Name: The Hunt for the Serial Killer of Laredo
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The Hunt for the Serial Killer of Laredo

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Sort ByFilter ByLocationsTypeView ResultsFilterse first began frequenting San Bernardo Avenue, in the border city of Laredo,&nbsp;Luera had grown up in a neighborhood near downtown and had attended Raymond &amp; Tirza Martin High School, which happened to be located on San Bernardo, less than half a mile from the prostitute blocks. Growing up, she and her sisters were called las blanquitas (“the whiteys”), because they were biracial. (Their father was Hispanic, and their mother was Scottish.) After high school, Luera had worked for a time as a clerk for the district attorney’s office. But she eventually became addicted to heroin. In 2014, Child Protective Services took away her five children and placed them in the custody of Luera’s sister and aunt. By 2015 she was working on San Bernardo.On the evening of September 14, about 36 hours after Luera’s body was discovered, Erika Peña, a skinny 27-year-old with dyed blond hair, was walking San Bernardo when she saw a white Dodge Ram pickup headed her way. Peña knew the driver, who went by David. She liked him, in fact. He had told her he was a federal law enforcement officer, but she had never seen him in uniform. That night, she would later say, he was happy and talkative.“He didn’t just want to stop the bad guys,” said Erik Aguilar. “He wanted to use his medical skills to help migrants. I know this might be hard to understand right now, but Doc really cared about people.” cco home in the San Isidro Ranch neighborhood, in north Laredo, for $240,000. He spent most of his free time with Daniella and the kids. Occasionally, on Saturdays, he hunted or fished with his best man Solis, and on Sundays he and his family attended the First Assembly of God. To those who knew him, it seemed that Ortiz had built a good life for himself.In early 2018, Ortiz told Solis he had to forfeit the hunting lease the two shared outside of Laredo. “He said that he was having to work too much, that he was under a lot of pressure at his job,” said Solis. “I said, ‘Come on, bro, we love that lease.’ But he kept talking about all the work he had to do.”During the following months, Ortiz and Solis periodically would meet at the truck yard owned by Solis’s family or at a Buffalo Wild Wings. Ortiz would drink excessively, often five beers or more. “And it was hard to have a conversation with him,” said Solis. “It was like something else was on his mind.” In late spring or early summer 2018, Ortiz told Solis that he had gone to Laredo’s VA clinic, where a doctor had prescribed what Solis describes as antipsychotic medication. “I told him, ‘Man, don’t go overboard with those pills,’ ” said Solis. “ ‘And don’t drink and take those pills at the same time. They will fuck you up.’ But he said, ‘These pills work. I don’t feel bad. I have no stress, no worries. I feel untouchable.’ ”Later that summer, Ortiz showed Solis a photo on his phone of a young woman. He said he had met her at a Gold’s Gym. Solis was stunned. “I said to him, ‘Ortiz, have you thought about what you’re going to do if your wife finds out you have a girlfriend? Are you willing to lose her and your kids?’ And he said, ‘There’s going to be no problem. My girlfriend knows I’m married, and she’s okay with that.’ ”On August 30, Solis invited Ortiz to the truck yard to watch a preseason game between the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans. Ortiz took a couple of pills and drank several beers. He said little and left before the game ended, explaining that he had to be at work early the next morning.Four days later, Melissa Ramirez was found next to the dirt road. When Solis saw her photo in the newspaper, he was struck by her resemblance to the woman he had seen on Ortiz’s phone. But he convinced himself he was mistaken. When he heard about the discovery of Claudine Luera’s body on September 13, Solis never considered that Ortiz might be involved in her murder.“I mean, Ortiz was a churchgoer,” Solis said. “He never once talked to me about prostitutes. If someone had told me that Ortiz was picking up women on San Bernardo, I would have said, ‘You’ve definitely got the wrong guy.’ ”The investigators entered Ortiz’s house just after midnight and found an arsenal of weapons, twelve in all, including high-powered rifles, pistols, and a shotgun. Assuming Ortiz would flee Laredo, they put out a BOLO (a “Be on the lookout” message) on him.Ortiz, however, had other intentions. After fleeing the gas station, he’d driven to his house, where he loaded up on ammo, and then returned to San Bernardo—no doubt the last place the police would expect him to go. He picked up 35-year-old Hernandez. He drove her up Interstate&nbsp;35 for twenty miles, stopped at an overpass, demanded that she get out of the truck, and shot her twice in the neck. He then cracked her over the head with what one investigator would later describe as “a blunt obAt the time, the Border Patrol was under fire for accepting unqualified applicants to fill its depleted ranks. But how, many demanded to know, had a serial killer gotten into the Border Patrol? Hadn’t anyone noticed that Ortiz was deeply disturbed? This article originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of&nbsp;Texas Monthly&nbsp;with the headline “The Serial Killer of Laredo.”&nbsp;.ByByByByByByIt’s free. It’s daily. And it’s full of great reads, y’all.ByByByandByByByByByByBy

Sort ByFilter ByLocationsTypeView ResultsFilterse first began frequenting San Bernardo Avenue, in the border city of Laredo,&nbsp;Luera had grown up in a neighborhood near downtown and had attended Raymond &amp; Tirza Martin High School, which happened to be located on San Bernardo, less than half a mile from the prostitute blocks. Growing up, she and her sisters were called las blanquitas (“the whiteys”), because they were biracial. (Their father was Hispanic, and their mother was Scottish.) After high school, Luera had worked for a time as a clerk for the district attorney’s office. But...

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The Hunt for the Serial Killer of Laredo

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