Texas files death-penalty case for agent

LAREDO, Texas — A U.S. Border Patrol agent who confessed to killing four women and leaving their bodies on rural Texas roadsides has been charged with capital murder, and a prosecutor said Wednesday that he intends to seek the death penalty.

Juan David Ortiz told investigators that he killed the women — whom police have identified as prostitutes — because he wanted “to clean up the streets of Laredo,” and that he considered that local agencies weren’t doing an inadequate job, Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said at a news conference.

Ortiz, 35, has been held in Webb County jail in lieu of a $2.5 million bond since his Sept. 15 arrest.

Ortiz, a Border Patrol supervisor and Navy veteran, seemed to be living a typical suburban life with his wife and two children when the killings occurred. After the first slaying, he continued going to work as usual.

Authorities have said Ortiz targeted his victims for their vulnerability. Melissa Ramirez, 29, was slain on Sept. 3, and 42-year-old Claudine Luera was killed on Sept. 13.

On Sept. 14, he picked up another woman, Erika Pena, who told investigators that Ortiz acted oddly when she brought up Ramirez’s slaying and that he later pointed a gun at her in a gas station. Pena said Ortiz grabbed her shirt as she got out and ran, finding a state trooper who was refueling his vehicle.

Ortiz fled and later told investigators that he then picked up and killed his last two victims — Alicia Cantu, 35, and Janelle Ortiz, 28, a transgender woman whose birth name was Humberto Ortiz.