my frogs into the house. I love to dress them up in Barbie clothes.

Speaker 8 Actual frogs. Yes.

Speaker 1 Siara knew her mother had suffered trauma beginning in her youth.

Speaker 8 What happened to her growing up?

Speaker 1 That's a hard story for you to tell.

Speaker 4 She was assaulted by somebody who lived behind her

Speaker 4 and

Speaker 4 I don't think anything was ever done about it.

Speaker 8 She was how old?

Speaker 4 I believe under the age of 14.

Speaker 1 She was damaged by that.

Speaker 8 Yeah, very damaged.

Speaker 1 Siara says her mom had always been there for her children,

Speaker 1 but then got together with an old boyfriend, someone the family felt was bad news.

Speaker 1 She started using heroin.

Speaker 4 I was like 15 and things, you know, she just changed. She would only wear like long sleeves.

Speaker 1 So you knew something was wrong.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it didn't make sense.

Speaker 1 It wasn't long before Claudine lost custody of her children.

Speaker 4 I would be lying if I didn't say there weren't times that I asked her, you know, like,

Speaker 4 when is my love gonna be enough?

Speaker 1 And what was her answer? It was

Speaker 4 that it was enough. She was just

Speaker 4 heavily addicted to a drug, and it took over. But my love was enough, and she always wanted me to know that, you know, to separate the drug from her and to understand.

Speaker 11 But I couldn't

Speaker 1 after that claudine turned to sex work to feed her habit her family never stopped loving her who didn't you think it killed her my thought was him the boyfriend the boyfriend because

Speaker 8 who else

Speaker 1 good question because the boyfriend had an airtight alibi

Speaker 1 Investigators did find a person of interest after looking through Claudine's phone. Shortly before her death, she'd been communicating with a guy who went by the nickname Choan.
He had a sheet?

Speaker 6 He did, you know, a little bit of everything.

Speaker 1 They went to his address, parked by his house, and waited.

Speaker 6 He's not there. He's not there, but as luck would have it, he shows up.
And as soon as he sees that there's people waiting for him outside his house, he takes off at a high rate of speed and

Speaker 6 they chase him, he gets away. All of a sudden, we feel like maybe we got our guy.

Speaker 1 And then Choon himself contacted police and came in for an interview. He said he was with Claudine,

Speaker 1 but before she was murdered.

Speaker 6 And he says that at some point in that late evening or night, he believes that she goes her way, he goes his way. That's the last that they saw.

Speaker 1 Which is exactly what the murderer would say.

Speaker 6 That's what, yeah, exactly. We definitely thought

Speaker 6 we were heading in the right direction.

Speaker 1 They thought finally they were getting close. Then investigators got a call that would make them realize it wasn't Chone,

Speaker 1 it wasn't Officer Arce,

Speaker 1 and it wasn't the trucker.

Speaker 6 And Ranger Salinas tells me, hey, one of our troopers ran into a female who she's frantic, she's scared. She says that somebody tried to kill her with a

Speaker 1 handgun.

Speaker 1 Like the two other victims, this woman worked san bernardo

Speaker 1 except this woman survived

Speaker 1 had she been face to face with the killer

Speaker 9 he was trying to grab you he was trying to grab me you're

Speaker 6 feels like you're getting close it feels like we're onto something finally so you know who he is

Speaker 1 September 14th, 2018, two nights after Claudine Lueira's killing, a Texas DPS trooper was pumping gas into his cruiser just before 9 p.m.

Speaker 1 when a frantic woman hurried toward him.

Speaker 1 She wasn't wearing a blouse as she breathlessly told him she'd just been attacked by the man she was with.

Speaker 1 That's when the trooper turned on his body cam audio.

Speaker 8 He had a white truck.

Speaker 1 The woman was 26-year-old Erica Pena.

Speaker 1 She told him she and the man had arrived at the gas station just a few minutes earlier. And then after they parked, he put a gun to her head.

Speaker 11 I came running. He wanted to.
He took out his gun and he wanted to get me back inside. And they started yelling, help me, help me.

Speaker 1 Erica used her wits to escape. She said, as the man grabbed her blouse, she threw the passenger door open, slithered out of her top, and ran to safety.

Speaker 9 So he was trying to grab you?

Speaker 10 He was trying to grab me.

Speaker 1 Erica admitted she worked on the streets of San Bernardo, where the man had picked her up earlier that evening. She described him as a regular customer.
So you know who he is?

Speaker 17 His name is David.

Speaker 8 He's tall, little.

Speaker 9 He's wearing boots and likes a little oilfield worker.

Speaker 10 I think he said he was a supervisor somewhere.

Speaker 6 Like in the oilfield, what?

Speaker 1 She told him something changed in the air when the subject of the murders of Melissa and Claudine came up in conversation.

Speaker 10 They're picking people up to investigate, right?

Speaker 17 The girls, and he's like, well, what are they closing?

Speaker 8 What have you heard? And I'm like, I don't know.

Speaker 9 The guy pointed a gun.

Speaker 1 At the mention of the murders, the trooper decided to contact investigators on the off chance it was connected.

Speaker 9 She's in shock, man.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 she was trying to mention something about the other two girls, and that's when the guy got nervous.

Speaker 1 They asked him to bring Erica to the substation

Speaker 1 where Captain Calderon and the Texas Ranger were waiting. With a Texas rainstorm pounding on a galvanized roof,

Speaker 1 Erica laid it out.

Speaker 11 I was standing there, and he passed by. He passed and he turned around.
Get in, babe.

Speaker 1 She said earlier that night, David had taken her to his house, where she'd been a couple of times before.

Speaker 6 She's able to describe the walkway, the driveway, the inside of the house, you know, the neighborhood it's in.

Speaker 1 Erica repeated what she'd told the trooper. When the conversation turned to the murders, David's demeanor suddenly changed.
He seemed nervous, agitated.

Speaker 10 They said, I'm scared, they said, because

Speaker 10 I was one of the last ones killed.

Speaker 10 They said

Speaker 10 something about DNA.

Speaker 1 Erica began to suspect David was the killer while inside his house with no clear way out.

Speaker 6 She starts getting a bad feeling like she is going to die, so she wants to leave.

Speaker 1 She wanted out of that house. He talked her into going with him to that gas station to get some food.
Luckily, the DPS trooper happened to be there. So maybe that's your guy.

Speaker 6 It's looking like one of the best leads we've had up to now.

Speaker 1 Erica remembered something else David had said.

Speaker 1 After her interview with detectives, a slew of investigators bundled themselves and Erica into three cars and told her to show them David's house.

Speaker 1 She directed them to a home in a nice neighborhood on the north side of Laredo.

Speaker 6 The house with a walkway just how she described it.

Speaker 6 The entrance to the house how she described it.

Speaker 1 To investigators, it all seemed to line up. There was no white Dodge in sight.
They decided to wait.

Speaker 1 Who lives at that address?

Speaker 6 We found out that it's owned by Juan David Ortiz and wife, is what it says on the record.

Speaker 1 And who's Juan David Ortiz?

Speaker 6 We think he's some sort of oilfield worker or something. There are two vehicles registered to that particular house.

Speaker 6 One of them is a Dodge 2500 white pickup truck, which fits the bill for an oil field type truck.

Speaker 1 That truck had disabled veteran plates, suggesting David had served in the military.

Speaker 1 So far, everything Erica had told them was ringing true.

Speaker 1 Feels like you're getting close.

Speaker 6 It feels like we're onto something finally.

Speaker 1 They put a bolo out for Ortiz's truck. Then,

Speaker 1 another twist.

Speaker 6 We get a call of another body that's found off of IH-35.

Speaker 1 Hey, hey, the killer of Laredo wasn't done yet.

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Speaker 1 Law enforcement was on the lookout for a white Dodge Ram belonging to Juan David Ortiz,

Speaker 1 the man they desperately wanted to question about the murders of Melissa Ramirez and Claudine Luera.

Speaker 1 Soon the truck was spotted near San Bernardo, the moment captured on security video.

Speaker 6 The troopers, they're driving by, they see the vehicle parked at a gas station. That's the truck right there.
You walked inside.

Speaker 1 When he emerged, they confronted him.

Speaker 16 Stop right there. Stop.
Stop. Stop.
Stop.

Speaker 1 Stop.

Speaker 16 Is this your truck? Is this your truck?

Speaker 1 Okay. all right, turn around.

Speaker 6 He started telling the troopers, hey, you're freaking me out.

Speaker 16 Okay, okay, I'm gonna explain to you.

Speaker 6 Then he runs from the troopers.

Speaker 1 They chased Ortiz for a few blocks, then lost him. No, bro.
He went out here.

Speaker 7 He's in here.

Speaker 1 He couldn't have gone far on foot, so the SWAT team was called in.

Speaker 1 Officers suited up and set up a perimeter.

Speaker 1 Then proceeded to comb the entire city block.

Speaker 1 Come out!

Speaker 1 Take police!

Speaker 1 There was no sign of him.

Speaker 1 It was a scene custom-made for La Gordi Loca.

Speaker 1 She was live streaming this latest news to the community most affected by it.

Speaker 5 Just really don't know what's going on yet, but it's very serious.

Speaker 1 They're all armed.

Speaker 5 They're all with their bulletproof vests. It's probably those recent deaths that just happened.
I can only speculate. Like I said, nothing's confirmed.

Speaker 1 As the search was underway, there's another one.

Speaker 6 We get a call of another body that's found off of I-35.

Speaker 6 The deputy makes it out to the body and he calls me and he says, hey, I think y'all have another one.

Speaker 1 It was the body of Giselda Cantu. She was also a sex worker, also shot to death on a Webb County road.
And near her, federal.40 caliber casings.

Speaker 1 And then came a phone call from the Border Patrol. It changed everything investigators thought they understood about the man they'd been pursuing.
He's not an oil field worker.

Speaker 6 He's not an oil field worker. He's a Border Patrol agent.
He's a supervisory Border Patrol agent.

Speaker 1 That had to hit you like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 6 We weren't expecting that. I can tell you that.
We were not expecting that.

Speaker 1 Other Border Patrol agents had connected the dots when Ortiz posted some messages on Facebook just moments before while he was on the run, telling his wife and kids he loved them.

Speaker 8 Along with

Speaker 1 Doc Ortiz checks out, farewell. Like he's expecting not to survive.

Speaker 6 Like he's expecting not to survive, correct?

Speaker 1 The search narrowed to a hotel parking garage. You two guys, let's start leading the way.
Let's start going to where we think this guy is. Let's do it slowly and carefully.

Speaker 19 So that's when we split into two sections and we made our way. We were making our way up to the parking lot.

Speaker 1 Investigator Noe Gonzalez led the SWAT team up that parking garage ramp with Laredo PD, DPS Troopers, Cal Darone, and Salinas all following close behind.

Speaker 1 As they made their way through the fourth and last floor, all that remained to be cleared were a lone pickup truck and some cement pillars.

Speaker 9 That was it.

Speaker 19 It was either the last four pillars or that truck.

Speaker 1 Gonzalez and others at the top of the stack covered the pillars. He directed the rest of the team toward the truck.

Speaker 1 Get down!

Speaker 1 Get down!

Speaker 1 And there he was, hiding in that truck bed. He doesn't put up a fight.

Speaker 6 He doesn't. It would not have been a wise thing to do, but no, he didn't.

Speaker 1 It was around 2.30 in the morning by the time they placed Juan David Ortiz under arrest.

Speaker 5 They got the guy. It's confirmed.

Speaker 5 Suspect is in custody.

Speaker 1 And then he was inside an interrogation room. What's his demeanor?

Speaker 1 Scared? Arrogant? Ashamed?

Speaker 6 I would say arrogant is the right word. You hit the nail on the head there.
He's

Speaker 6 basically laughing that he was able to outrun the troopers.

Speaker 20 Who's the trooper I spoke to, man? The trooper couldn't keep up with me, dude.

Speaker 20 Tell him he needs to work out tomorrow, man.

Speaker 1 Ortiz repeatedly denied knowing any of the victims.

Speaker 20 I have no guilt at all about it. I don't know who it is.

Speaker 20 She happened to be. I have no recollection.
And the evidence is showing us.

Speaker 20 Like I said, I don't recall.

Speaker 1 Investigators recalled finding Erica's bag in his truck.

Speaker 1 Over more than eight hours, they took his clothes, had a man with a badge change into prisoner orange,

Speaker 1 and they pressed him.

Speaker 20 We got the bullets. We got the motors.

Speaker 20 We also got

Speaker 20 pretty intense

Speaker 1 DA Alamiz was watching on video.

Speaker 7 I'll never forget the time was 11.24 in the morning. He looks at Captain Carleron and says,

Speaker 7 Can you take him off?

Speaker 7 He says, I'm not going to hurt you. And I'm sitting there watching like you're watching the Super Bowl, you know, and I'm like, take him off.
Take him off.

Speaker 1 Do it. He's asking for trust here.
Yeah, so Carl Deron goes to take off

Speaker 7 his handcuffs. I look at everybody in the room and I say, get ready.
Here it comes.

Speaker 20 And then,

Speaker 1 and here it came.

Speaker 20 I was continuing driving on time.

Speaker 20 And then this is where a monster came out.

Speaker 1 Investigators were trying to learn more from Ortiz, and La Gordi Loca was live with the latest.

Speaker 5 The man who was detained last night in the parking lot of that hotel is a Border Patrol agent.

Speaker 1 She told her audience the man who had sparked such fear in the city of Laredo for the last two weeks had been caught.

Speaker 5 We had or we might have

Speaker 5 a serial killer in our hands.

Speaker 1 A captive Ortiz was speaking to a captivated audience.

Speaker 1 He said he'd taken his San Bernardo friend to score drugs late Sunday night, then got upset when she got high and passed out in his truck.

Speaker 20 After a while, the captain's driving around like a dumbass.

Speaker 1 He said Melissa began yelling she wanted out of his truck and that was all it took

Speaker 1 and i asked him specifically what gun did he use he said he used as a service weapon the service weapon issued by the border patrol along with the federal ammo his employer supplied

Speaker 1 and having made the jump from lawman to to murderer, Ortiz said he wanted to do it again.

Speaker 1 Ten days after he killed Melissa, he picked up Claudine Luera. He says she was curious about where Melissa's body had been found.
So he started to drive her out there.

Speaker 20 That's when she stopped greeting, freaking, no, no, dude, no, f ⁇ that. No, dude, no, I don't want to go after all.
You're probably the killer. You're probably the killer.

Speaker 1 Ortiz said he told her to get out, then shot her as she turned her back.

Speaker 1 Now, Calderón and his team had to ponder this.

Speaker 1 Remember how investigators trying to solve Melissa's murder had reached out to the rest of law enforcement, including the Border Patrol, looking for Melissa's friend, Claudine Luira.

Speaker 1 Ortiz's job with the Border Patrol was to work in the BIC, the Border Intelligence Center. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You think Ortiz heard that you guys were looking for Claudine Luera and went out and found her and killed her?

Speaker 7 I swear I, you know, the coincidence is just too

Speaker 7 big, too strong. I think that he heard the call come in.

Speaker 7 I think that he was on full alert.

Speaker 1 And thought, I got to cover my tracks.

Speaker 7 And thought, I've got to get to Claudine

Speaker 7 before they do.

Speaker 1 Ortiz confessed to killing Claudine and Melissa and Giselda

Speaker 1 and assaulting Erica.

Speaker 1 And he wasn't done.

Speaker 6 He tells us, and there's one more you probably don't even know about.

Speaker 1 He sent them to a gravel mound 15 miles outside of town.

Speaker 7 A bunch of cops that I'm there with, they all burst out of the room to get in their patrol cars and drive out there.

Speaker 1 It's where they found 28-year-old Janelle Ortiz.

Speaker 1 Same last name, but no relation to the man who killed her. Janelle Ortiz fit the profile?

Speaker 6 Fit the profile,

Speaker 6 same

Speaker 6 work

Speaker 6 type, worked in the same area, also a drug user.

Speaker 1 When law enforcement caught up to Ortiz at that gas station, he had just returned from killing Janelle.

Speaker 20 Mind you, by this time I know that you guys are looking for me because of Erica. So by this time, the whole life is coming to an end.

Speaker 1 Ortiz knew he was being hunted by law enforcement and so accelerated his killing spree. And if you hadn't caught him, he wouldn't have stopped.

Speaker 6 He told us that he was going to keep going until he was caught.

Speaker 1 In the room, Ortiz offered motives that made him sound virtuous. He described murdering sex workers in cold blood as a kind of public service.

Speaker 20 I was continuing driving on Tunbin,

Speaker 20 and this is where a monster came out.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 20 I was driving all that

Speaker 20 people

Speaker 20 they they don't have jobs they're all

Speaker 1 this sounds stupid like why don't you clean up the streets and I always gotta do it had he just made that up to avoid the shame of being a cop who was also a customer

Speaker 1 or had he been afraid the women he'd been with could have exposed him

Speaker 1 you think what set Ortiz off was that he let the women get too close? Yes.

Speaker 7 I think what ended up happening, I think there was a power shift here. And starting with Melissa, I think she crossed over, you know, from

Speaker 7 her world into his world.

Speaker 1 And that gave her a lever.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Because she becomes now a threat to his livelihood, to his family, his children, to his job.

Speaker 1 D.A. Alaniz had enough to charge Juan David Ortiz with four counts of murder, one count of unlawful restraint, one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and two counts of evading arrest.

Speaker 1 Melissa Ramirez's mom, Christina, recalled how hard it was seeing Ortiz for the first time at one of his hearings.

Speaker 11 I saw him and my heart accelerated, and I got so angry that I stood up and I shouted at him that he was a murderer.

Speaker 11 Order, order.

Speaker 4 He just gave this smirk

Speaker 4 and that literally sent chills down my spine. Like, why is it, you know, you have this poor lady screaming at you, and you're just like, this is a mom who lost a daughter.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you're laughing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ortiz said his confession was coerced. and pleaded not guilty.
Four years later, a jury didn't buy it. Their verdict took less than five hours.

Speaker 21 We the jury find the defendant Juan David Ortiz guilty of the offense of capital murder as charged in the indictment.

Speaker 1 Juan David Ortiz was sentenced that very night, life in prison, with no possibility of parole.

Speaker 1 It was a long fall for a decorated combat medic, a rising star at the Border Patrol, and a married father of three.

Speaker 4 Intel Supervisor had all this power, all this knowledge masters educated i mean the list goes on for the victims families the verdict brought some relief i was very happy i wanted to yell i wanted to like scream of excitement and he just looked um

Speaker 1 i think he didn't care no emotion no emotion at all

Speaker 8 But I felt so happy.

Speaker 1 Siara's life also changed in one good way.

Speaker 1 And now you work for the Sheriff's Department. I do.
How is that?

Speaker 4 I love it. I think I am in the right place.

Speaker 4 And I know my mom would be so proud of me.

Speaker 1 I know she's proud of me.

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