Details emerge in Round Rock kidnap case
Suspect says he fled with slain woman’s 2 daughters over fear of ‘crazy Mexicans’
A Round Rock man accused of kidnapping his dead roommate’s children apparently blamed his decision to flee with the girls for fear of “crazy Mexicans” he linked to the killing, according to federal court documents.
Terrance Allen Miles was taken into custody Wednesday after authorities in Colorado pulled him over and found the two missing children — 14-year-old Lilianais Victoria Cake Griffith and 7-year-old Luluvioletta Mariposo Bandera-Magret — in the car with him.
The Las Animas County traffic stop capped off days of searching begun in late December after authorities responded to the Leslie Court home of Tonya Ellen Bates for a welfare check. The mother of two had failed to show up for work for her 7 a.m. shift the day before, prosecutors said.
When Round Rock police stopped by her home they found Bates dead from blunt force trauma, according to court documents. Investigators later determined she’d died sometime on Dec. 29, and her car and both daughters had disappeared.
Authorities sent out an Amber Alert along with a tip that Miles, then considered a person of interest in the “suspicious” death of his roommate, could be headed to Louisiana. Police initially said the girls were in “grave or immediate danger” after an abduction.
Tipster spots vehicle
Surveillance footage later recovered from a Round Rock Walmart showed Miles purchasing camping supplies just after midnight on Dec. 30, driving what appeared to be Bates’ vehicle, prosecutors later said. He stocked up on sleeping bags, tarps and ropes, according to court documents.
About an hour after his latenight shopping trip, Miles’ mother got a text, believed to be sent by her son from the older girl’s phone.
“Mom I left with the kids and came home to something bad I think Tonyas boyfriend,” it said, according to court documents. “I cant talk now tonya was involved in some bad stuff I will talk to you later when im safe these guys are crazy Mexicans.”
By 6 a.m., the girl’s phone pinged off a tower near Lubbock, and by mid-morning someone was using it to make calls in New Mexico. Investigators located the younger girl’s phone where it had been apparently discarded in a wooded area near in Round Rock.
Just after noon, license plate readers near Raton, N.M., recorded the dead woman’s car headed north toward the Colorado border, according to court records. Later that day, police said, Miles was spotted on surveillance footage at a Trinidad, Colo., business.
Although authorities initially issued an Amber Alert covering much of Texas, by Wednesday police were certain enough the girls were in another state to call off the alert and reissue one for Colorado.
Late Wednesday, a Las Animas County deputy acting on a tip spotted the missing vehicle and tailed it for a few miles before pulling over the erratic driver. Both girls were found safe inside, and Miles was taken into custody without incident, police said.
“I’d like to say thank you to that tipster,” said Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks, adding that Miles’ arrest with the help of the multi-state Amber Alert was “a prime example of the system working.”
History of violence
Miles doesn’t appear to have prior arrests in Texas, according to Texas Department of Public Safety records. But he is already on probation for a 2015 domestic violence conviction in Louisiana and is considered a person of interest in a 2014 slaying there, according to authorities.
He was also charged with second-degree attempted murder for trying to suffocate a woman he was dating in 2011 and allegedly staging a suicide scene.
Miles is charged in the Western District of Texas but was slated to make his first court appearance Thursday afternoon in Colorado. He waived his right to a preliminary hearing in Colorado and prosecutors have filed a request to deny bail, citing the severity of the crime and possible flight risk.