[country music playing]
[Lt. Joe Kenda] Laredo is a border town in South Texas.
It is the busiest crossing for commercial traffic
on the Mexican border.
Just outside the city limits,
there is a rancher tending to a broken fence.
[suspenseful music playing]
And he notices a black pickup truck with tinted windows.
[engine idling]
It's on his property line, it's idling.
And he wonders "What is that guy doing?"
And then the truck pulls away.
The rancher sees something on the ground.
"What is that?"
So he goes to investigate.
[dramatic music playing]
And he finds something horrible.
[audio recording playing]
Every homicide case starts with one.
[camera shutter clicking]
But it doesn't always end there.
[camera shutter clicking]
We had a serial killer in our midst.
[dramatic music playing]
[Alaniz] He's targeting these people.
We didn't know what we were coming up against.
He is not going to stop.
-[ominous music] -[gun cocking]
They're gonna have to stop him.
-[officer 1] He's in here! -[officer 2] Look out!
[officer] State police!
[dramatic music playing]
[officer] Hey, hey, hey, hey!
[gunshot]
[enthralling instrumental music playing]
[Kenda] I spent my career closing murder cases.
But I'm not the only one
who answered the call.
It takes a rare breed to solve the unsolvable,
to catch a ruthless killer,
and find justice for the dead.
That's what it takes to be
an American Detective.
I'm Captain Federico Calderon from the Webb County Sheriff's office.
I've been working for the Sheriff's office
for about, almost 18-and-a-half years.
[camera shutter clicks]
I started off as a patrol deputy
and worked my way through investigations
and eventually, became an investigation supervisor.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Kenda] Supervision requires an overview
that detectives don't have to have.
Their commander is pursuing everything.
If you do it correctly, it consumes you.
Calderon is consumed by it.
Just like I was.
[dog barking]
[Calderon] I'm on my way right now, getting in the car.
The call came in on a holiday so I wasn't at work.
But being a supervisor for investigations,
you're always working.
[engine starts]
To play the game, you've gotta be in the game.
Sitting behind a desk,
you're not gonna learn anything.
Get out there where the action is.
The crime scene, this is an area
which is a sort of a farm road that only the residents
that live out there would be traveling on.
[camera shutter clicks]
It's not a place you would be expected to get called to,
for a crime scene, for a potential murder.
[dispatch speaking indistinctly on radio]
-[camera shutter clicks] -[ominous music]
[Calderon] The victim was lying face down.
What do we got?
[officer] It's a female. No ID.
There was very obvious head trauma.
So she was a little bit harder to identify.
Calderon has the same problem anyone does
looking at a gunshot wound to the head of the female.
It's just a mass of blood.
You can't tell where the hit was
or whether it was front-to-back or back-to-front.
You can't tell. Until you get 'em in a morgue.
There was something very unique in this case
that the victim, uh, was clenching
a bag of candy in their hand.
It is often referred to as the death grip.
[camera shutter clicks]
But in reality, it's all the muscles
exerting themselves at the same instant.
[camera shutter clicks]
'Cause the nervous system has been disconnected
from the brain.
So they have this grip that cannot be broken.
Also at the crime scene
are three expended casings
from a semi-automatic pistol.
The shell casings, they weren't the steel case
or the aluminum case.
It's a premium brass cartridge. It stood out.
They're 40 caliber. 40 S&W.
That caliber is so effective,
it is commonly used by law enforcement and by federal agents.
[camera shutter clicks]
It is the kind of ammunition
that an average street criminal wouldn't even consider obtaining
because it's expensive.
So it says to Calderon,
whoever this is knows guns.
[dispatch speaking indistinctly on radio]
[Calderon] Good afternoon, sir.
[Kenda] So the next step of course is to speak to the person
who found the remains.
So Calderon questions the rancher.
[Calderon] He said that he saw a vehicle
driving around the ranch road
and he assumed that that truck
played a role in whatever was happening there.
[rancher] I didn't see her right away
but I did get a license plate number.
That is a remarkable fact that never happens.
Witnesses normally can't tell you what color the car was.
This guy is descriptive.
He says a black pickup with heavily tinted windows,
relatively new, nice condition, clean,
and this is the plate number. Texas plates.
Well, that's a great witness.
[Calderon] Thank you so much for your time today.
[Kenda] Calderon's next step is to go to the morgue
and see exactly what we're looking for.
[Calderon] Autopsies are so important.
They give us a window into the final moments of that person's life,
and they tell us how and why that person died.
They're able to clearly see that she three gunshot wounds to the head...
[clicking]
...administered close range, less than 18 inches.
And further, a gunshot wound to the wrist.
If you think about watching someone eating a bag of M&M's,
they often hold it in their hand.
And they raise it to their mouth and dump in a few M&Ms.
When she takes those rounds,
one of 'em exits her head and goes through her wrist.
And that's why she's got that bag in her hand.
She was eating M&Ms
when she's executed by somebody.
She didn't expect what was coming.
[Kenda] So Calderon asks the coroner,
"What else can you tell me about this girl?"
[Calderon] There was a toxicology screen done by the doctor
and it did come back to narcotics.
We ran her fingerprints
and she was identified.
Our victim was Melissa Ramirez.
[camera shutter clicks]
She is somebody who our investigators
and our jail staff was familiar with.
She was a habitual drug user
who was involved in prostitution as well.
[Alaniz] So now, it was gonna be a challenge for law enforcement
trying to find who did this.
Right? Given the work she did.
She's the perfect victim.
[Kenda] There are people in the world
who prey upon sex workers
because they're easily obtained.
You don't have to force your victim into the car.
They just get in.
So your suspect pool has grown well beyond
associates and known persons.
But Calderon has something going for him in this case.
He's got a license plate of a truck
that was inches away from this dead body.
[Calderon] The plan was to identify that vehicle
and track down the owner of the truck.
[Kenda] They run the plate
and Calderon is speechless.
The registration comes back to a local police officer,
Gustavo Lopez.
That's who owns the truck.
Good God. How could this be?
What is he up to next to this body?
[dramatic music playing]
[Kenda] Calderon has a suspect
who is a police officer named Gustavo Lopez.
He looks into his history with the department
and finds some things that are rather questionable.
Lopez tends to be aggressive with the public.
A number of complaints had been received about him,
and one was so serious,
he was placed on probation.
That was a little bit concerning
considering the circumstances.
Let's have a conversation, Gustavo,
and see what you have to say.
You question a police officer the same way you question anyone else.
There is no professional courtesy.
Particularly when you're considered a suspect.
And Calderon has a very good reason to believe he is.
By the time we got around to talking to him,
he knew what we were looking for him in reference to.
There's a piece of property that I was gonna buy.
[Calderon] Okay.
He said, "I took my two kids with me out to that spot.
To show them a piece of ground I was thinking about buying,
to see what the view would be like.
What body are you talking about?"
The body, it was not hidden.
And it was not hard to see.
The idea that a law enforcement officer
would have completely not seen that...
was difficult to... to work around.
[Kenda] But Calderon checks with the real estate company
and confirms that Lopez has been in contact with them for weeks
about the piece of ground
adjacent to the eyewitness' property.
-[door squeaks] -Go ahead.
[Calderon] I generally don't believe in coincidences.
But at the end of the day,
we didn't have anything on him
to continue with him being a lead suspect.
[upbeat music playing]
I think, in general,
criminal investigations can feel overwhelming.
You have to develop your own information.
And you have to go out there and talk to family members.
Nobody likes it. It's ugly. It's nasty.
But you're the boss. It's your responsibility.
Take the responsibility and go deal with it.
[Maria speaking in Spanish]
[Calderon] We talked to Melissa's mom.
She was hurting, you know, emotionally and physically.
Um, but she gave us a lot of good information about Melissa.
[Maria speaking in Spanish]
She would always have, like, this good attitude always
and always a happy and good feeling
whenever we were together.
[Erika Quiroz] Oh, my God, she had a really particular laugh.
Even if somebody would get mad at her,
she'd say something so you can laugh at it and be like...
You can't get mad at her.
She did have two children.
She was the best mother.
She made sure those kids had a good family and a good place for them.
She loved her kids a lot.
[speaking Spanish]
[camera shutter clicks]
[Kenda] She has an arrest 10 years ago for prostitution.
She's also addicted to narcotics.
[Gracie] She would always keep her things to herself.
It was really quite difficult for us
to help her, to see what was really wrong with her.
[Kenda] Many sex workers have a story that begins
when they become involved in narcotics.
They need money.
The only thing left for them is to sell their own body.
[Gracie] The last time I saw her,
I was there at my mother-in-law's house
and, uh, she wanted to confess something
but she didn't know how to say it.
[Maria speaking Spanish]
[Kenda] There's this constant drumbeat of violence
that's always on the edges of being a sex worker.
You are at risk all the time.
[dramatic music playing]
So Calderon gets a lot of information about Melissa
but what he doesn't get is a solid lead on a possible suspect.
So in the lack of any leads or evidence,
uh, we had to develop our own.
So like any good detective,
uh, Fed Calderon went to the source.
He wanted to get down to where Melissa was working.
[Calderon] There's a stretch of road, San Bernardo.
It's in an older part of town, a bit more run-down.
It's known for the area
that the prostitutes frequent.
[upbeat music playing]
Everybody knows if you drive around San Bernardo late night,
you're gonna see people picking up people.
[Kenda] Calderon wants to speak to the girls
to see if anybody knows Melissa,
to see who she hangs out with.
Did anybody see her go with anybody?
It was like they say, old-fashioned police work. It was exactly that.
Driving up the streets, walking up and down,
trying to talk to these people.
Even though for the most part we're plainclothes,
we still looked like cops.
-Nothing you can really tell me about that? -No, not just her.
It's last type of person they want to talk to.
Oh, hey.
They know who the cops are.
They can feel it.
-[speaking indistinctly] -What part of town?
After we explain we're investigating a crime that happened to somebody
who was potentially in their same shoes,
some people chose to talk to us.
Through one of the field interviews,
the name Claudine Luera came up.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Marissa] She was a sex worker.
The same situation of Melissa.
That she has addictions.
They were really good friends.
They work in the same area in San Bernardo.
Which means she could be an eyewitness to who picked up Melissa
the night she was killed.
[Calderon] So we attempted to
ask around, "Where is she?" "Where can we find her?"
[Kenda] But Calderon has no luck.
No one seems to know where Claudine is.
But he does come up with a few names
of male customers who're relatively well-known
among the prostitute crowd on San Bernardo Avenue.
So he gathers up these names,
gets associated license plate numbers
and he has a plan in mind.
His plan includes the United States Border Patrol.
[Calderon] They have, you know, assets that read license plates,
and they have databases with unique information
that may not be the same information we have or that the State does.
[Kenda] It literally can track
every car and where it moves
in a 30-square-mile area
around the city of Laredo, Texas.
So this system is quite sophisticated.
Calderon is gonna provide the list of individuals
through special agent Juan David Ortiz
who's a supervisor
in the surveillance system controlled by the Border Patrol.
We gave them these names and I said,
"See what you can come up with on them."
[captivating instrumental music playing]
Could be previous criminal history
that's strictly federal-related,
whether it be a license plate crossing
or... who was inside the vehicle with them
when they went through at the checkpoint
or through the bridge or something. You know, you never know.
They search the system for the plate numbers and the individual names.
And they get no result.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kenda] But at the end of the day,
an officer who works the San Bernardo Avenue area
calls Calderon
and says, "I have this guy.
He was seen with Melissa Ramirez
on the night she disappeared.
And his name is Dominic Ortega."
Now that's really interesting information.
He said that sometimes she'd go to his house.
So we felt like he was definitely
a lead we had to go after.
[pensive music playing]
And when Calderon types his name into the police database...
[music increases in tempo]
things get really interesting.
Mr. Ortega lives less than a mile
from where Melissa's body was found.
[camera shutter clicks]
Well, Mr. Ortega, you could be the one.
[pensive music playing]
[Kenda] So Captain Calderon receives a tip about a client
of Melissa Ramirez
named Dominic Ortega.
He lived around the same part of town
where the body was discovered.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kenda] Calderon goes to speak to Ortega
where his job is...
-Dominic Ortega? -What's this about?
...and discovers the encounter to be rather confrontive.
We have reason to believe that you were with Melissa the night she disappeared.
But when Calderon tells him that Melissa Ramirez
has been murdered,
he changes his attitude completely.
[Calderon] He said they weren't strangers.
He had picked her up before.
She had been to his house.
He's not only a regular customer of Melissa's.
He's also her friend.
Can you tell us about that night?
[Kenda] Ortega explains that he picked her up on a date.
And they went back to his house
and she got high.
And then she passed out.
He obviously hired her for a different reason.
[Kenda] Finally she woke up, and by this moment,
Dominic Ortega had changed his mind.
He just took her home.
That's the last time he ever saw her.
[Calderon] He was 100% cooperative
and we had information from his employer that
he was at a distant location.
So we felt that it was very unlikely
that this was a person who had committed a crime.
[Kenda] Over the next few days,
Calderon feeds a few more names and license plates
to Agent Ortiz of the Border Patrol.
But they don't work out either.
So this case is beginning to lose its force.
[Calderon] Okay.
An unsolved murder is always a bad thing.
But we were trying and we were exhausting every lead we had.
[grave instrumental music playing]
[Kenda] And then September 13,
ten days after Melissa was killed,
another horrible event occurs in Laredo, Texas.
[911 dispatch] Okay.
Initially, it came in as an auto-pedestrian accident.
They call it an auto-ped.
Soon as the EMTs arrived at that scene...
[sirens wailing]
...EMT said, "No, no, no.
This isn't from being hit by a car.
This woman has been shot in the head."
[dramatic music playing]
[Calderon] I crossed paths with the ambulance.
So we sent the investigators to the hospital.
[siren wailing]
We had hopes that she would be able to tell us anything, something.
[siren wailing]
We began processing the scene.
Even from just looking at the crime scene,
you could tell that something horrible had happened there.
[camera shutter clicks]
Her property was scattered everywhere.
[camera shutter clicking]
It looked like there were a stretch of drag marks
where she tried to crawl after she got injured...
-[camera shutter clicks] -...leaving a trail of blood.
And then he sees something else
that alarms him to no end.
[Calderon] Take a look at that.
[suspenseful music playing]
Three 40 caliber Smith & Wesson expended cases.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Kenda] It's about a mile away
from where Melissa Ramirez was found.
[Calderon] Having two similar cases
on the same stretch of road,
with a very similar weapon,
that was out of the ordinary.
We felt like we were probably dealing with
the same person who had done that to Melissa.
One, two, three.
[Alaniz] It had all the markings and indications
that this was the beginning of a serial killer.
I know we... we have a problem.
[camera shutter clicks]
This time, there is a purse.
[dispatch speaking indistinctly on police radio]
[Kenda] And the officers at the scene discover that this is, in fact,
Claudine Luera,
the woman Calderon couldn't find.
Who was a close friend of Melissa Ramirez.
What is going on here?
Who might be responsible for this?
Good to have a cell phone here.
The purse also contained a prepaid Tracfone
and it wasn't locked.
[camera shutter clicks]
[Calderon] Phones can be very helpful.
[camera shutter clicks]
It can tell us a lot about a person.
Can you bag this for us, please?
Calderon is really anxious to speak to the victim.
[man speaking indistinctly on phone]
[Kenda] But that's when he learns from the hospital
that the victim is never going to speak again.
[Alaniz] Sadly, when she was taken to the emergency room,
they tried to start to work on her,
is when she expired and she passed.
[Calderon] So once again, you have to know your victim.
And you have to go out there and talk to family members,
That can end up being the investigation key
that unlocks what you're after.
When she passed away I think the whole block heard me yell.
It's the worst news.
Those words will never leave my mind.
Having to hear them say, like,
"Yes, we can confirm that it is Claudine Luera."
My first thought was,
"I need to get to Ciara."
It was a Friday morning. Um, I was working at the plasma center downtown.
My manager comes to the back
and she goes, "Hey, Ciara, there's um...
there's someone here to see you."
And she was like, "It's your aunt. She wants to speak to you."
And I peeked my head out
and I could just see, like, their body language,
and, like, how they were looking at me.
Something's wrong. Please, no.
Claudine's family is able to tell Calderon
a very sad story indeed.
[somber instrumental music playing]
She was educated. She was bright.
And slowly, her life unraveled.
[Colette] Claudine has five children.
Ciara was two years old at the time
when she had the first set of twins.
And then, lo and behold, she got pregnant right away
with the second set of twins.
And then we started noticing what the first set of... twins,
some characteristics.
And I think getting the diagnosis of autism
really hit her hard.
I think that really just, you know,
brought her down into a depression.
She started getting more into, like, prescription drugs,
and then in 2009,
we knew something was going on.
She was, like, heavily addicted to heroin at the time.
And it was hard.
I wanted her to do better. I wanted things to be different.
I wanted my mom.
[Kenda] Eventually, the five children were taken away from her.
And she wound up on San Bernardo Avenue
as a sex worker.
-[dog barking] -[upbeat music playing]
The day that Melissa's body had been found,
my mom actually called me and she spent the night.
And we hadn't spent the night together since I was, like, 13 years old.
And I was really in shock, like,
I was, like, "Okay, something's wrong."
[upbeat music playing]
[Ciara] I just know her saying, like,
she feared her life.
She knew Melissa wasn't gonna be the only one.
But little did I know then
that that would be the last time...
That I'd never see her again.
To learn that your mother has suddenly been ripped away from you,
absolutely devastating.
To make matters worse,
now we have two victims working in the same industry
killed in exactly the same way
in similar locations.
And no one has a clue
as to who might be responsible.
When the second case happened, Claudine,
it was like a, "What is going on?"
We had a serial killer in our midst.
He's targeting these people.
He's targeting sex workers.
And I'm telling the Sheriff's department,
"You guys need to find this killer
or there's gonna be more.
There's gonna be more."
We were feeling the pressure from the community
and our bosses as well.
We're trying to track down every bit
of every lead that we had.
Calderon goes back to check with his tech team
regarding the contents of the Tracfone
that Claudine Luera had in her purse.
At that point, we discover a picture of Claudine
with another male,
taken recently.
[Kenda] There are a number of text messages
between Claudine and an individual
known as Hector Vega
on the night of her murder.
They look up Hector Vega.
Vega is a drug addict.
Vega's committed aggravated assault in the past.
Could he be our guy? Absolutely.
[Calderon] So we got back to work and we started looking for him.
We have vehicles parked at his house.
And at some point, he shows up.
And he realizes that there's some cop cars
and he takes off.
[siren blaring]
If they had any doubts about Hector Vega
being a possible suspect,
it's been erased by his flight.
Innocent people don't run.
And Hector is running.
[dramatic music playing]
Detective Calderon summons
a number of cruisers to his location.
[siren blaring]
-[sirens wailing] -[dispatch speaking indistinctly on radio]
They try to pursue Hector in his car.
-[sirens blaring] -[tires screech]
Highway speeds inside the city aren't anything that anybody needs to be doing, ever.
He's weaving in and out of streets, making hard turns.
And all of a sudden...
We couldn't see him anymore.
[suspenseful music playing]
The officers said, "Hey, he's gone."
They disengaged
and we tried to find him using other means.
Hector's in the wind.
Is that frustrating? Oh, my. Yes, it is.
Calderon is well aware
if the suspect moves across the border,
his case is doomed.
It's not until the next day...
-[phone ringing] -[bell dinging]
[Calderon] We get a call at the police department
Someone who wanted to come forward and talk.
[dramatic music playing]
Well, guess who it was.
Mr. Hector Vega.
[dramatic music playing]
The runaway guy and skilled stunt driver
is now sitting in a police station by his own volition.
What happened?
Calderon asked Hector, "Why did you run?"
"Oh, man, I had drugs on me.
So I started to run.
And then I thought about Claudine.
I heard what happened to Claudine.
I was friends with her."
He started telling us that they hung out
and, you know, used drugs.
[Hector] We made out for a bit last night.
And then she went back out to San Bernardo.
"I figured you guys put two and two together
and you think I did this.
And I didn't do this."
[Calderon] He said that that was the last time he had seen her
until he heard that she had been found, uh, dead.
He was genuinely disturbed and distraught.
I'm sure it was difficult for him
to try and understand that when she left his company,
she ended up getting killed shortly after.
Calderon is experienced and has talked to a lot of people,
both suspects and otherwise.
And Hector comes across as legitimate.
He's not the best person in the world but he's not a killer.
[dramatic music playing]
[Calderon] It's difficult, getting your hopes up,
and then at the end, you know,
falling short.
But it's something that happens in any criminal investigation
and you just gotta pick up the pieces,
reassess and come up with a new gameplan
and go forward again.
There's still this maniac serial killer running around, killing everyone.
And if he's done two, he's gonna do more.
-[tires screech] -[engine accelerating]
You know that the person responsible for this
picks up women on San Bernardo Avenue.
We need to surveil San Bernardo Avenue.
[Calderon] We were driving up and down,
looking for anything out of the ordinary.
[mysterious music playing]
They see some different cars they haven't seen before.
They pass those plate numbers on
to the United States Border Patrol
by and through supervisor Ortiz.
And nothing comes of it.
Nobody emerges as anybody with a history, anybody with intent.
Calderon did a great job in a case of this magnitude.
He was relentless,
following leads and interviewing people,
and doing what any good investigator's doing.
But being in this line of work for 28 years,
sometimes you need a lucky break.
In this case, that's what he got.
It is September 14,
day 11 in the investigation...
when a Texas state trooper
pulls into a gas station to fuel his car.
[Alaniz] It's sometime around 9:00 p.m.
Outta nowhere...
this female comes running to him, dressed in jeans.
and she just doesn't have a blouse or shirt on.
-[woman] Oh! -Oh! Excuse me.
[officer] What's... what...
And she's screaming, "He's trying to kill me!"
[woman speaking indistinctly]
The trooper puts his hand on his gun and looks behind her
for threats and sees none.
He deploys his bodycam.
She's terrified. She's shaking uncontrollably.
[Alaniz] Her eyes are just wide open,
speaking real fast, unintelligible.
[Alaniz] At this point in time, he's thinking
that he's interacting with a drug addict
or some homeless person who's just talking gibberish, right?
But the more he talks to her, things start to get serious real quick.
A guy just pointed a gun at her face.
[trooper] Erika? Okay.
Well, now, what does Erika Pena do?
She's a sex worker on San Bernardo Avenue.
Oh, my.
Being aware that there is an ongoing investigation
for somebody killing sex workers, he makes the connection.
[Kenda] Two and two equals four.
She is a living witness
to whoever this killer is.
who's already killed two
and just now attempted to kill a third one.
[mysterious music playing]
Erika Pena has escaped somebody
who just pointed a gun at her face.
She is hyper-ventilating.
She's got fear and adrenaline that are going through her.
[trooper] Mm-hmm.
[Calderon] She mentioned Melissa's name, Claudine's name.
Seeing as who she was and kind of the circumstances,
the trooper thought that it might have something to do
with what me and the ranger were investigating.
[line ringing]
So he called.
[trooper] She knows the victim, the girl, the deceased girl.
With that in mind, I said, "You know what?
This probably might be a lead."
Uh, yeah, you want me to take her over there?
Calderon, he wants to talk to her
right... now.
[siren wailing]
-[engine accelerating] -[siren wails]
[Calderon] The trooper shows up and she is crying,
she's scared, she's convinced that
you know, someone's coming after her to kill her.
So I go inside, get her a shirt from somewhere inside the station
and she was able to tell her story.
She begins telling us how she knew
this client of hers by the name of David.
And that David had picked her up on San Bernardo.
The same area Melissa and Claudine worked and frequented.
She gets in the truck with him.
He said "I want to take you to my house 'cause my wife and kids
are away for the weekend."
So off they go.
Once they get inside, they're just talking.
And, uh, the conversation at some point came up
about Melissa and Claudine.
And she said his whole demeanor changed.
[Calderon] She says that he was grabbing the back of his neck
and that he was making weird noises.
And she started feeling really uneasy.
[dramatic music playing]
David has a look that she described, just a real scary look.
Erika felt like
he might have had something to do with it.
And she started, you know,
uh, freaking out, for lack of a better word.
She has this overwhelming sense of nausea,
sick feeling in her stomach comes over her.
[vomiting]
She started to think, "How can I get out of this?"
And without trying
to tip him off, she's asking, "Take me somewhere."
[mysterious music playing]
He suggested stopping near a gas station
so she could get something to eat.
and maybe settle her stomach.
[Alaniz] He decides to stop in the back of the gas station,
on the side of the street, in the dark...
She starts at this moment thinking, it's him. He killed Melissa.
He killed Claudine. It's him.
He's telling her stop freaking out.
You're not getting out. You're not getting out.
And then she starts to reach for that door handle
is when he pulls that handgun out,
brings it across his body and points it to her face.
She was going to be the next victim.
She became frantic and tried to escape.
She said that he was trying to hold onto her
and he grabbed her by the shirt.
Come here.
He pulled the shirt directly off her back
and she ran to the gas station
where she sees this Texas state trooper fueling his car.
We felt like we might be finally getting the lead we were after
and that we were looking for a David.
She tells us that we need to be looking out for a white pickup truck.
She doesn't know the address of the house but she knows the general vicinity.
She had a couple of landmarks in mind.
I felt that we could reasonably drive around out there
and try and locate the address.
So we went to that specific neighborhood
and we started looking around.
And we had, uh, several other investigators
and deputies in the car, to provide security.
And all of a sudden, she says, "Wait, wait, wait, wait."
That's the house right there.
Calderon's headlights come across the sidewalk
and the vomit is on the sidewalk.
And that ended up being what broke the case wide open.
So once we got the address,
we're checking databases, both public and police databases,
to see who are we dealing with.
And when he sees the name, he is absolutely stunned into silence.
It's not just someone he knows.
It's someone who's working alongside him in this very case.
[Kenda] Calderon goes back to the station, runs the address
and now he has the name.
He never could have predicted what he finds.
The ghost that Calderon has been seeking
is in fact Juan David Ortiz.
A supervisor with the United States Border Patrol
and the agent working the case with Calderon.
He was a cop.
It completely surprised all of us.
He would have been the last one that any of us would have ever imagined.
It is scary to think that he was in there listening, watching, observing
as the case was investigated.
Juan David Ortiz who is now 35 years of age
was born in Brownsville, Texas
and raised by a single mother.
He joined the United States Navy out of high school
and was trained as a crewman.
He had been deployed in 2003,
had seen action in Iraq.
He was a medic for his marine unit.
When he gets out of the service,
he decides to join the Border Patrol.
He has an impeccable record.
He shows empathy for immigrants coming across the border,
migrants.
He treats people suffering from exposure of being in the desert.
People call him Doc because of his skills.
[Alaniz] There was nothing whatsoever
based on what we saw on Juan David Ortiz's background
that this would have been foreseeable.
Uh, his record was clean.
This guy was your Laredoan neighbor.
He had a steady job. He had a nice house. He had a family.
Went to church on Sundays.
Not what you would think of when you think serial killer.
[Kenda] Humans are complicated.
Sometimes frighteningly so.
How does one go from being an all-American war hero
into a psychotic killer?
[Alaniz] So we're not dealing with an ordinary criminal.
It presents a whole new dynamic.
We're dealing with a Border Patrol agent,
who we know carries a duty weapon
that's a 40-caliber Smith & Wesson
and we know that they get issued federal cartridge ammunition.
So he's using his duty weapon to carry out his rage against sex workers.
He was prepared to drop victim number three,
when she interfered with that by escaping his custody.
He is not going to stop.
They're going to have to stop him.
[Alaniz] The race was finding him
before more victims and more bodies started to stack up.
We had a security team at his house to see if anyone came back home.
That wasn't happening.
Nobody got close to the house.
We put out information
about the plates associated with that white pickup truck
being driven by Juan David Ortiz
and that he was being looked for
as a person of interest in connection with Melissa and Claudine's murder.
Ortiz is not an idiot. He knows he's being looked for.
So he is running.
Two hours, almost, after Erika's escape,
we get notified that a trooper is at a gas station off of San Bernardo.
State Trooper Bradshaw sees that truck matching that description
parked in front of a dumpster to the left side of the gas station.
[Kenda] He looks through the window of the gas station
and who does he see?
None other than Juan David Ortiz.
He calls it in
and trooper Obregon also pulls in.
Now you're about to confront someone who is undoubtedly armed.
You don't want to confront him in the store.
You're putting the clerk at risk and you're putting everyone else.
You're going to wait for him to come out.
Juan David Ortiz walks out of the Stripes store.
They are giving him orders.
Juan David Ortiz is not following orders.
He starts, uh, acting like he's scared
and he doesn't know why they want to talk to him.
It's a very high stress, uh, situation.
Ortiz is thinking about what he's going to do.
And he sees the opportunity and he makes a run for it.
[bleep]
Our serial killer is finally within reach.
You can run, Mr. Ortiz, but you cannot hide.
Juan David Ortiz has finally been located.
But he seems to have no interest in giving himself up.
Ortiz sees an opportunity and he bolts.
[bleep]
He is able to get that little lead on these two troopers.
And they lose sight of him running toward the parking lot of the Ava Hotel.
They stop their foot chase and they ask for backup.
[Kenda] Ortiz has run into a parking garage.
This particular parking garage has several levels.
Is he going to steal a car? What's he going to do?
A couple of minutes after is when I show up
with, uh, the ranger and the rest of the investigators.
Immediately, we set up a perimeter.
We block off all the exits of the building and of that city block.
So now that they know he's contained in this garage,
they call the SWAT team.
A parking garage is a difficult place to search.
They don't have people with the right equipment
and the right protective gear to search this premise.
[Calderon] While we're organizing the SWAT team
to search for Ortiz in the Ava Hotel parking lot,
we get a call from a passerby off of IH-35.
Is our body count suddenly rising?
[Calderon] We send a deputy out there to go check
and he tells me that it's another crime scene.
It's a woman face down.
The officer sees Smith & Wesson expended casing.
[Calderon] There's 40 caliber casings again
and we were concluding that it was probably related
to Melissa and Claudine's murder.
Calderon's worst nightmare is coming true.
Ortiz is continuing his work.
The victim was identified as Guiselda Cantu.
Also worked in prostitution. Also substance abuse problems.
Guiselda was a mother and she was a good person.
Obviously also addictions and the same problems like the other victims.
If Ortiz escapes that garage without being arrested or killed,
more bodies are going to appear.
He's on a mission.
The SWAT team are very well trained, but so is Ortiz.
He knows his way around weaponry.
The commander of the SWAT team announces the standard plan.
Clear this place one level at a time
to drive him up. You want him up.
High is easy to capture
'cause there is no stairway to heaven.
So we used our tactical team, the SWAT team,
and, uh, some troopers that went in with our SWAT team.
[Alaniz] They formed a stack
and they went up the ramp into the parking lot area of the hotel.
[Calderon] By this time, I had made my way up
and I was watching from on top.
I had a bird's eye view of everything going on down there.
The SWAT team clear the first level. They find nothing.
They clear the second level.
They still haven't found him.
Is he still here?
Did he somehow get out of this?
You know, in one of the bodycam videos, you hear the breathing.
That fast-paced, hyperventilating breathing
that comes with being in a high-stress situation.
Every step they take, you feel that stress,
thinking they're going to be met with gunfire.
I radioed to them to make it to the top of the parking garage
so we can check the rest of the parking garage.
As they were finishing searching the last lot,
Hey, Captain. Take a look at this.
we were told Ortiz is posting things on Facebook.
And I asked, like, he's posting them now?
One of the Facebook messages he posted was
[reading]
and the other one was
[reading]
[Kenda] This is not a good thing.
If he's making his final goodbyes,
nothing is more dangerous than that.
[Calderon] Based off of what they told us that he was posting,
we didn't know what we were coming up against.
SWAT's mission is to take him, dead or alive.
They don't care which.
They assume they're going to get in a gunfight.
[Kenda] It's been five hours since Erika Peña escaped the clutches
of the serial killer Juan David Ortiz.
And now Calderon and his SWAT team
hope to have him cornered in a parking garage.
We have the SWAT team searching the floor by floor, by car,
under cars, behind pickup trucks,
and as they were finishing searching the last lot...
There is a black truck and Juan David Ortiz is in that truck.
They started giving him commands and they took him down.
They pull him out of that truck and cuff him.
He doesn't have a gun on his person,
so he has made the decision not to die
and not to kill any policemen.
[Alaniz] There's a big sense of relief
that nobody was harmed, nobody was shot, that everything worked out.
No, Juan.
We're not like you.
We don't do that.
They immediately put him in a car,
asked me what we wanted to do with him
and I had him transported to the substation.
We got him.
We got him. Those were the first words I hear
and I just remember saying, "Okay, you know what?"
"Let me get ready and get over there."
At that point, there was some degree of, you know, sleep deprivation
but the case was too important to put on the backburner.
I get into one of the closed circuit rooms
and I take my seat there at the table and I'm taking notes.
And, uh, just watching this thing play out.
He was acting actually pretty cocky.
He was very proud of himself that he was able to outrun the troopers
and that gave us a little bit of insight into his personality.
Knowing that we were dealing with another cop,
it was going to be more of a challenge getting him to talk.
We decided to approach him calmly and build a rapport with him.
He begins by denying any knowledge of what they're asking him about.
We bring out photos of the victims.
We bring out photos of the crime scene.
[speaking in English]
We just wanna see his reaction to his work, to what he did.
[crumpling paper]
[speaking in English]
He said he didn't know any of 'em.
It was complete denial so we locked him into that denial.
[speaking in English]
I knew that this was gonna be a long night,
uh, based on what was... was going on.
[speaking in English]
Slowly... calmly, of course,
and, uh, as carefully as we could
we were starting to confront him with his own life.
[speaking in English]
[Isidro] We found where the gun was...
which was in the door panel.
[Joe] Calderon is pushing his buttons
and telling him how much they know about this case
and why he will not escape punishment for this.
You're just a killer like anybody else
and we're gonna hammer you flat.
[speaking in English]
You're getting past his defensive shield
and you're getting to him.
[speaking in English]
When he asked that question I'm thinking to myself,
"Take the handcuffs off.
Take the handcuffs off. The guy wants to...
He wants to talk."
[speaking in English]
I turn to everybody who's in that room and...
and I say, "Guys, get ready, here it comes."
And from there the floodgates open.
[speaking in English]
He begins to tell us that he did know Melissa
and that it's a person he had picked up before.
[speaking in English]
He says they would've gone and bought some heroin.
And she took and injected herself in his truck.
[speaking in English]
At point, he said she started coming to
and that she became belligerent.
[speaking in English]
He said that she was aggressive,
uh, she started to insult him.
[speaking in English]
He told Calderon, "She became
too pushy.
She needed to go away."
Well, all right, then.
He pulled over to let her go to the bathroom.
He said that at that point he saw the opportunity.
[speaking in English]
Wow.
Juan.
You're really crazy.
[speaking in English]
What happens next is what happens to all people who become killers.
Their appetite increases
and the thrill of the bloodletting is what drives them now.
[speaking in English]
So he goes, "You really wanna go there? I'll take you there."
As they're driving out there
they start to go on these desolate farm roads in the middle of nowhere.
She starts to get scared.
[speaking in English]
She starts pointing at him saying, "It's you.
It's you. You killed her."
[speaking in English]
She was trying to run away and there had been a struggle.
[woman 1] Let me go. Stop.
[gasps then moans]
[speaking in English]
To me, it was not a coincidence that Claudine was killed on the 13th.
[Federico] We were actively
at one point, looking for Claudine
because she may have either mentioned that she found Melissa or
she knows who was with Melissa.
It's probably why he killed her.
He didn't wanna take any chances.
[speaking in English]
[indistinct shouting]
[Isidro] After Erika escaped,
Juan David Ortiz goes to his home.
[in English]
He takes out an arsenal of weapons
expecting law enforcement to show up.
[in English]
[Isidro] Law enforcement doesn't show up.
He makes a decision to go out
and start hunting.
[in English]
He possesses his resentment towards these, uh, these workers
and his solution is to get rid of them.
He's just gonna eliminate them 'cause they don't matter.
They're not human.
They're insects and they have to be stepped on.
Wow.
[in English]
[Isidro] Ends up being Guiselda Cantu.
He drives north on I-35, he exits around the 22 mile marker
and tells her to get off his truck.
[in English]
He tells her that he's the one
who's been killing the prostitutes.
[in English]
[Isidro] He describes how she turns around
and tells him, "You don't have to do this.
You're a good person. I wanna pray with you."
[in English]
He loses his temper because
she's trying to talk him out of it.
[in English]
I think he was gonna kill her the whole time.
I think that's just, uh,
a fact that he interjected,
uh, in order to minimize his culpability.
[Joe] All of his conversations are designed
to minimize his involvement in something evil
because it isn't evil, it's the right thing to do.
And I had the courage to do it.
Swell.
[in English]
[Isidro] At that point in time
the proverbial question is... is posed...
Is there anyone else?
And Juan David Ortiz says...
[in English]
"...There's one more that you guys don't know about."
Oh, my.
Juan David Ortiz has admitted to killing three women.
But then he tells Calderon there is a fourth victim
that he doesn't know about.
[in English]
As soon as he started saying the location
and where he left that person,
uh, they took off to go verify.
[Isidro] It was a 13 miles north of Laredo.
There was a gravel mound of asphalt
and over to the right in the tall, green grass
they were gonna find the body.
[Joe] The victim is 20-year-old Janelle Ortiz.
No relation to the suspect.
She is transgender and she has been shot in the head.
My name is Rosenda Ortiz
and I am Janelle's younger sister.
September 16th, I get that call that you don't expect to hear.
That it is Janelle.
And my... I just broke down. I couldn't
handle what I heard.
Janelle was 9 years older than me.
Growing up in her teen years,
she was already transitioning.
She didn't care what other people thought about her.
She was really outgoing, she had a lot of friends.
She was just that type of person that you can go up to
when you needed a hug,
you needed someone to talk to.
Just someone that was there.
I just had that bond with her
that I will never have with no other.
[in English]
[Federico] He picked up Janelle Ortiz.
He said that he started driving... north
toward I-35.
[in English]
[Isidro] Janelle Ortiz asks Juan David Ortiz,
"You're gonna kill me, right?"
And Juan David Ortiz looks at Janelle and says, "Yeah."
[Federico] He said that he was surprised that he didn't get any fight
out of, uh, Janelle Ortiz.
[Juan] Get out of the truck.
[Isidro] And he pulls into the 13-mile marker.
Janelle gets out, Juan David Ortiz walks around his truck,
stands behind Janelle...
[Juan] Turn around.
[in English]
...gets back in his truck,
drives back to San Bernardo.
He leaves her body right there.
Mr. Ortiz kills two women in less than two hours.
He has to kill more.
He's not satisfied yet.
He was gonna keep cleaning up the streets quote-unquote,
until somebody stopped him.
[in English]
And luckily those troopers were at the right place at the right time that night.
[in English]
It was something I've never seen before,
never in 28 years seen something play out the way it did,
as... as descriptive and as animated as he was.
Boom.
Boom, boom.
[Joe] The question always becomes
"Why did this happen?"
Men that hate prostitutes, in my humble opinion
because they hate themselves
for doing what they do.
To engage in sex for money.
He made a comment the monster in him came out.
I disagree, Mr. Ortiz.
You are the monster.
It's not inside you.
It is you.
When we found out that they had gotten the suspect.
It was just shocking news for us to know that it was the Border Patrol.
Someone that, supposedly, we need to feel protected.
[Ciara] I really was just so in shock.
Like, I couldn't believe, like, it was a Border Patrol agent.
I couldn't fathom it. I was just so distraught.
It was really really surreal.
That just... like, threw me over, like
"What do you mean it's a Border Patrol agent?"
It was hard to grasp.
After all the carnage that
Juan David Ortiz left behind,
Melissa Ramirez's mom is interviewed
and she comes out there and says, "I'm not in favor of the death penalty."
[speaking in other language]
[Isidro in English] For him it was worth going to trial
so that he could maybe get a lesser charge
and ultimately a lesser sentence.
[Colette] It was scary walking into that courtroom
finally seeing him, who he was.
I felt the urge to scream so loud.
But I couldn't. I just sat there and looked at him
and my tears kept rolling down.
[speaking in other language]
[in English]
We were able to transport, if you will, the jury
to the last moments of these victims' deaths.
We also put 'em in the interview room
with the Texas Ranger and Captain Calderon.
[in other language]
[Federico in English] Erika was part of the trial...
and, uh, she had a very important role to play.
[in English]
Because of her, uh, we were able to bring justice to the rest of the families.
[Ciara] Like, I hugged her, I cried with her.
Like, she's our hero, you know,
and she's so strong. I don't have the right words to thank her.
-[man 1] Was it a unanimous verdict? -[woman 1] Yes, it was.
[man 1] Can you please hand the verdict form to the bailiff?
Verdict form, "We the jury find the defendant, Juan David Ortiz guilty
of the offense of Capital Murder as charged in the indictment
and as instructed in this charge.
The jury was able to arrive
at him being guilty of Capital Murder, life without parole.
So long, Mr. Ortiz.
Let's lock you up in a box
and feed you bologna sandwiches for the rest of your life
and see what you think of that.
I was feeling so relieved. I was like, "Thank God, justice was served."
[Rosenda] I felt just relieved after we got our justice.
Like, this really left my chest.
We got the verdict we wanted.
But he ruined our lives. He changed everything, you know.
He caused, like, so much trauma.
[in other language]
[in English] Regardless of what JD Ortiz thought about these people,
they are mothers, they're sisters, they're daughters
and nobody deserves to get treated the way they were treated
regardless of their lifestyle.
Melissa was just the best mother that she could be
for her kids.
It saddens me a lot the way people just judge you.
In life, we're not always gonna make the right decisions
and sadly weakness can take control on a person.
And yes, Claudine took her life to the streets
but it didn't define her.
She had her children, she had her family who loved her.
[Ciara] You know, my mom was such a beautiful soul, like,
we all have our vices, like, she wasn't a bad person.
I try to do everything with love the way she did.
[Rosenda] Janelle still pops up in my dreams.
It's just a reminder, you know, that she is
out there looking out for us.
I love you, Janelle.
You're always in my heart.
No one is above the law.
And no one is below the law in the state of Texas.
-[man 1] Court's adjourned. -[gavel bangs]
We were able to expose JD Ortiz.
People like him need to be stopped and
luckily, there are police all over the country who are willing to do the job.
Good police work thinks, rethinks,
restarts, reengages.
Always looking.
And Federico Calderon
is an example of that.
You don't believe that?
Ask Juan David Ortiz if he believes that.
This season on American Detective...
There are moments in criminal investigations
that a bad feeling comes over you.
These are monsters.
You look into your eyes and...
...you know, you're coming up zeroes.
That's not just a red light...
that's a solar flare.
It looked like something you would see in a horror film.
I have never seen a body that destroyed.
Just when you think you've seen the worst in somebody
the next person is like, "Hold my beer."
A passenger in her car had been abducted.
What if our killer is a cop?
She said, "Please tell me it's not true."
"Tell me Melissa's house is not on fire."
When you get information that there is a child missing
it knocks the wind out of you.
There is freshly fallen snow
and there is no physical evidence to be seen.
If you think this is going to end well,
you're sorely mistaken, my dear.