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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 farInvestigations into the murders of Brenda Salazar and Armida Garcia had gone into the cold-case files. Although Andy Ortiz was arrested in connection with Armida's murder, prosecutors did not consider the evidence against him adequate for trial. He was sent to prison for an unrelated parole violation and released in 1999.CHAPTER 11Anna had much in common with the victims of Andy Ortiz. She was young, for one thing, just 15 when she met the north-side gang member, who was eight years older. She was also pretty, with dark hair and lovely eyes. And like many of the others, she was hopelessly naive, another starry-eyed child who bought Ortiz's pickup lines, another girl who would believe his declarations of love.But there was something different about Anna, though exactly what it was perhaps only Ortiz could say. While he typically skulked around in the shadows, seducing young girls in places where no one else would see, he courted Anna in plain sight, with the blessing of his parents and hers. Her name would end up tattooed on Ortiz's right arm, near the name of his mother, Stella.They had met early in 1997, introduced by Ortiz's older brother, David, who had met Anna's family a few months before. The relationship between Andy and Anna began later that year when Ortiz was sent to prison for violating his parole and he began to write to the girl from his cell.One topic of conversation was what had happened that August, when police had accused him of raping and strangling a 15-year-old girl named Armida Garcia. In his letters to Anna, he insisted that he was innocent. The cops had tried to make him a scapegoat because of his long criminal record, he said. If he were guilty, Andy wrote to Anna, he would have been tried for murder, but that never happened.So the girl believed him, especially when Ortiz began to write that he loved her, that he wanted her to be his girlfriend. Anna began taking weekend drives to prison with Ortiz's parents, sitting with them in visiting rooms as she and her older boyfriend made awkward conversation.Then came the day in July 1999 when David Ortiz Sr. and his wife, Stella, came by Anna's house on the south side of Fort Worth, saying that they had a surprise for her. It was "a big bear," they said, but the girl, then 17, would have to ride with them to see it. So, with her parents' permission, Anna hopped into the back seat of the Ortiz family SUV.It was a long trip, as it turned out, all the way to downtown Dallas and a parking spot outside the bus station. Stella Ortiz rushed off into the afternoon, leaving her husband and Anna waiting in the SUV. When Stella returned a few minutes later, Andy was at her side, wearing khakis and a white shirt. He hugged Anna, then sat with her in the back seat as his father stopped at Wendy's to buy hamburgers as a way of celebrating his son's freedom. But for Anna, there was one more big surprise that day. The ex-con, her 25-year-old boyfriend, was coming to live at her house.
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