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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.The story so farHomicide Detective Joe Thornton was sure that gang member Andy Ortiz had killed 15-year-old Armida Garcia, but he still had to prove it. So far, an interrogation has proved fruitless.CHAPTER 9Cynthia Catano had a sudden and desperate craving for peanuts and Dr Pepper, which she knew could be satisfied with a short walk to the convenience store down the street. So just before dark that Sunday night, Aug. 3, 1997, the pregnant woman set off on foot. Her 11-year-old daughter, Ann, decided to tag along for company. (At their request, the mother and daughter are not identified by their full, legal names.)They were on their way home, walking into the mouth of the alley behind their house, when a young man sprinting down the narrow pathway from the opposite direction nearly ran them over. Cynthia didn't see his face, but her daughter got a good look, recognizing him as a guy she had seen before in the neighborhood. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white muscle shirt and had a dark shirt slung over one shoulder. He had short dark hair and a tattoo sprawling down one arm. And he looked agitated, angry or frightened as he crossed Northside Drive and sprinted up Lagonda Avenue.Yet Ann didn't give him a second thought because guys were always running back and forth in the alley. Then, as she was getting ready for bed, she heard sirens coming from the next block. Ann put on a pair of tennis shoes and ran with her mother from her home on Lagonda toward the noise on Denver Avenue, where her good friend Armida Garcia lived.Armida was four years older, but she and Ann always attended each other's birthday parties and family functions. Their moms were best friends, so Ann had spent almost as much time in Armida's home over the years as she had in her own. But that night, as she and her mother rounded the corner, Ann saw police at Armida's house, and when she looked in the ambulance, she saw her friend lying motionless beneath frantic emergency workers. As they stood together outside the ambulance, Cynthia clung to Graciela Garcia, Armida's mother, who had rushed home after being alerted by a relative.Ann's head was spinning. What terrible thing had happened? She begged her mother to explain. But all Cynthia would say was that Armida would be fine and that Ann needed to walk back home so the two mothers could ride together to the hospital. Ann could see that Armida wasn't fine. And sometime before midnight her mother called from the hospital to confirm that her friend was dead.The days to come were a blur of mourning. Ann remembered Armida's kindness, her beautiful singing voice and her resemblance to the famous Tejano singer Selena. In fact, Ann had been sure that Armida herself would be famous someday. But now she was gone, just like that. The adults said that a man had come into her house and killed her, strangled her with shoelaces. And as the days passed, Ann started to think she knew who that man was, because even an 11-year-old could put the horrifying pieces together.
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