Serial killer case in the jury’s hands
Ex-border Patrol supervisor Ortiz is facing life in prison
One by one during 13 days in 2018, Juan David Ortiz picked up four sex workers in Laredo, took them to remote areas and shot them in the head or neck, leaving them to die, prosecutors told jurors Wednesday in closing arguments in his capital murder trial.
The jury began deliberating shortly after 2:30 p.m. If found guilty, Ortiz, 39, a former U.S.
Border Patrol intelligence supervisor, faces life in prison without parole.
“Mr. Ortiz was a serial killer then, and now,” said Isidro R. “Chilo” Alaniz, the district attorney for Webb and Zapata counties. “That is what the evidence has proven.”
Ortiz was 35 when he was arrested on Sept. 15, 2018, after a frantic manhunt. The search was triggered by a fifth woman, a prostitute who told police that one of her customers had pulled a gun on her as she became suspicious that he had killed two of her friends who also worked Laredo’s red light district on San Bernardo Avenue.
A 10-hour interrogation quickly followed — later played on video to the jury — in which Ortiz described killing Melissa Ramirez, 29, on Sept. 3, 2018, Claudine Anne Luera, 42, on Sept. 13 and Guiselda Alicia Hernandez, 35, and Janelle Ortiz, 28, hours before his arrest.
Defense attorneys Joel Perez and Raymond Fuchs argued that law enforcement officers did not properly inform Ortiz of his constitutional right to silence, illegally searched his Dodge Ram pickup and coerced him into confessing after keeping him handcuffed to the arm of a chair for hours.
“That evidence should not
have been admitted for your consideration,” Fuchs told the panel. “If one of us is denied a right, we are all denied a right. In this case, police denied his rights.”
Perez said the main investigators used “improper persuasion, improper influence, and promises” to get the confession, citing the video in which one of the detectives told Ortiz that if he cooperated, they would “put in a good word” with the DA.
Ortiz also was charged with aggravated assault in the case of Erika Peña, the state’s key witness who detailed how she escaped from Ortiz’s truck at a gas station and convenience store in Laredo on Sept. 14, 2015.
Peña had testified that “somehow, some way” she wriggled out of her blouse as Ortiz held the garment with one hand and pulled a gun on her with the other.
Peña ran to a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who was at the gas station. Hours later, Ortiz returned to the store, was confronted by officers and fled on foot. He was arrested in the parking garage of a nearby hotel.
Alaniz on Wednesday replayed a video of Peña desperately telling the trooper what happened, in English and in Spanish.
Testimony and Ortiz’s confession established that he knew Peña and three of the women killed — he would pick them up, take
them to buy drugs and have sex with them. Ortiz told investigators he had never met Hernandez but that when she learned, just before he shot her, that he was thinking of killing himself, she had told him, “Don’t do it. God loves you.”
Jurors saw video of his denying and deflecting questions about the women from Webb County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Federico Calderon and Texas Ranger E.J. Salinas. After hours of interrogation, he told them, “I’m the one who did it.”
Ortiz, a Navy veteran, joined U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Laredo in 2009. He rose to become a supervisor, and along the way earned a master’s degree from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. Records show Ortiz and his wife, Daniella, owned a home in San Antonio from 2007 until 2015.
The trial was moved to San Antonio and Bexar County because of extensive media coverage in Laredo and Webb County. Judge Oscar J. Hale Jr., who presides over the 406th District Court in Webb County, allowed the jury to consider a lesser offense of murder. They began deliberations at 2:35 p.m.
Alaniz had sought the death penalty but in October rescinded that after consulting with the families of the four victims, who he said did not want Ortiz executed.