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This series contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence.
Editor's note: To Catch a Killer is the true story of killer Andy James Ortiz, his young victims, and the Fort Worth police and Tarrant County prosecutors who brought him to justice.Three victims in today's installment were not identified for their protection.The story so farYoung Brenda Salazar was found strangled in her apartment near Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, and Fort Worth police, including Detective Curt Brannan, combed her apartment for clues. But the investigation turned cold. Meanwhile, north-side gang member Andy Ortiz kept adding to his rap sheet - and hitting on young girls.CHAPTER 4Most entries in Andy Ortiz's criminal dossier, which grew to be several inches thick, concerned burglary, along with auto theft, brawls and parole violations, typical gang stuff. But several police reports detailed more sinister allegations, such as one in which the victim was a 13-year-old girl.She was walking past Ortiz's home on Lee Avenue on Sept. 4, 1991, when he called out her name. When she would not come into his house, the police report said, he grabbed her, pulled her through the front door, locked it and threw her on a sofa, where he began kissing her face and neck. The girl managed to break free, escape the house unharmed and run to the house of a friend, who called police.Ortiz was arrested within hours and eventually charged with aggravated kidnapping. But the charge was dismissed as part of a plea bargain when Ortiz agreed to a nine-year prison sentence for earlier burglaries. He was paroled after nine months.So he was free two years later, on Aug. 8, 1993, another night detailed in long police report narratives. This time the girl was a 15-year-old who joined two young friends using fake IDs to sneak into a north-side nightclub. That night, when the teenager declined the advances of a young man who approached her in the bar, he pushed something into her back. "Come with me now, or I'll shoot you here," the man said, according to a police report.Outside, she was forced into the back seat of a car with the man. Another man was behind the wheel as they drove away. The 15-year-old remembered that her abductor wore a dark blue Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and jeans and smelled as if he had been sniffing paint. She wept and her heart raced as they turned left from the parking lot, passing a large school. The radio was tuned to a Spanish-language station. After several minutes, the car stopped in front of a light-colored house on the north side, and the abductor forced the teen from the car. Standing in front of the house, he began calling her a bitch and a whore and threatened to shoot her when she cried."Shut up so you don't wake anyone," the man said, according to the police narrative. "If you don't shut up I'll kill you."Inside she saw the hardwood floors in the living room and two twin beds in a bedroom. She told police that she was raped and beaten on one of them and that when she began to scream, her assailant choked her and put a gun to her forehead. When he finished, he ordered her to dress and forced her back outside to a house a few doors down the street, where several other young men were drinking beer outside in the pre-dawn. The girl was certain the other men were about to rape her, too, so she ran.
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