The man pulled up next to Stephany Gonzalez, a sex worker on the strip, as she walked with her friend, Nikki Enriquez. He rolled down the window. Gonzalez had a bad feeling. Two of her good friends, also sex workers, were recently found dead with gunshot wounds to the head on rural roads outside Laredo. She was hoping for a client that night but felt uneasy by the nervous-sounding driver. She tightened her grip around a pocketknife she held under her shirt.
Her friend, Enriquez, a year-old transgender woman known to many of her friends as Janelle, got into the truck instead. It was the last time Gonzalez saw her alive.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/L5WH34MQ4BLRNGOVJLY4GOTYHE.jpg "Sex guide Laredo")
That night was the beginning of the end of a day killing spree last month that claimed four women and rattled this normally quiet border city. Enriquez was the last of four women who authorities said were murdered by Juan David Ortiz, a year veteran of the U. Border Patrol. Law enforcement officials are still gathering all the evidence in the killings. Isidro Alaniz, district attorney for Webb and Zapata counties, said earlier this month a murder indictment for Ortiz will likely be filed in December.
Ortiz, 35, who was arrested hours after his encounter with Gonzalez, allegedly confessed to the killings. Tellez did not respond to several requests for comment. More than a month after the slayings, authorities and friends and families of the victims are all still grappling with a central, unanswered question: Why? What triggered Ortiz, a Navy veteran, husband, father of two and Border Patrol supervisor, to allegedly go on the deadly rampage, meticulously killing woman after woman, police say, with a.
They were often seen crowding around the same bus stop bench on San Bernardo, clowning around or seeking out clients. They left behind sons, daughters, devastated moms and dads and perplexed, angered friends. What was his problem? Motive may still be a mystery but a picture is emerging of what occurred between Sept. Based on interviews with law enforcement officials, court documents and interviews with families and friends of the victims, those 12 days were a roller coaster of terror, sweeping detective work, false leads and killings that shattered family after family.
