Mother of man killed by cops breaks silence
When Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner last month announced plans to honor José “Joe” Campos Torres by renaming a plaza and establishing a memorial at the spot where he was killed by police officers, his mother summed up her feelings in one word.
“Finally,” said 87-year-old Margaret Campos Torres, who has said little publicly in the decades since her son was brutally beaten and dumped in a Houston bayou by police in 1977. She spoke recently with Hearst Newspapers in what she and her family said was her first interview with a media outlet on his death.
Margarita, as she is called, still has the stoic manner and fortitude captured by cameras as she advocated for justice after her son’s body was found floating in Buffalo Bayou.
“He was so young,” she said of her son, a Vietnam War veteran who was 23 when he died.
In the first couple of years after her son’s killing, she made brief speeches in public places demanding justice. Then she crashed, depressed from the loss of her son in such a “brutal and senseless way,” she said, and frustrated by a justice system that didn’t deliver. Silence about the topic has been her way to cope with the pain for four decades, her family said.
His case is “an example of the worst police brutality and the failure of prosecutors and juries to act upon it,” wrote Lupe Salinas, a retired judge and law professor from Houston, in a Michigan State Law Review article.
The 2020 killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police brought renewed demands for police reform nationwide. It also led to a push for more accountability in the Torres case. Last spring, Turner and Houston Police Chief Troy Finner issued a formal apology to the family, with Finner describing Torres’ drowning death as “straight-up murder.”
His mother and other members of their family, which is of Mexican descent, decided now was the time to talk more about “Joe,” the tragedy and the need for change.
“I wish there is no more (police) brutality, no more having a person beaten up or killed for nothing,” Margarita said.
Killed for nothing
On the night of May 4, 1977, Torres went out drinking at a neighborhood bar, not far from where he was staying at the time with his paternal grandmother in Houston’s East End.
Torres was involved in a quarrel with two customers — and then a scuffle with the bar manager. Six police officers arrived, and Torres was arrested for disorderly conduct.
Instead of taking Torres to jail, the officers took him to a spot known as “The Hole,” a platform hidden below street level on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, according to information from court cases and documentaries. All of the officers except for a rookie, 20-year-old Carless Elliott, who would later serve as a witness for the prosecution, took
turns brutally beating the handcuffed veteran, who was wearing Army fatigue pants and combat boots.
Officers Stephen Orlando and Elliot then took Torres to the city jail around 1:15 a.m. on May 5. But he was so severely injured that the sergeant on duty refused to book him and told the officers to take him to Ben Taub Hospital for treatment.
Torres never made it to the hospital. Instead, Orlando arranged a regrouping at The Hole.
“Let’s see if the wetback can swim,” officer Terry Denson reportedly said, before pushing Torres off the platform and into the bayou’s swirling waters 20 feet below. His dead body was found floating in the bayou three days later, on May 8.
It was Mother’s Day.
The veteran’s brutal killing and subsequent court trials were covered nationally, drawing attention to racism and brutality
within the police department. Denson and Orlando both were convicted in state court of negligent homicide and received probation of one year and a $1 fine.
The Justice Department then brought civil rights charges against Denson, Orlando and a third officer, Joseph Janish. They were all convicted and sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ross Sterling to a year and a day in prison for civil rights violations.
Torres’ case led to civil rights protests in Houston that eventually sparked reform inside the police department.
Simmering anger within the Latino community boiled over during a riot in Moody Park in 1978 after police were called to respond to a disturbance. Dozens of people were arrested and 15 injured.
To the officers, Torres was no more than “an unruly Mexican who needed to be taught respect,”
wrote Dwight Watson, an associate professor emeritus at Texas State University, in his book “Race and the Houston Police Department, 1930-1990: A change did come.”
The Torres case, he added, is the “ultimate symbol of police racism, injustice and brutality” that led to major changes, wrote Watson.
Mother’s Day
Margarita and family members said their nightmare began on the morning of Thursday, May 5, 1977, when they realized that José hadn’t come home.
They called each other, relatives and friends, but no one had any idea of his whereabouts. It was out of character for Torres to stay out all night without calling or letting his grandma know.
By Friday, when Torres didn’t show up for work at a shop where he was a glass laborer, the family knew something was wrong. Worries turned into fear. They called police and reported him missing.
By that Sunday, Mother’s Day, Margarita wasn’t feeling up for a celebration. But she agreed to go to the movies with her husband, José Luna Torres, and some of their kids. Their second child, Phillip, and a third, Gilbert, were deployed at the time with the Navy and Marines, respectively.
They were at a neighborhood movie theater watching “Jaws,” a 1975 film that was back in theaters, when they spotted an uncle looking for them in the darkness.
The uncle told the father to come outside to the parking lot, and the family followed. Margarita could not bring herself to talk about it, but the memory of what happened is still vivid in the mind of daughter Janie, who was 10, even though she said she didn’t fully comprehended the context of the events at the time.
As the uncle explained what had happened, José Luna became emotional.
“I saw my dad screaming, ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ ” as he slammed his hand with each word on the car, said Janie, seeking to capture her father’s agony by slapping her left hand. She paused and wiped away a tear.
Janie said she and her sisters clung to Margarita.
“Ay, mama! They took our boy! They took our boy,” Janie heard her father saying. “I can just hear my mom screaming and then falling and he’s trying to hold my mom up. And she’s screaming and kept falling. And I remember shaking.”
Back at home, the family prayed and put a green liquid that smelled like alcohol on Margarita.
“Everyone was desperate trying to calm my mother — my grandma burning sage in the gas, burning incense, I remember the smell,” she said, crying. “My gramma trying so hard to find something healing for everyone.”
Healing and justice have been elusive for the Torres family.
Margarita has largely avoided the topic over the years. Janie stepped in with her son Richard Molina, advocating for justice and keeping the memory of Torres alive by organizing the annual Joe Campos Torres Solidarity Walk for Past and Future Generations in Houston on the anniversaries of his death.
Family members have been pushing for a memorial to Torres as a way of reminding people of an egregious case of police brutality, abuse of power and racism and to show solidarity with the families of other victims. They said Turner’s announcement is a good start.
“I have never heard my family speak like this with the media about the murder of my uncle,” Molina said. “But it’s important that people hear it from the family themselves. People support our cause to end abuse and racism when they understand it from the human level.”
‘A good son’
Sitting in the den of her home, Margarita reflects on her son’s positive attributes.
“Joe was good. A good son. And he would eat anything, but he liked my rice and beans, and tortillas with huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs) with potatoes,” she recalled. She and family members remembered that Torres, as the elder of eight siblings, used to take a fatherly role sometimes, imparting discipline and encouraging them to do well in school.
“He lives in my heart,” she said, leaning forward in her seat, surrounded by brown cushions and placing a hand on her chest, touching a rosary she always wears as a necklace, her eyes fixed straight ahead.
Janie Torres held her hands while grandson Richard Molina, in a nearby chair facing her, closely monitored the abuela’s feelings.
They are very protective of Margarita, a woman of small frame who now uses a support walker to get around.
Margarita said she still thinks about her son every day. “I feel at ease sometimes, but when all of this comes up, it brings memories to me.” She said she prays for the police to “do their job right, that they are trained.”
Thinking about the policemen who killed her son, she said, “God gave me the grace to forgive them. I just pray that they will repent. I can hate no more.”