Jurors hear former Border Patrol agent’s confession in four sex-worker killings

SAN ANTONIO — Jurors in the capital murder trial of a former U.S. Border Patrol agent have heard a taped interview in which he confesses to the 2018 killings of four sex workers in South Texas.

If convicted of capital murder, Juan David Ortiz, 39, faces life in prison without parole because prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty. The trial started on Nov. 28 and is set to continue today.

Ortiz, a Navy veteran, was a Border Patrol intelligence supervisor at the time of his arrest in September 2018. Ortiz, who officials have said wasn’t on duty during the killings and wore civilian clothes, is accused of killing Melissa Ramirez, 29; Claudine Anne Luera, 42; Guiselda Alicia Cantu, 35; and Janelle Ortiz, 28.

Each woman was shot in the head and left along roads on the outskirts of Laredo in September. One died of blunt force trauma after being shot.

Juan David Ortiz told detectives in the video played in court last week that as he drove along a stretch of road that the women frequented, “the monster would come out,” the San Antonio Express-News reported. He told investigators he wanted to “clean up the streets,” and referred to the women as “trash” and “so dirty.”

Ortiz’s attorney, Joel Perez, argued in opening statements that investigators had jumped to conclusions, and that his client’s confession was “coerced.” He said his client was “broken” and “suicidal” when he made the confession and told investigators he’d had blackouts. Perez said that Ortiz told the investigators that he was a war veteran who’d been experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and was unable to sleep and was having nightmares. Perez said Ortiz had been put on “a bunch of psychotic pills.”

The ex-agent’s arrest was set in motion when a woman, Erika Pena, escaped from him when he pointed a gun at her while they were in his truck at a gas station on Sept. 14, 2018. Pena, now 31, testified that Ortiz would give her money for drugs, drive her to buy them and then they would have sex.

Normally, she said, he was “nice, smart, funny, a normal guy,” but on Sept. 14, 2018, she got a bad feeling after he told her he was the “next to last person” to have sex with Ramirez, who was found slain the week earlier. She testified that he was worried investigators would find his DNA.

“It made me think that he was the one who might have been murdering,” Pena told the jury.

After Pena escaped, Ortiz fled from the gas station but was later arrested when authorities tracked him to a hotel parking garage.

The trial is being held in San Antonio, in Bexar County, following a defense request to move the trial from Webb County due to extensive media coverage.