Chapter 14 | As police identify victim, a familiar suspect emerges

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

A female's body was found at Marine Creek Lake in northwest Fort Worth. Detective Curt Brannan was investigating but had not identified the victim. Victoria Curtis in Crowley, sick with worry over her missing niece, realized the horrible possibility.

CHAPTER 14

Beverly Brannan often learned more about her husband's job from co-workers at the Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Worth than from Curt Brannan himself. Someone from her office would read about the detective in the newspaper or see him on television -- up to his elbows again in one case or another -- and mention it to her.

"What did he do now?" she would ask, laughing.

The Brannans had been married for 29 years by the summer of 2000, high school sweethearts who shared a commitment to their two sons, Cole and Jacob; a deep religious faith; and passions that ranged from karate to twin Harley-Davidson motorcycles to rodeo. Those were the things they talked about at home -- not murder -- because Curt didn't bring his work back to the family's 3 acres south of town.

But sometimes homicide intruded, like the day when Beverly found crime scene photos that Curt had mistakenly left in the house and her curiosity got the best of her. The photos were of a young woman who had been shot in the head, her body dumped in a river.

"I picked them up and I thought, 'I don't know how in the world anyone could view something like this on a regular basis and not go crazy,'" she remembered.

And sometimes the cases were so difficult or so painful that they would disrupt Curt's sleep, driving him to get up in the middle of the night to eat a bowl of cereal or turn on the television to distract himself. The murders of children were particularly hard. During those investigations, Beverly would see the hurt in her husband's eyes when he walked through the door. She remembered when Jacob was 6 months old and Curt went to investigate the killing of a baby. He came home and took his infant son in his arms and wouldn't let him go.

"He couldn't make enough love go into Jacob," Beverly said. "That really upset him."

In the summer of 2000, Beverly saw the pain in her husband again, and for one of the few times in their life together, Curt spoke of it. A 13-year-old girl had sneaked out at night and ended up strangled, her body dumped on the shore of Marine Creek Lake.

"It's just a shame," he said to Beverly. "If she had just stayed home, I wouldn't be out there trying to find out who killed her."

A sickening revelation

In the days after the body was found, Curt Brannan believed that the Jane Doe was a young woman, maybe in her 20s, and he combed through missing-persons reports with that in mind. He had talked to Victoria Curtis, who called on a Sunday and said her missing niece's nails were painted bright pink, just like the victim's. But Brannan told Curtis that the victim by the lake was probably much older than 13.

He was wrong.

At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, July 25, Brannan received a call from Dr. Rodney Crow, a pathologist at the Tarrant County medical examiner's office. Crow had used dental records to identify the victim: the teenage Crowley girl named Krystal Minjarez who had sneaked out of her aunt's home in the middle of the night a week before.

The news sickened Brannan and struck too close to home. A few years before, his brother had died of a heart attack, so Brannan had become a father figure to his two nieces. Krystal was about the same age. From that day forward, whether talking to his nieces or to girls in his Fort Worth karate class, Brannan would use Krystal's case as a cautionary tale.

When young girls went out, they needed to let their parents know where and with whom, Brannan would say. A predator was much less likely to strike if a potential victim's friends and relatives knew him, so girls needed to make sure any new boyfriends were introduced around. Too many times, girls had sneaked out for what they thought would be a little fun, a secret fling with a guy who seemed harmless, and ended up dead.

"That's a message that needs to be put out there," Brannan said recently. "When they sneak off or don't let anyone know where they're at, they don't understand the potential. They don't understand the possible consequences. They don't have a clue about the dangers."

That Tuesday morning, when he learned the victim's identity, the veteran homicide detective could not help wondering about the moment Krystal realized she was in mortal danger, about the terror she must have felt. It must have been a horrible thing, Brannan thought.

A stunning connection

By 2:30 that Tuesday afternoon, Curtis and her two daughters were sitting in the homicide unit downtown, waiting to be questioned. Talking to a murder victim's loved ones was always a delicate task, and Brannan could see that Curtis and her daughters were stricken. But relatives were the first suspects in a murder case. Although Brannan expressed his condolences and was respectful, his questions were direct, and he was alert for any signs of deception.

He found none. Curtis' story made sense. Krystal and her aunt had argued about the telephone, so the girl decided to sneak off and do her talking whether Curtis liked it or not, a story that Brannan knew was all too common. At a friend's house later that night, Brannan learned, Krystal had borrowed a phone and paged a guy named Jaime. This Jaime had apparently come to pick her up. Later that morning, sometime before sunrise, Krystal called the friend to say she was at Jaime's place on the north side, which was in the vicinity of Marine Creek Lake.

"I'm thinking, 'We're on the right trail,'" Brannan remembered. "We know where the girl was. We know where she originated from. Now we've just got to figure out what happened between here and when I'm standing over her body out there."

Then, that same afternoon, came a break that touched off an investigative whirlwind. As Brannan was questioning Curtis, Crowley detectives who had been working Krystal's missing-persons case arrived at Fort Worth police headquarters with the young victim's address book. Listed in the girl's handwriting was a Jaime Martinez, whose address, on Lee Avenue, was on Fort Worth's north side.

Brannan immediately asked his partner, Michel Carroll, to punch the address into the police computer and see what came back. An hour later, Brannan's cellphone rang as he walked just outside headquarters. It was Carroll.

"Curt," he said, "you're not going to believe this."

A tortured former detective

There was no Jaime Martinez at the Lee Avenue address, Carroll told Brannan. Instead, it was the home of well-known gang member Andy James "Jaime" Ortiz, arrested in August 1997 in connection with the rape and strangulation of a 15-year-old north-side girl named Armida Garcia. Just looking at their photographs, you might think that Armida and Krystal were sisters. Ortiz, who was never prosecuted in Armida's murder because of insufficient evidence, had been accused of other sex crimes against Hispanic girls.

At 4:30 that Tuesday afternoon, about five hours after Krystal's body was identified, three detectives and one former detective stood together in the homicide unit, engaged in animated conversation. Brannan and Carroll were there, with homicide supervisor Skeeter Anderson, who had succeeded Paul Kratz. But much of their attention was on the fourth man, Joe Thornton, the former homicide detective who had investigated Armida's case.

Thornton, by then a supervisor on the SWAT team, was crestfallen. When Carroll called him with the news about Ortiz, the former detective's heart sank, but he was not surprised. Thornton always believed that Ortiz would kill again. And while other detectives blamed prosecutors, the former investigator largely took responsibility for giving Ortiz the opportunity.

"I always felt the burden lay with me," Thornton recalled recently. "It was my responsibility. It was my case. [If] I had been able to get more on him and keep him there [during the interrogation]. ... I think I took a little bit of that on. Rightfully so, I don't know, but I did."

Thornton briefed the others on the frustrating investigation that began in the summer of 1997. Within a few days of Armida's murder, Thornton said, he had established that Ortiz had both motive and opportunity. He had found jailhouse snitches and a friend of Ortiz's who said the suspect had admitted committing the crime. But that had not been enough to satisfy prosecutors.

In an interview last year, Brannan described Thornton's tortured demeanor. As the men discussed their next move, Brannan slapped Thornton on the back and tried to reassure him.

"We're going to get him now," Brannan said.

When the meeting broke up, detectives set out to determine Ortiz's whereabouts and eventually learned that he did odd jobs for a contractor. He was still living at his parents' home on the north side. Brannan began preparing a search warrant for the house on Lee Avenue.

"My mind was racing," Brannan remembered. "I thought, 'How are we going to link him to Krystal's case?' I'm convinced she was there with him. I'm convinced he was probably her killer, given his history. ... You have a few really big cases in a career ... and when it cracks and you think, 'We've got something to work with now,' that's always a really good feeling."

At 10:30 that night, Brannan and Anderson drove to the home of Judge Brent Carr and asked him to sign a search warrant for the Ortiz residence. In his supporting affidavit, Brannan summarized the developments of that eventful Tuesday, as well as Ortiz's suspected involvement in Armida's death three years before. In the affidavit, Brannan said the knot in the ligature used to kill Armida was similar to the knot in the ligature used to kill Krystal. The detective went on to say that while executing the warrant, officers hoped to find the same sort of wire that was used to strangle Krystal; the flip-flops the girl had been wearing when last seen; and any hairs or fibers that might prove she was at the Ortiz residence the night she disappeared.

Brannan and Anderson waited while Carr read the three-page document. Then they watched him sign the warrant, which the detectives planned to execute at first light the next morning. There was one more stop before Brannan and Anderson could head home for a few hours' sleep.

Near midnight, they drove to the north side and parked outside the Ortiz home on Lee Avenue. The white house was dark, but lights burned in a garage apartment in back. A gray Cadillac was parked in the driveway. Was that the light-colored car seen driving away the night Krystal disappeared? Was that the car Ortiz used to dump her body? Were Krystal's flip-flops inside the house? Those questions would make sleep difficult for Brannan that night.

The answers, when they came the next day, were more shocking than the veteran detective could have imagined.

Next: The search.

TIMELINE

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 is accused of kidnapping a 13-year-old girl. That 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.

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 serves one year.

Early 1995: Ortiz first meets 13-year-old Armida Garcia 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.

Early 1997: Ortiz meets a 15-year-old girl named Anna.

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.

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

Aug. 4, 1997: A caller tips off Detective Joe Thornton that Ortiz might be her killer.

Aug. 8, 1997: Ortiz is arrested in the killing; Thornton tries to get a confession from Ortiz.

Fall 1997: The Salazar murder case grows cold.

Late 1997: Ortiz is jailed on parole violations; he begins corresponding with Anna.

January 1998: Thornton gets a tip that someone may have seen Ortiz fleeing from Garcia's home the night of the killing, but he's unable to 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's mother-in-law kicks him out of the house.

March 22, 2000: Ortiz threatens his estranged wife; the next day, she contacts police.

July 18, 2000: Krystal Minjarez sneaks out of her home in Crowley and calls a man named "Jaime." He picks her up during the early morning, and she calls a friend later to say she is at his home.

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