Chapter 6 | A new detective catches the case, vows to find the truth

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

Young Brenda Salazar was found strangled in her apartment near Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, but Fort Worth police were unable to solve the case. Meanwhile, north-side gang member Andy Ortiz kept adding to his rap sheet -- including accusations of rape. He struck up an acquaintance with teenager Armida Garcia. On a Sunday night in August, her younger brother found her strangled in their home with laces from his own tennis shoes.

CHAPTER 6

From appearances alone, two men could not have been more different than Curt Brannan and Joe Thornton, both detectives working homicide in the Fort Worth Police Department in 1997.

Brannan was 45 that summer, a native Texan and a senior investigator with 13 years in the unit. Thornton was 37, grew up in New York and was homicide's rookie. Brannan was tall and strapping, Thornton short and slender. Brannan was easygoing and gregarious, but Thornton was unusually quiet, a cop whose gentle nature seemed to belie his choice of occupations.

But the two investigators also had much in common. Both were keenly intelligent, thorough and highly organized -- essential qualities for a homicide detective. More important, both saw their work investigating the ultimate crime as a sacred mission, part of an ongoing battle between good and evil. That passion inspired in both of them an acute, often painful awareness of the human suffering that was such a large part of their work.

Such sensitivity could be a homicide detective's greatest professional asset and an exhausting occupational hazard -- an obsession that motivated them but also kept them awake at night. In the summer of 1997, Brannan would have more sleepless nights than at almost any other time in his long career.

After Brenda Salazar's murder in late May, Brannan spent two months pursuing fruitless leads. Finally, in the first week of August, he sketched out a ring stolen during Salazar's murder and had the drawing published in the Star-Telegram, hoping that a pawnshop dealer might recognize it and call with a lead. But there was no response. None of the stolen items ever turned up. As summer dwindled, the trail grew cold.

Thornton's ordeal began on a Sunday night, Aug. 3. His telephone rang about 10:30 p.m., just after he finished watching the late news at his home in North Richland Hills. A police dispatcher told him that a 15-year-old girl had been strangled and that her younger brother had found her body at their home. The detective jotted down the address on Fort Worth's north side, hurriedly put on a necktie and stepped out into the steamy summer night, anger rising up in him when he thought of the victim's age. Thornton was always particularly appalled when the elderly or children were victims.

"They should never be hurt," Thornton, the father of two daughters, would say later. "They should not have to worry about those things. For someone to prey on them, to me, is just the ultimate disgrace."

Fifteen years old, Thornton thought as he drove off. Still just a kid.

Rising through the ranks

In many ways, that call was the moment Thornton had anticipated for decades, since he was a boy watching his father put on a New York State Police uniform each day for work. His dad caught bad guys for a living, and for as long as Thornton could remember, he had wanted to do the same. After college, Thornton headed for the booming Sun Belt and quickly landed a spot in the Fort Worth Police Academy. Six years later, after stints in patrol and plainclothes investigations, he joined the SWAT team as a sniper, fulfilling one longtime career ambition.

Catching killers was another. Thornton realized that dream in early 1997 when he got a call from the homicide supervisor, Sgt. Paul Kratz.

"I remember asking him, 'Do you think I'm ready?'" Thornton recently recalled.

For the first several months in the unit, he was paired with Brannan, a former rodeo cowboy whom Thornton thought of as "Mr. Homicide." The rookie detective was like a sponge, carefully noting how Brannan talked to witnesses, conducted himself at a crime scene, took notes and dictated important information into a tape recorder. He also watched as other detectives tried to coax confessions from suspects, and he voraciously read case notes, prepping for the moment when his name would be on the dry-erase board as the lead investigator on a murder.

That time had come for Thornton earlier that summer, but those first cases were "gimmes," pretty much open-and-shut, and the victims were adults. This murder was different, a true whodunit, and for the first time, Thornton would be in charge of tracking down the killer of a child. As he drove toward Denver Avenue, Thornton went over the lessons of his training, running crime scene checklists in his head. By the time he approached the home of Armida Garcia, emergency vehicles clogged the street.

Thornton parked at a convenience store and walked across the street into his toughest case.

Studying the evidence

Patrol officers guarded the front door of the modest home as Thornton met one of his supervisors, Lt. Craig Slayton. Slayton described how the victim had been found on the floor of her parents' bedroom with shoelaces tied around her neck. The body was no longer at the scene, Slayton said, because Armida had been rushed to Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital in a final and futile attempt to revive her.

Thornton greeted G.R. Gray, a veteran crime scene officer, who said there appeared to be no evidence of forced entry. Gray also described the condition of the body when he arrived: The victim's jeans and panties had been pulled down and dangled from her left ankle, and her bra had been pulled up, making sexual assault almost a certainty.

Making his way to Armida's room, Thornton saw a huge stuffed white bear atop a computer monitor. The girl's makeup and a mirror were spread across the leopard bedspread, as if she had been preparing to go out for the night. In the kitchen, a magnetic Texas Rangers baseball schedule was affixed to the refrigerator.

Gray told Thornton about the towel that Armida's brother, Fernando Garcia, had found wrapped around the back door. A theory began to form in Thornton's mind: Armida had known her attacker, who had been there earlier in the evening and rigged the door with the towel so he could return.

Then Thornton stepped into the bedroom where Fernando had found Armida. The comforter that had covered the victim was still on the floor. Boys' sneakers without their laces were nearby. On the unmade bed were two pillows, a black purse and the shoelaces that had been cut from Armida's throat by paramedics, who were careful to preserve the knot.

Thornton and Gray stood in the bedroom, trying to decide what to collect as evidence and what to leave. What about the plastic drinking glass on the floor? The Coors Light can in the bedroom trash? The pair of sunglasses on the bedroom floor? The appointment book found near Armida's body? The two men decided they would take almost all of it.

The most difficult moment

At 12:35 a.m., after about two hours at the crime scene, Thornton left the Garcia home and drove to Harris Methodist Fort Worth. He was directed to Trauma Room No. 11, where Armida's body lay. Her long, dark hair was splayed beneath her on the gurney, her head tilted slightly. Part of the breathing apparatus used in the attempts to revive her still protruded from her mouth. Armida's hands and feet were covered with plastic bags to preserve microscopic evidence.

The detective examined the long abrasions on Armida's neck from the ligature. Her arms were badly bruised, evidence that the beautiful girl had tried to fend off her attacker. Most interesting were what looked like bite marks on Armida's right shoulder, which could have been the calling card of a particularly twisted killer.

The most difficult part of his night came next. Thornton stepped into the waiting room to introduce himself to Armida's parents. Graciela Garcia wept, while her husband, Juan, stood solemnly at her side. The stricken couple asked to see their daughter's body, but Thornton told them through an interpreter that it was not yet possible. The cold truth was that Armida's body was still evidence, and the detective could not take the chance of losing a clue during a mother's or father's last embrace.

As Thornton stood with them, he tried to imagine what they were feeling, knowing that their nightmare was just beginning. He was frustrated by the language barrier.

"Something like this, I want to solve it for the family," Thornton would say years later. "For Mom and Dad, so they'll know. It's hard enough losing a child, but it's even harder going through your whole life wondering what happened to them or who did it. That's kind of what drives me."

Thornton told the Garcias to return home and promised to talk to them in the morning. It was 1:30 a.m. when the detective finally headed home for the first night of what would be three years of fitful sleep. But he would be back at his desk before 8 the next morning, and his first big break in the case came almost the moment he sat down.

Next: The hunt is on.

THE GARCIA CRIME SCENE

About 10 p.m. on Aug. 3, 1997, Fernando Garcia returned to his north-side home. He found his older sister, Armida Garcia, facedown and motionless beneath a comforter on the floor.

While on the phone with a paramedic, Fernando made another gruesome discovery: Tied around his sister's throat were shoelaces from his old sneakers, close-ups at left. "Oh! Someone strangled her," the boy cried. "She got strangled!"

Police on the scene found no sign of forced entry into the living room.

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 kidnaps 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.

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 27, 1997: Salazar's parents, who live in the Rio Grande Valley, are notified of her death.

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

June 5, 1997: The Salazars return to Fort Worth to get Brenda's belongings and give Brannan a letter that raises his suspicions about one of Brenda's co-workers; the lead doesn't pan out.

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.

Fall 1997: The Salazar murder case grows cold.