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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 far Andy Ortiz was charged with murder in the killing of Brenda Salazar. Detective Curt Brannan continued to search for evidence against Ortiz in the case of 15-year-old Armida Garcia, who was strangled in 1997.CHAPTER 22On a night not long after Andy Ortiz was arrested in Brenda Salazar's murder, Victoria Curtis heard a knock at the front door of her trailer home in Crowley. She looked outside and saw two unfamiliar Hispanic women. When Curtis cautiously opened the door, one of the women introduced herself in English, saying she was there to serve as an interpreter for the other, whose name was Graciela Garcia.Through her interpreter, the Garcia woman explained the reason for the visit."The same man who killed my daughter killed your niece, too," Armida Garcia's mother said.Curtis was briefly speechless. Her niece, Krystal Minjarez, who had lived with her, was murdered a month or so before."How did you find me?" she asked.From an address in a story in the Crowley newspaper, came the reply.Curtis gathered herself and invited the women inside. Graciela Garcia was carrying a photo album. When she sat down, she opened it to the first page, pushing it toward Curtis."I wanted you to see my daughter," she said.The first photo stole Curtis' breath. A beautiful young girl smiled out from the page, wearing a white dress for her quinceañera. The picture was taken just a few months before the girl was raped and killed in her own home, her mother told Curtis.Another reality dawned on Curtis as she looked at the portrait and leafed through other photographs of the girl: Armida and Krystal could have been sisters. Ortiz had obviously sought out a certain type of victim -- beautiful, young, naive Hispanic girls. Waves of horror and revulsion swept over Krystal's aunt.Then Graciela Garcia pulled out newspaper clippings and began to describe what had happened three years before, how Ortiz had been arrested in Armida's killing but set free because of what prosecutors called a lack of evidence. Armida's mother never believed that was true, she told Curtis that night.The authorities had failed to do their jobs, Graciela Garcia said bitterly. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that her daughter was Hispanic and from a working-class family. If police and prosecutors had not failed, Armida's mother told Victoria Curtis, Krystal would still be alive.But there was a part of the story that Armida's mother did not share with Curtis. Graciela Garcia did not mention that she knew an 11-year-old girl who had seen Ortiz running from the direction of Armida's house the night of the murder. Nor did Graciela Garcia mention that she and the girl's mother agreed that the girl should remain silent because of the girl's fear of Ortiz.
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