- I'm craig melvin,
And this is dateline: Secrets uncovered.
- She said, "I need to say something.
"I'm not gonna be here for long.
"someone's gonna kill me."
♪
- The sheriff department and texas rangers
Are investigating a murder.
- Who'd want melissa dead?
- I have no idea.
- The sheriff had a bad feeling about this case.
♪
- The second victim is from laredo.
Comes from a very good family.
- I think my whole block heard me scream.
- It did not feel like a coincidence.
- The killer is looking for his next victim.
She does something amazing.
She's able to slip out of her blouse.
- She realizes, oh, my god...
He killed melissa.
He killed claudine.
And I'm sitting in his house.
♪
- Hello, and welcome to dateline: Secrets uncovered.
Melissa ramirez and claudine luera
Had a lot in common.
They were friends,
Both mothers from loving families,
And both held dark secrets.
Also, melissa and claudine
Were found murdered days apart.
Theirs were the first two in a string of homicides
Sending police in search of a serial killer.
Here's josh mankiewicz with "the streets of laredo."
♪
- These are the streets of laredo, texas.
And these are also the streets of laredo.
They're named after famous mystery writers,
Men and women who created frightening,
Intriguing stories full of twists,
Stories that often deal with the wealthy,
The powerful, the privileged,
And the damage they can do.
We cover a lot of that on dateline, too.
This story is different.
It's a visit to the underbelly,
A four block stretch of laredo
Called san bernardo avenue.
It is the wrong side of the tracks,
Known for prostitution, drug deals,
And everything that comes with that.
In the late summer of 2018,
These blocks were even more dangerous.
That's when someone was hunting the women
Of san bernardo like prey.
On these sidewalks,
You find people who rarely have their stories told.
♪
It began on September 3rd,
When a woman's body was found on a secluded road
25 miles from downtown.
Now, despite its frontier reputation,
The border town of laredo
Is consistently ranked
Among the safest cities in the country.
Isidro alaniz is webb county district attorney.
Usually when a body turns up, it's not a murder.
It's somebody who was crossing the border
Who died from the heat.
- That's exactly true. - This wasn't that.
- No, not at all. Not at all.
- Webb county sheriff's captain,
Federico calderon, was called to the scene.
A young woman shot in the head.
- From a distance, it looked like
She might have been dumped there,
But, you know, upon closer inspection,
It looked like she had been executed at that spot.
There were shell casings.
- The ammo came from a .40 caliber handgun,
And the brand federal,
A leading ammunition supplier
That also sells to a lot of law enforcement agencies.
The medical examiner made the I.D. Of her prints.
The victim was 29-year-old melissa ramirez.
- She has kids.
She has a family that lived in rio bravo,
Um, which is a municipality just south of laredo.
- Law enforcement knew melissa as a drug user
And sex worker.
To her family, she was something else entirely.
- Every time we would hang out with each other,
We would just laugh.
It was very fun to be around with her.
- Gracie ramirez was melissa's sister-in-law.
- We were like sisters.
We were super close to each other.
- Melissa's mom likes to remember her daughter,
As she was.
- She got good grades.
I never struggled with her.
I never had problems with her.
- That was before her early teens,
Before a bipolar diagnosis that went untreated.
Gracie says melissa never let on to her family
That she'd turned to drugs and then sex work.
She really kept her life split in two, didn't she?
- She was very private to her life.
- Still, when melissa would leave for days at a time,
Her family knew it couldn't be for anything good.
- So she would come visit me.
I would beg her to stay with me.
I would feed her.
I would give her everything she needed.
But she just insisted that she needed to head out.
- But she wouldn't say where.
- No, she would never tell me where.
Nor her- her brother.
She wouldn't tell anybody.
- Now, melissa had met a brutal end.
- A female was found deceased...
- When it comes to news
About the under-served and under-covered,
People in laredo usually turn to priscilla villarreal.
- We're live, fyi. Just so you--
- Oh, we're live. - Yeah, wanna say hi?
- Hi, everybody.
To her more than 200,000 followers,
Priscilla is known as la gordiloca.
La gordiloca, the big, crazy woman.
- Thank you. - Uh--
- Everybody says the fat, crazy, and I'm like--
- She deals mostly in crime,
But unlike traditional news outlets,
Her reporting is done off-the-cuff
Via facebook livestreams, as events are unfolding.
And so, if something's going down in laredo,
La gordiloca usually knows about it.
- They call me and say, "hey, there's a chase here
"by, you know, central laredo."
- You can get to it. - I am up and going.
- That rawness and immediacy
Seems to keep laredo clicking on her.
Now, la gordiloca was asking the same questions
As melissa's family.
Who would want melissa dead?
- I-I... I have no idea.
- She didn't, but maybe melissa did.
Investigators heard that about three weeks before her murder,
Melissa had some kind of premonition.
- We were at the kitchen table.
She, uh, said, "I need to say something."
We just stop what we're doing.
And she said,
"I'm not gonna be here for long.
"someone's gonna kill me."
- She didn't tell you who that was?
- She never said who it was.
She just said,
Someone's gonna point me with a gun, like this.
- She said somebody was going to shoot her in the head?
- Yes.
- And prosecutor alaniz, who was on this from the start,
Says forensics back up the story
Melissa so chillingly foretold.
- She did have a gunshot wound to--
Around her wrist area, one by her jaw,
And one to her- her head.
- It feels like she's putting her hand up
As-- - that's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
- Melissa's premonition came true.
Soon, police had more than just a sense
That they were headed in the right direction.
- And at this moment, police and other agencies
Are surrounding a home in las cuestas subdivision.
♪
- Investigators in laredo, texas,
Were working the murder of melissa ramirez,
Found dead on the side of a desolate road.
The murders of sex workers
Can be problematic for investigators.
Victims often don't keep regular hours,
Making their movements difficult to track.
They may not know their customers real names,
And often, their families and friends
Don't want to speak with police.
Over the years,
A number of law enforcement agencies faced criticism
That they just didn't work hard enough
To solve the murders of sex workers.
And if the laredo killer was counting on that,
Then he made a mistake
Because investigators pursued this case aggressively.
Sheriff's captain federico calderon
Knew he'd need help,
So he called in the texas rangers,
The department of public safety
And the u.S. Border patrol.
And early on, came a lead, a big one.
The residents who had discovered melissa's body
Told of a dark colored pickup truck parked nearby.
As they approached the truck to see who was inside,
It sped off.
And when they saw the truck leave,
Uh, they noticed that there was a body
Next to where the truck was parked.
- One of the group was close enough
To jot down a plate number.
A computer search later,
Investigators were able to track down
The truck's owner that same evening.
And it wasn't at all who they were expecting.
And that person of interest is one of yours.
- That's right.
- At this time, the sheriff department
And texas rangers are investigating a murder.
- Investigators in laredo, texas,
Were not talking publicly about melissa ramirez's killing.
La gordiloca wasn't talking about anything else.
- And at this moment, um, the police and other agencies
Are surrounding a home in las cuestas subdivision.
- She was live on facebook
As laredo pd staked out the house of a man
Whose truck had been seen next to melissa's body.
It had to have been a little surreal for those officers
Because the truck's owner, 32-year-old rene arce,
Was himself, a laredo police officer.
Even so, as soon as he stepped out his front door,
He was cuffed
And brought in for questioning.
- A male police officer is either detained,
Or has not been detained yet,
But it's being said he is responsible
For the murder of this female.
- Law enforcement didn't know if that last part
Was actually true.
It's one of the things they asked officer arce about.
- Arce said he was in the area that day,
But had nothing to do with any murder.
He was just checking out real estate.
- Investigators kept at him.
So not the caliber of weapon that killed melissa.
Of course, plenty of officers own more than one gun.
It can't be lost on you that the laredo police officer
Will have access to .40 caliber federal ammunition.
- That's a reasonable conclusion.
- Arce insisted it wasn't him.
You go through his house and his truck?
- Yes. - Anything?
- Weapons were recovered from his house?
- Yes. Except none matched the murder weapon,
Or the ammo.
Still, it was strange.
He's parked right next to a body
And he doesn't see it.
- That's what he said.
- And with no probable cause, they let him go.
Soon investigators were following a new lead.
Melissa's mom mentioned a suspicious man
Who'd been with her daughter the week before.
- She came with a man. I didn't know him.
- She was unnerved enough
That she told gracie about the encounter.
- She told me that he never said anything at all.
He was just there, sitting down.
Just looking at melissa while she was getting ready.
And she said that he had this weird look on his eyes
Whenever he would see melissa.
Like, like an evil look.
And then after that, she never saw her again.
- That, to me, sounds like somebody
Who at least is a sort of potential suspect.
- Oh, absolutely. He was on our list.
- Investigators tracked him down,
And it turned out the man was a john,
A customer of melissa's.
- It happens to be that while...
The time frame of the murder occurred,
He was in another location on the road.
He was driving a truck somewhere.
- Now, you've looked at two specific guys.
The police officer who parked almost right on top
Of melissa's body,
And the guy who'd been a customer of hers.
You don't get a good hit off either one of those guys.
- We're nowhere closer than we were
The day of the actual murder.
And we resorted to, uh, what cops do best.
And that's being nosy and talking to people.
- That meant scouring the corners of san bernardo.
One of the names you hear
When you're building a profile of who melissa was,
Is claudine luera.
- Correct. They worked in the same area.
They-they were acquainted. They knew each other.
- Both prostitutes, both on drugs.
- Correct.
- Investigators thought claudine might know who it was
That melissa so feared.
Except she was nowhere to be found.
They put out the word among other law enforcement agencies,
But claudine didn't turn up.
Possible that she heard you guys were looking for her
And was keepin' her head down.
- That is a possibility for sure.
- Ten days after melissa's murder,
They finally found claudine luera.
She wasn't talking.
- She's been shot. - She's been shot.
- It was about two miles
From where melissa's body was found.
Also by the side of the road.
Nearby, the same .40 caliber federal ammunition.
Claudine was taken to a hospital.
She did not survive.
- It's starting to smell like it's the same guy.
And we have a strong inclination
After processing that crime scene,
That we're probably dealing with the same person.
- Someone's killing prostitutes.
- Someone's killing prostitutes with a .40 caliber handgun.
♪
- It was a hot end to the summer of 2018,
And laredo was simmering.
Within ten days,
Two women had been found executed,
And investigators thought it was the work of one killer.
They'd focused on two potential suspects.
Neither panned out.
- People were worried. People were scared.
Now this was real
And you could feel the-the tension.
- I would just order everything to get it delivered
Rather than going to the store.
We were all scared.
We were like, what is going on?
- Law enforcement had been looking for claudine luera.
Now she was gone, too.
- It wasn't until Thursday
That I heard of another female being found.
- The victim was found...
- Claudine's sister colette, heard about the second murder
From kgns news.
- She was alive when deputies arrived,
But later died at the hospital.
- And, I kept thinking, "man, poor lady.
"she must have suffered a lot."
I go, "poor family."
- She had no way of knowing it was claudine.
And when she found out, it hit her hard.
- I think my whole block heard me scream.
And just to think, you know, here I am,
Feeling sorry for this person the day before,
Saying, you know, how sad for the family.
[sniffling] she must've suffered.
And next thing you know, we're that family.
- She rushed to tell claudine's daughter ciara at work,
But didn't have to say a word.
- I could just see the look on their face.
[sobbing] and I knew my mom was gone.
- It's no words that anybody should hear.
Ciara just... She just stood there,
And what words do you give a child?
Their mother's gone.
- Colette remembered
How close she and claudine were growing up in laredo.
- She would help me sneak in my frogs into the house.
Um, I loved to dress them up in barbie clothes.
- Actual frogs? - Yes. [laughing]
- Ciara knew her mother had suffered trauma
Beginning in her youth.
What happened to her growing up?
That's a hard story for you to tell.
- She was assaulted
By somebody who lived behind her.
And, um,
I don't think anything was ever done about it.
She was how old?
- I believe under the age of 14.
- She was damaged by that?
- Yeah. Very damaged.
- Ciara says her mom had always been there
For her children,
But then got together with an old boyfriend,
Someone the family felt was bad news.
She started using heroin.
- It was like, 15.
And things, you know, she just changed.
She would only wear, like, long sleeves.
- So you knew something was wrong?
- Yeah. It didn't make sense.
- It wasn't long
Before claudine lost custody of her children.
I would be lying if I didn't say
There weren't times that I asked her, you know, like,
When is my love gonna be enough?
- And what was her answer?
[voice cracking] - it was.
That it was enough, she was just...
[sniffling] ...Heavily addicted to a drug
And it took over, but my love was enough,
And she always wanted me to know that.
You know, to separate the drug from her
And to understand, but I couldn't.
- After that,
Claudine turned to sex work to feed her habit.
Her family never stopped loving her.
Who did you think had killed her?
- My thought was him.
- The boyfriend? - The boyfriend.
Because who else?
- Good question.
Because the boyfriend had an airtight alibi.
Investigators did find a person of interest
After looking through claudine's phone.
Shortly before her death,
She'd been communicating with a guy
Who went by the nickname "chon".
He had a sheet. - He did.
You know, a little bit of everything.
- They went to his address, parked by his house,
And waited.
He's not there. - He's not there.
But as luck would have it, he shows up.
And as soon as he sees
That there's people waiting for him outside his house,
He takes off at a high rate of speed, and--
- And you're in a pursuit. - They chase him, he gets away.
All of a sudden, we feel like maybe--
Maybe we got our guy.
- And then chon himself contacted police
And came in for an interview.
He said he was with claudine,
But before she was murdered.
- And he says that at some point
In that late evening or night, he leaves,
That, uh, she goes her way, he goes his way.
That the last that they saw.
- Which is exactly what the murderer would say.
- That's what-- yeah, exactly.
We definitely thought
We were heading in the right direction.
- They thought finally they were getting close.
Then investigators got a call that would make them realize
It wasn't chon,
It wasn't officer arce, and it wasn't the trucker.
And ranger salinas tells me, "hey,
"one of our troopers ran into a female who--
"she's frantic. She's scared.
"she says that somebody tried to kill her with a handgun."
♪
- Like the two other victims,
This woman worked san bernardo.
Except, this woman survived.
Had she been face-to-face with the killer?
♪
- Welcome back to dateline: Secrets uncovered.
I'm craig melvin.
Investigators believed melissa ramirez
And claudine luera were murdered by the same man
Using the same .40 caliber handgun,
But his identity remained a secret.
Now, detectives were about to get their first big break
From someone
Who had been face-to-face with the killer
And lived to tell the tale.
Back to josh mankiewicz with "the streets of laredo."
♪
- September 14th, 2018.
Two nights after claudine luera's killing,
A texas dps trooper
Was pumping gas into his cruiser
Just before 9 p.M.,
When a frantic woman hurried toward him.
She wasn't wearing a blouse as she breathlessly told him
She had just been attacked by the man she was with.
That's when the trooper turned on his body cam audio.
- The woman was 26-year-old erika peña.
She told him she and the man had arrived
At the gas station just a few minutes earlier.
And then after they parked, he put a gun to her head.
- Erika used her wits to escape.
She said as the man grabbed her blouse,
She threw the passenger door open,
Slithered out of her top
And ran to safety.
- Erika admitted she worked on the streets of san bernardo,
Where the man had picked her up
Earlier that evening.
She described him as a regular customer.
- She told him something changed in the air
When the subject of the murders
Of melissa and claudine came up in conversation.
- The guy pointed a gun...
- At the mention of the murders,
The trooper decided to contact investigators
On the off chance it was connected.
- They asked him to bring erica to the substation,
Where captain calderon and the texas ranger were waiting.
With a texas rainstorm pounding on a galvanized roof,
Erika laid it out.
- She said earlier that night,
David had taken her to his house,
Where she'd been a couple of times before.
- She's able to describe the walkway,
The driveway, the inside of the house.
You know, the neighborhood it's in.
- Erika repeated what she'd told the trooper.
When the conversation turned to the murders,
David's demeanor suddenly changed.
He seemed nervous, agitated.
- Erika began to suspect david was the killer.
While inside his house, with no clear way out.
- She starts getting a bad feeling
Like she is going to die.
So she wants to leave.
- She wanted out of that house.
He talked her into going with him
To that gas station to get some food.
Luckily, the dps trooper happened to be there.
- So maybe that's your guy.
- It's looking like one of the best leads
We've had up to now.
- Erika remembered something else david had said.
- After her interview with detectives,
A slew of investigators bundled themselves and erika
Into three cars,
And told her to show them david's house.
She directed them to a home in a nice neighborhood
On the north side of laredo.
- The house with a walkway, just how she described it.
Uh, the entrance to the house, how she described it.
- To investigators, it all seemed to line up.
There was no white dodge in sight.
They decided to wait.
Who lives at that address?
- We found out that
It's, uh, owned by juan david ortiz and wife.
It's what it says on the record.
- And who's juan david ortiz?
- We think he's some sort of oil field worker or something.
There are two vehicles registered
To that particular house.
One of them is a dodge 2500 white pickup truck,
Which, uh, fits the bill for an oil field type truck.
- That truck had disabled veteran plates,
Suggesting david had served in the military.
So far, everything erika had told them
Was ringing true.
Feels like you're getting close.
- It feels like we're onto something, finally.
- They put a bolo out for ortiz's truck.
Then, another twist.
- We get a call of another body that's found
Off of ih35.
- Hey, hey!
- The killer of laredo wasn't done yet.
♪
- Law enforcement was on the lookout
For a white dodge ram belonging to juan david ortiz,
The man they desperately wanted to question
About the murders of melissa ramirez
And claudine luera.
Soon, the truck was spotted near san bernardo,
The moment captured on security video.
- The troopers, they're driving by.
They see the vehicle parked at a gas station.
- When he emerged, they confronted him.
- Stop right there.
Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!
Is this your truck? Is this your truck?
- Okay, all right. Turn around.
- He started telling the troopers,
Hey, you're freaking me out.
- Okay, okay, I'm gonna explain to you.
- And he runs from the troopers.
- Okay, hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey!
- They chased ortiz for a few blocks.
Then lost him.
- He couldn't have gone far on foot.
So the swat team was called in.
Officers suited up and set up a perimeter.
Then proceeded to comb the entire city block.
- There was no sign of him.
It was a scene custom made for la gordiloca.
She was live streaming this latest news
To the community most affected by it.
- Just really don't know what's going on yet,
But it's very serious.
They're all armed.
They're all with their bulletproof vests.
It's probably those recent deaths that just happened.
I can only speculate.
Like I said, nothing's confirmed.
- As the search was underway...
- We get a call of another body that's found
Off of ih35.
The deputy makes it out to the body,
And he calls me and he says,
Hey, I think y'all have another one.
- It was the body of guiselda cantu.
She was also a sex worker.
Also shot to death on a webb county road.
And near her, federal 40 caliber casings.
And then came a phone call from the border patrol.
It changed everything
Investigators thought they understood
About the man they'd been pursuing.
- He's not an oil field worker.
- Not an oil field worker.
He's a border patrol agent.
A supervisory border patrol agent.
- That had to hit you like a ton of bricks.
- We weren't expecting that. I can tell you that.
We were not expecting that.
- Other border patrol agents had connected the dots
When ortiz posted some messages on facebook
Just moments before while he was on the run,
Telling his wife and kids he loved them,
Along with "doc ortiz checks out. Farewell."
Like he's expecting not to survive.
- Like he's expecting not to survive, correct.
- The search narrowed to a hotel parking garage.
- Yeah.
- So that's when we split into two sections,
And we made our-- we're making our way up
To the parking lot.
- Investigator noel gonzales led the swat team
Up that parking garage ramp
With laredo pd, dps troopers,
Calderon and salinas,
All following close behind.
As they made their way through the fourth and last floor,
All that remained to be cleared
Were a lone pickup truck and some cement pillars.
- That was it.
It was either the last four pillars
Or that truck.
- Gonzales and others at the top of the stack
Covered the pillars.
He directed the rest of the team toward the truck.
[shouting]
- Get down! Get down!
- And there he was, hiding in that truck bed.
Takes out his cell phone very quickly.
- Correct.
- You tell me, hoping that the swat team
Will think it's a gun and kill him?
- That was his-his hope,
To get, uh, killed by-by law enforcement
So that he didn't have to deal with what he had done.
- If suicide by cop was the plan,
These officers didn't fall for it.
Instead, they placed him in cuffs.
He doesn't put up a fight?
- He doesn't.
It would not have been a wise thing to do.
But no, he didn't.
- It was around 2:30 in the morning
By the time they placed juan david ortiz under arrest.
- They got the guy. It's confirmed.
Um, suspect is in custody.
- And then he was inside an interrogation room.
What's his demeanor?
Scared? Arrogant? - Um...
- Ashamed?
- I would say arrogant is the right word.
Uh, you hit the nail on the head there.
He's basically laughing
That he was able to outrun the troopers.
- Ortiz repeatedly denied knowing any of the victims.
- Investigators recalled finding erika's bag
In his truck.
- Over more than eight hours,
They took his clothes,
Had a man with a badge change into prisoner orange,
And they pressed him.
- D.A. Alaniz was watching on video.
- I'll never forget, the time was 11:24 in the morning.
He looks at captain calderon,
And he says, can you take 'em off?
- He says, I'm not gonna hurt you.
And I'm sitting there, watching like you're
Watching the super bowl, you know,
And I'm like, take them off, take them off.
Do it.
- He's asking for trust here.
- Yeah, so calderon goes to take off
His-his handcuffs.
I look at everybody in the room,
And I say get ready. Here he comes.
- And here it came.
♪
- Welcome back.
After an intense manhunt, detectives were convinced
They finally nabbed the killer of laredo.
And he was a man with a badge.
Border patrol officer juan david ortiz
Was now being grilled about the murders of three women.
Would he crack?
Even the veteran investigators would never forget
What he was about to tell them.
Here's josh mankiewicz with the conclusion
Of "the streets of laredo".
- Investigators were trying to learn more from ortiz
And la gordiloca was live with the latest.
- The man who was detained last night.
In the parking lot of that hotel
Is a border patrol agent.
- She told her audience the man who had sparked
Such fear in the city of laredo for the last two weeks
Had been caught.
- We had, or we-we might have
A serial killer in our hands.
- A captive ortiz was speaking to a captivated audience.
- He said he'd taken his san bernardo friend
To score drugs late Sunday night,
Then got upset when she got high
And passed out in his truck.
- He said, melissa began yelling
She wanted out of his truck,
And that was all it took.
- And I asked him pacifically what gun to use.
He said, he uses a service weapon.
- The service weapon issued by the border patrol,
Along with the federal ammo his employer supplied.
- And having made the jump from lawman to murderer,
Ortiz said he wanted to do it again.
Ten days after he killed melissa,
He picked up claudine luera.
He said she was curious about
Where melissa's body had been found.
So he started to drive her out there.
- Ortiz said he told her to get out,
Then shot her as she turned her back.
- Now, calderon and his team had to ponder this.
Remember how investigators trying to solve melissa's murder
Had reached out to the rest of law enforcement,
Including the border patrol,
Looking for melissa's friend, claudine luera?
Ortiz's job with the border patrol
Was to work in the bic, the border intelligence center.
- Yeah. - You think ortiz heard
That you guys were looking for claudine luera
And went out and found her and killed her?
- I-I swear, I--
You know, the coincidence is just too...
Too big, too strong.
I think that he heard the call come in.
I think that he-he was on full alert.
- And thought, I gotta cover my tracks.
- And thought, I've got to get to claudine
Before they do.
- Ortiz confessed to killing claudine,
And melissa and guiselda,
And assaulting erika.
And he wasn't done.
- He tells us, uh, and there's one more
You probably don't even know about.
- He sent them to a gravel mound
15 miles outside of town.
- A bunch of cops head up there with--
They all burst out of the room
To get in their patrol cars and drive out there.
- It's where they found 28-year-old janelle ortiz.
Same last name, but no relation to the man who killed her.
- Janelle ortiz fit the profile?
- Fit the profile. Same-same work type.
Worked in the same area. Also a drug user.
- When law enforcement caught up to ortiz
At that gas station,
He had just returned from killing janelle.
- Ortiz knew he was being hunted by law enforcement,
And so accelerated his killing spree.
And if you hadn't caught him, he wouldn't have stopped.
- He told us that he was going to keep going
Until he was caught.
- In the room, ortiz offered motives
That made him sound virtuous.
He described murdering sex workers in cold blood
As a kind of public service.
- Had he just made that up to avoid the shame
Of being a cop who was also a customer?
Or had he been afraid the women he'd been with
Could have exposed him?
You think what set ortiz off was
That he let the women get too close.
- Yes.
I think what ended up happening,
I think there was a power shift here.
And starting with melissa, I think she crossed over,
You know, from-from her world into his world.
- And that gave her a lever?
- Yeah, because she becomes now a threat
To his-to his livelihood,
To his-his family, his children,
Uh, to his job.
- D.A. Alaniz had enough to charge juan david ortiz
With four counts of murder,
One count of unlawful restraint,
One count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon,
And two counts of evading arrest.
Melissa ramirez's mom, cristina, recalled
How hard it was seeing ortiz for the first time
At one of his hearings.
- I saw him, and my heart accelerated,
And I got so angry that I stood up
And I shouted at him that he was a murderer.
[shouting in spanish]
- Order, order!
- He just gave this smirk.
And that literally sent chills down my spine.
Like why is-- you know, you have this poor lady
Screaming at you
And you're just like...
- This is a mom who lost a daughter.
- Yeah. - And you're laughing.
- Yeah.
- Ortiz said his confession was coerced
And pleaded not guilty.
Four years later, a jury didn't buy it.
Their verdict took less than five hours.
- We, the jury, find the defendant,
Juan david ortiz, guilty of the offense
Of capital murder of charge in the indictment...
- Juan david ortiz was sentenced that very night.
Life in prison with no possibility of parole.
It was a long fall for a decorated combat medic,
A rising star of the border patrol
And a married father of three.
- Intel supervisor, had all this power,
All this knowledge,
Masters, educated, I mean, the list goes on.
- For the victims' families, the verdict brought some relief.
- I was very happy and wanted to yell.
I wanted to, like, scream of excitement.
And he just looked, um...
I think he didn't care.
- No emotion? - No emotion at all.
But I felt so happy.
- Ciara's life also changed in one good way.
- And now you work for the sheriff's department.
- I do.
- How is that? - I love it.
I think I am in the right place.
And I know my mom would be so proud of me.
I know she's proud of me.
- That's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.