HATRED, FORGIVENESS FOLLOW KILLER’S FATE
Families of 4 slain women address agent after sentence
His expression stern, convicted serial killer Juan David Ortiz said nothing as he faced relatives of the four women he killed in Laredo in 2018.
Across the aisle from where the families sat, Ortiz’s mother wailed, watching them shower him with profanity, hatred and the desire that he burn in hell.
Ortiz had just been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, convicted by a jury that deliberated more than five hours Wednesday to find him guilty of capital murder.
He shot the women in the head or neck, execution-style, in less than two weeks in September 2018, leaving them along desolate roads outside Laredo. All were addicts who did sex work to buy drugs. Ortiz, a Border Patrol supervisor, was a repeat customer of three of them.
His victims also were the mothers, sisters, daughters and aunts of people who had jammed the first few rows of the gallery in Bexar County Court at Law No. 5 throughout the eightday trial.
In victim impact statements after Ortiz’s sentencing, they let him have it.
“I hate you for what you did, and I can never forgive you, nor do I think God will. You deserve
to suffer in prison and go to hell,” Gracie Perez told Ortiz, as the tone of her voice went from strength to rage. “Monsters like you don’t even deserve to live.”
Perez is the sister-in-law of Melissa Ramirez, 29, Ortiz’s first victim, who died Sept. 3, 2018. Ortiz next killed Claudine Anne Luera, 42, on Sept. 13.
Even as police searched for Ortiz based on a report by a woman who got away from him Sept. 14, he killed Guiselda Alicia Cantu Hernandez, 35, and Janelle Ortiz, 28, in a matter of hours. Their bodies were found Sept. 15.
After about 10 hours of interviews with investigators, Ortiz declared, “I’m the one who did it” and revealed his disgust with prostitutes who frequented San Bernardo Avenue. If he had not been caught, he told them, he would have continued killing “those bitches.”
The arrest drew national attention, as did the trial after defense lawyers succeeded in getting it moved to Bexar County because of extensive publicity in Laredo.
Testimony established that he would pick up women on the avenue, give them money, take them to buy drugs and have sex with them. The one who got
away, Erika Peña, “broke the case wide open,” Webb County District Attorney Isidro R. “Chilo” Alaniz said in his closing arguments.
After the verdict and sentencing, state District Judge Oscar J. Hale Jr. asked Ortiz if he wanted to make a statement. He said nothing.
Relatives of each of the victims
walked beyond the bar in front of the judge’s bench to face Ortiz, who stared back at them, flanked by defense attorney Joel Perez and at least three Bexar County deputies.
Ramirez’s mother, Maria Cristina Benavides, wept as she asked Ortiz in Spanish why he killed her.
“She meant nothing to you,
but she was my life. When I heard she was dead, I thought I would die from the pain. You have no idea how much I hate you,” Benavides said.
Two members of the Luera family held each other as they fought tears and told Ortiz how their lives came “crashing down” when they learned of the “horrible thing” he did.
The women told Ortiz they decided to forgive him and “let God handle” what they could not.
Rose Ortiz, a sister of Janelle Ortiz, who was not related to the convicted killer, trembled and cried throughout her statement and had to be held up so she could continue.
It was the statement of Hernandez’s brother, Joey Cantu, that brought most of the already taut audience to tears. Cantu cried as he said he forgave Ortiz and said he was the one who asked Alaniz to not seek the death penalty.
Cantu said he called his sister “Chelly” and that she “did bad things,” but she was empathetic and compassionate and defended him from bullies when they were children.
“She was a drug addict, a prostitute and a felon, but one day she would seek to leave those things,” Cantu said through tears. “I forgive you and hold no ill will.”
“She did not beg for her life, but for yours,” he said, noting that in the videotaped confession, Ortiz told investigators that after telling Hernandez that he had killed Ramirez and Luera and that he planned to end his life, she told him, “No matter what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter, God loves you.”