Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008

Chapter 8 | One phone call generates years of second-guessing

By TIM MADIGAN, with DEANNA BOYD and MELODY McDONALD

Star-Telegram staff writer

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.

The story so far

Homicide Detective Joe Thornton was sure that gang member Andy Ortiz had killed 15-year-old Armida Garcia, but he still had to prove it. His opportunity came when Ortiz was finally arrested and taken to police headquarters for interrogation.

CHAPTER 8

Detective Joe Thornton was the first to admit that he might not be suited to a long career investigating murders. If ever there was a job that needed to be left at the office, it was that one, with its gore and heartbreak and regular acquaintance with evil. Thornton was far too prone to taking his work home.

"I can remember waking up at night and thinking about a case, wondering if I did this, did I do that? Did I do what I should have done?" Thornton, now a supervisor in the Fort Worth Police Department's narcotics division, remembered in an interview. "And I would have to make a note to check it in the morning. A lot of times, I wouldn't go back to sleep because my head started going about things. I don't know that my personality was such that I could have done it for a lot of years, like some guys did. I don't know if I would have gotten any rest."

Thornton's stint in homicide began in early 1997. It ended two years later, when he was promoted to sergeant and transferred to the SWAT team as a supervisor. During those two years, no murder case disrupted his sleep more than the rape and strangulation of a 15-year-old north-side girl named Armida Garcia. And nothing about that case haunted him more than the interrogation late on Friday night, Aug. 8, 1997.

Thornton got the call he had been waiting for about 10:30 that night. The homicide supervisor, Sgt. Paul Kratz, said that suspect Andy Ortiz had been arrested and that Ortiz would be waiting for Thornton in the homicide unit interrogation room downtown. So Thornton said goodbye to his family and set off for police headquarters, mentally preparing his line of questioning and tamping down his adrenaline before the crucial confrontation.

And it was crucial. Thornton's case against Ortiz to that point was lacking in physical evidence. The girl's autopsy had indicated rape, but there was no recoverable semen, meaning no DNA. What had seemed to be bite marks on the victim's right shoulder had actually been made by some sort of tool, which meant there was no chance to compare the wound with Ortiz's teeth. Several hairs that might have belonged to the killer were recovered from Armida's body, but the results of genetic testing might not be available for weeks or longer. Simply put, Thornton needed a confession.

He rode the elevator to the third-floor homicide unit, then conferred with one of the officers who had made the arrest, hearing how Ortiz had begged not to be killed. The lack of belligerence was encouraging, Thornton thought.

His optimism grew when he saw the prisoner. The interrogation room was a tiny space with beige walls, no more than 12 feet square and brightly lit. It was unadorned -- no photographs on the walls or fake plants in the corners, nothing that might distract a suspect from the unpleasantness at hand, nothing that might provide comfort. The only furniture was a plain table pushed up against a wall, and two nondescript chairs.

Ortiz sat slumped in one of them, a short, paunchy and otherwise unimposing young man with short hair and a goatee, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, shackled at the ankles. The prisoner stared down at the old blue carpeting and scarcely looked up when Thornton entered the room. He seemed defeated and on the verge of tears. Thornton thought Ortiz looked like a guy ready to spill his guts.

Then the detective's hopes plummeted. Ortiz handed him the business card of a defense attorney named Gene DeBullet and a receipt from DeBullet showing that the prisoner's family had already retained a lawyer. Thornton figured there was no way DeBullet would allow Ortiz to be questioned without a lawyer present.

"So does that mean you won't talk to me?" Thornton asked.

Ortiz never looked up from the carpet.

"No, I'll talk to you," Ortiz said.

Before Ortiz could change his mind, the surprised detective read the suspect his Miranda rights. Ortiz had the right to a lawyer during questioning and could terminate the interrogation anytime. Did he understand that? When the suspect nodded and said he did, Thornton handed him a pen. Ortiz signed the sheet and Thornton checked his watch, filling in the date and time, 11:15 p.m.

Before Thornton could ask his first question, Ortiz spoke.

"My attorney said you could take a sample of my sperm," he volunteered.

So Ortiz had even conferred with his attorney while on the lam, Thornton thought. But the detective already knew from the autopsy that whoever had raped the girl had used a foreign object or was wearing a condom. Ortiz's offer was nothing more than a ruse. But at least he was talking.

Thornton pulled his chair a few feet from the suspect. With only a corner of the table between them, he kept his voice low and his demeanor calm. His first objective was to get Ortiz to admit that he had been with the girl the night of her death, because from there it wasn't far to a confession of some sort. But Ortiz kept his head in his hands, and his eyes rarely left the table. When he spoke, it was just above a whisper, and it was not to admit anything. He told Thornton that he knew Armida, sure, but considered her a little sister of sorts. He said he had not seen her since early July.

That was Ortiz's first lie, Thornton thought, one that he could prove. The detective told Ortiz that witnesses had placed him with Armida the day she was killed. The suspect just stared at the table and shook his head, mumbling that he was home the night of Armida's death, talking to two girls on the telephone. Thornton could check.

The detective pressed on. What about the letters Ortiz had sent to Armida from jail? What about his anger when the pretty girl rejected his sexual advances? What about the phone call the day Armida was killed, when she refused to go to the mall with him? What about the night of the killing, when Ortiz apparently tried to plead his case with Armida in person?

Ortiz mumbled, if he replied at all. As the minutes passed, he never really denied killing the girl, but he didn't confess, either. Thornton tried different tactics, eventually shedding his calm demeanor and standing above Ortiz, his face a few inches from the suspect's. That seemed to have an effect, because Ortiz eventually began to cry. He seemed ready to break.

"He knows what he did and he got caught," Thornton remembered thinking. "He realizes that we've got him."

Then Ortiz asked to speak to his mother, his strongest defender. Thornton figured that Stella Ortiz (who declined repeated interview requests for this series) might be the last hurdle between Ortiz and the truth. If the suspect could square things away with her, Thornton reasoned, it might be over. So he agreed to bring Ortiz out of the interrogation room and into the homicide unit, where he handed the suspect a phone. He sat next to Ortiz as he dialed the number and listened as the weeping suspect told his mother where he was and what was happening. The conversation lasted just seconds, and Thornton's stomach sank the moment Ortiz hung up. The suspect said he was done talking. His mother had insisted that he talk only to his attorney. It was a moment that Thornton would replay over and over during the years of fitful nights to come.

"I could have kicked myself, to be honest with you," Thornton remembered recently. "I was actually thinking I made a mistake by letting him talk to her. At the time, I thought it was a good idea, that it might put him over the hump. But the minute he hung up, I regretted it. I regretted it every day for three years. If I hadn't let him talk to his mom, I could have broken him. I kid you not. I worried about that and thought about that. I felt he was the guy who killed her and that I had lost my opportunity to get a confession."

But, as the coming months would show, the lack of a confession was just the beginning of Thornton's investigative nightmare.

Next: A witness and a hunch.

Timeline

1984: Detective Curt Brannan joins the homicide unit of the Fort Worth Police Department.

Nov. 25, 1990: Andy Ortiz is arrested in the burglary of a car, the first of his many arrests as an adult.

Sept. 4, 1991: Ortiz is accused of kidnapping a 13-year-old girl. An aggravated-kidnapping charge is dismissed as part of a plea bargain when Ortiz agrees to a nine-year sentence for earlier burglaries. He is paroled after nine months.

1992: Brannan works the high-profile Caren Koslow murder case.

Aug. 8, 1993: Ortiz is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, but there isn't enough evidence to go to trial. He is returned to jail on a parole violation and is released after serving one year.

Early 1995: Ortiz first meets 13-year-old Armida Garcia at a convenience store and gets her phone number.

1995: Ortiz begins corresponding with and calling Garcia from jail, where he is doing time on a theft charge.

December 1995: Ortiz is released from prison.

Summer 1996: Nineteen-year-old Brenda Salazar moves to North Texas to pursue a job in the airline industry.

1997: Detective Joe Thornton joins the homicide unit of the Fort Worth Police Department.

May 26, 1997: Salazar's roommate returns from out of town and discovers Salazar's body in their apartment just after 5 p.m. She was killed either late on May 25 or early on May 26.

May 28, 1997: Salazar's parents come to Fort Worth to meet with Brannan.

July 9, 1997: A 12-year-old girl is raped by a man matching Ortiz's description; she decides not to pursue the case after becoming fearful of reprisals.

July 19, 1997: Ortiz tries to kiss Garcia and is rebuffed by her; they don't speak again for two weeks.

Aug. 3, 1997: Garcia is strangled in her parents' bedroom on Fort Worth's north side.

Aug. 4, 1997: A caller tips off Thornton that Ortiz might be her killer.

Aug. 5, 1997: A warrant is issued for Ortiz on a charge of capital murder.

Aug. 8, 1997: Ortiz is arrested in Garcia's killing.

Fall 1997: The Salazar murder case grows cold.