Posted on Sun, Mar. 09, 2008

Chapter 24 | 'I'm not going to admit to nothing that I didn't do'

By TIM MADIGAN, with DEANNA BOYD and MELODY McDONALD

Star-Telegram staff writers

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 convicted of murdering Brenda Salazar, 20, and Armida Garcia, 15, but was never charged in the death of Krystal Minjarez, 13.

On TV: A Star-Telegram documentary about Andy Ortiz's crimes will debut at 8 tonight on KTXA/Channel 21.

CHAPTER 24

On an October afternoon in 2001, after two weeks of trials, two guilty verdicts and two life sentences for Andy Ortiz, two grieving mothers had the final word.

Graciela Garcia spoke first, a beautiful woman in her 40s who sat in the witness stand and dabbed at tears.

"I want to ask you if you have a conscience about what you did," Armida Garcia's mother said through an interpreter. She looked across the courtroom toward the defendant, who was seated next to his lawyers. "I know I should be happy about what has happened to you, but I am not. No matter what kind of punishment you receive, you will never bring my daughter back -- or the other child."

Family members sobbed in the gallery as the mother spoke, and jurors quietly wept. Ortiz looked at the ceiling and scratched his chin.

Then Brenda Salazar's mother came forward.

"Andy Ortiz, you took away my daughter's life ... and you took away a part of us," Rosa Maria Salazar said. "She was seeking a profession and a career, and I took her back home dead." Ortiz was led from the courtroom in shackles a few minutes later.

In a courthouse corridor, the two mothers embraced and exchanged phone numbers, promising to keep in touch because, as Rosa Maria Salazar said that day, they were forever united "in the same pain."

'God had sent me an angel'

Several years later, Brenda's mother sat at a round kitchen table in her South Texas home, her eyes focused on a tissue damp from tears. Rosa Maria Salazar folded the tissue once, then again, and when it came apart in her hands, her surviving daughter, Rosalia, handed her another.

Life had gone on, Brenda's mother said. She and her husband lived in a new home, and Rosa Maria had opened a place called Brenda's Beauty Shop, where haircuts went for $7. Visits to the cemetery were less frequent, but the pain was still raw, and her heart was still broken. "In the morning, I get up and think about her," Rosa Maria Salazar said. "At night, I go to bed, and again I think about her. She never goes away in my mind. Sometimes I think that by now she might be married with children. But God's wishes were different. I give thanks to God for the 20 years I was able to have with her. It was like God had sent me an angel."

A lifetime of pain

In a small, tidy Fort Worth apartment, Graciela Garcia met visitors in her living room , surrounded by pictures of Armida -- many of the girl in her quinceañera dress. The photographs are Graciela's only keepsakes of her daughter. There's no need for others, the mother explained, because Armida is always in her head.

Graciela dabbed away tears and spoke about the place where her daughter still lives -- in her dreams.

"I never dream about her death," she said. "[She's] always alive. Sometimes we even fight, or I scold her and she gets mad at me."

Then she told of her shattered family. Several years after Armida's death, her parents divorced, a breakup brought on by the weight of their shared grief. Armida's brother, Fernando, now in his early 20s, still struggles with the loss of his sister and with the memories of finding her dead.

"My daughter got killed and my 13-year-old son found her," Graciela said. "I had two pains. ... I wondered why it couldn't have been me who found her or my ex-husband. Why did it have to be him? He was for a while not doing very well. He wasn't doing well at school. I don't think he's ever going to forget it."

Graciela is not doing well, either.

"My pain is never going to go away," she said, "whether I talk about it or I don't."

No third conviction

Ortiz was not indicted for the murder of Krystal Minjarez.

"There just isn't enough [evidence] to make a death penalty case out of it, and it wouldn't serve any function to stack three life sentences when you already have two," said Alan Levy, the chief felony prosecutor in the Tarrant County district attorney's office. But, as Levy said, Ortiz will "always be vulnerable to that case."

And there can be little doubt about who murdered Krystal and dumped her body on the shore of Marine Creek Lake. The girl's family finds some comfort in the fact that Krystal's case led police to Ortiz once and for all: Her death had helped end his long criminal odyssey. Victoria Curtis, Krystal's aunt, moved from her trailer in Crowley to an apartment in Fort Worth several years after the murder. There, on a recent afternoon, she remembered the girl known as "La Giggles," the teenager who prayed every night before she fell asleep, the girl who unknowingly left a trail of bread crumbs for detectives on the summer night she disappeared.

"It's like she caught and convicted her own killer," Curtis said.

In his own words

The William Clements Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a prison named for the former Texas governor, sprawls across flat, treeless prairie on the outskirts of Amarillo. The complex of buildings sits behind two fences, each topped by coils of razor wire. Corrections officers with high-powered rifles man the tops of guard towers at the high-security facility for the worst criminals in Texas.

Andy Ortiz certainly qualifies. For years he has lived there, in a tiny cell, with a bed, a desk and a toilet. He is in solitary confinement, though his administrative segregation, as it is officially known, has more to do with Ortiz's past gang affiliations than with the crimes that put him in prison for good.

He is allowed out of his cell for one hour a day, to exercise alone in a 12-foot-square room with a basketball hoop. To prison guards, Ortiz is known as a "cell warrior," a prisoner who talks a big game when his cell doors are locked, threatening to do this or do that to prison authorities.

"But when he goes outside the cell or when his cell doors are open, he's very meek and mild," said Maj. Mary Miller, a prison supervisor who has known Ortiz for years.

One day about a year ago, Ortiz, now 34, consented to an interview at the prison. He shuffled into a spartan visiting room carrying a stack of papers and notebooks, wearing a white prison jumpsuit open at the chest. His dark hair was short and thinning, his face pale and soft. Ortiz was locked into a small cubicle. From behind shatterproof glass, he picked up a telephone to talk, the first time he had ever discussed his life with the media.

Ortiz said he read Christian magazines to pass the time, though it was hard to be a Christian in prison with all the negativity that surrounded him. He continued to try to find a legal angle that might win him his freedom, though his appeals had long been exhausted. He spoke of his parents and said they made sure that he and his two brothers went to church when they were kids. Ortiz spoke of his north-side neighborhood and how the brothers were forced to fight to defend themselves. That's how his trouble started, defending himself, Ortiz said.

Ortiz smiled when the topic turned to girls. He did not argue with a characterization of him as a player, a ladies man.

"Yeah, I mean, that's why, when the detective was asking a lot of different girls in my phone book, 'Were you ever afraid of this guy?' they told him no. 'Why would we be afraid of him? We would mess with him,'" Ortiz said. "A lot of different girls told him, 'We'd sleep together and stuff. There was no way he had to take nothing from us, rape us.'"

Did he have a thing for young girls?

"No, I had a thing for girls pretty much my age," he said. "Like that one girl they accused me of killing, Armida Garcia, the district attorney tried to make that letter [sent by Ortiz to Armida] out to say that I was trying to be sexually explicit. Like it was a dirty letter or something. But if you ask a Mexican person about that letter, carnal means 'brother' and carnalita means 'sister.' That's the way I used to talk to her. I even used to put in there, 'my little carnalita.'"

He riffled through the pages in front of him, organizing his story, talking about each case.

The witnesses were lying in Armida's case, he said. Krystal Minjarez had called him the night she disappeared, needing a ride. Then she left with one of his friends. And he never even knew Brenda Salazar's name, just that he met a young woman in an Arlington bar called Desperado's, a girl who was happy because she had just been hired as a waitress. (This was the first indication of how Ortiz met Salazar. Detective Curt Brannan had visited Desperado's but had found no link between the two.)

They went to her car in the parking lot outside, Ortiz said. That explained the fingerprint on the door.

His semen was found in her mouth. Is that what he meant when he said girls would "mess with" him?

Ortiz smiled.

"Yeah," he said.

So how did Brenda end up dead?

"Honestly, I really got no idea," Ortiz said. "My attorney asked me, 'Do you know where that place is?' Wherever it was she lived, I couldn't tell you where it was at."

The bottom line: Ortiz was innocent, he said, innocent of everything. Everything could be explained away -- the killings, the rapes. Everything.

But the truth of it was something else. Nothing could be explained away.

Ortiz would die in prison.

Had he killed any other girls? And if so, why didn't he admit it so their families could have some peace?

Ortiz looked toward the ceiling, surprised.

"I want to leave," he said.

If Ortiz was worried about his own soul as a Christian, it didn't make sense for him to keep denying crimes.

"I know people want me to say, 'I did this' or 'I did that,'" he said. "I'm not going to do that."

Why not?

"Because I'm hopeful that one of these days, I'll come out," he said. "I'm not stupid. I did my own little investigating and stuff. I don't care what people say."

Didn't he have a conscience?

"Yeah, I have a conscience."

How could he live with himself?

"I can live with myself. I just can," Ortiz said. "Can you?"

Wouldn't he be doing himself a favor to come clean?

"Come clean with it? I'm not going to admit to nothing that I didn't do," Ortiz said. "I ain't got nothing to say. ... That's my story, and I'll always stick to it."

After the allotted hour had passed, there was a rattling behind Ortiz as a guard put a key in the lock. Ortiz shuffled from the cubicle and within a few minutes was back in his tiny cell, once again alone with his thoughts, whatever those thoughts happened to be.

Timeline

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

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

Aug. 8, 1993: Ortiz is accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl, but the case doesn't go to trial. He returns to jail on a parole violation and serves one year.

Early 1995: Ortiz first meets 13-year-old Armida Garcia and gets her number.

1995: Ortiz begins corresponding with Garcia from jail, where he is doing time for theft.

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.

May 26, 1997: Salazar's roommate discovers Salazar's body in their apartment just after 5 p.m.

July 9, 1997: A 12-year-old girl is raped by a man matching Ortiz's description; she decides not to pursue the case at that time.

Aug. 3, 1997: Garcia is strangled in her parents' bedroom.

Aug. 8, 1997: Ortiz is arrested in the Garcia killing; Detective Joe Thornton tries to get Ortiz to confess but is unsuccessful.

Fall 1997: The Salazar murder case grows cold.

Late 1997: Ortiz is jailed on parole violations; he begins corresponding with a 15-year-old named Anna.

January 1998: Thornton gets a tip about Ortiz fleeing from Garcia's home the night of the killing, but he can't find the witness.

July 1999: Ortiz is released from jail; he moves in with Anna's family.

Jan. 29, 2000: Ortiz marries Anna.

March 8, 2000: Ortiz is kicked out of the house by his mother-in-law.

July 18, 2000: Krystal Minjarez, 13, sneaks out and is picked up by a man named "Jaime." She calls a friend to say she is at his home.

July 21, 2000: Minjarez's body is found at Marine Creek Lake.

July 25, 2000: After finding Ortiz's address in Minjarez's address book, Detective Curt Brannan gets a search warrant.

July 26, 2000: Police find indecent photos and hundreds of girls' phone numbers in Ortiz's room; Ortiz talks with Brannan and implicates a friend, Michael Olguin, in the Minjarez killing.

Late July-August 2000: Police spend weeks contacting the young women whose phone numbers were found in Ortiz's room.

July 31, 2000: Olguin meets with Brannan.

Early August 2000: A young woman is raped by Ortiz; she goes into hiding.

Aug. 10, 2000: Brannan acts on a hunch, reviewing physical evidence to connect Ortiz to the Salazar killing.

Aug. 11, 2000: Brannan finds out that a fingerprint on Salazar's car belongs to Ortiz; the print apparently was not run through the system in 1997.

Aug. 13, 2000: Olguin wears a wire and tries to get Ortiz to confess; he is unsuccessful.

Aug. 15, 2000: Brannan finds out that DNA evidence from Salazar's body matches Ortiz; Ortiz is arrested.

Aug. 17, 2000: Prosecutors pursue a capital murder case against Ortiz in Salazar's death.

Aug. 22 and 24, 2000: Two sexual-assault victims come forward and tell Brannan that they were raped by Ortiz; aggravated-rape charges are added.

Aug. 25, 2000: Brannan finds out the identity of the witness who saw Ortiz leaving Garcia's house after the killing.

Aug. 28, 2000: Brannan meets with the witness; she identifies Ortiz. Prosecutors add a second capital murder charge against Ortiz, in the Garcia killing.

Oct. 8, 2001: Ortiz is convicted of capital murder in the Garcia killing and sentenced to a life term.

Oct. 18, 2001: Ortiz is convicted of capital murder in the Salazar killing and sentenced to a life term.