Chapter 22 | A stunning secret revealed

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 22

On 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.

Just a few days after Graciela Garcia visited Curtis, Detective Curt Brannan punctured that silence.

Discovering Ann

In the days after Armida's murder in 1997, Detective Joe Thornton and his partner questioned residents up and down Denver Avenue, where the victim lived. But they did not extend their canvass one block behind to Lagonda Avenue, where the family of Armida's friend Ann lived. Years later, that would come to haunt Thornton.

"Maybe if I had knocked on her door, it may have been different with the little girl," Thornton said recently. "Maybe not. That's something that still bothers me."

As it was, Ann was still unknown to police when Brannan drove up to Juan and Graciela Garcia's home on a sunny Friday morning in late August 2000. During his visit, Brannan planned to tread lightly with the couple, who were still grieving over the death of their daughter.

With Thornton now on the SWAT team, the 1997 rape and strangulation of the couple's teenage daughter, Armida, was Brannan's case. It was up to him to find new evidence against Ortiz that would satisfy Tarrant County prosecutors.

That morning, Aug. 25, Brannan was accompanied by a Spanish-speaking woman from the Police Department's victims assistance office. She was there to serve as an interpreter and to help the couple feel more comfortable with the imposing detective in a white cowboy hat.

Armida's parents invited the visitors in. As Brannan sat down in the small living room, he offered his condolences and explained the purpose of his visit. It would be helpful to see where the crime had occurred, he said. The Garcias quickly agreed to show him around. They started in what had been Armida's bedroom, then led Brannan into their own bedroom, where, on an August night three years before, the girl's younger brother had found her lifeless body. The brief tour concluded in the kitchen, where Juan Garcia pointed to the back door, saying Armida's killer had fled through the door and down the alley behind the house.

Brannan was puzzled. Investigators had suspected that was how the killer fled the scene, but they did not know for sure. Why did Juan Garcia seem so confident of it? Through the interpreter, the detective began to probe, insisting that Armida's father take him to the back yard and point out the direction the killer had likely fled.

"I'm getting more and more curious. In fact, I'm getting a little harsh with them," Brannan remembered. Eventually, the Garcias told him about a girl who lived across the alley, who might have seen something.

The girl's name was Ann. (At their request, Ann and her mother, Cynthia, are not identified by their full, legal names.) She was four years younger than Armida, but the girls were close because their mothers were friends.

On the night of the killing, Ann and her mother passed a man fleeing down the alley from the direction of the Garcia home, the same man whose photograph would be shown on the television news as a suspect in Armida's death.

Brannan was stunned.

The implications of what the Garcias were saying were staggering. Another credible witness against Ortiz (besides Armida's cousin, Roberto Jordan, who saw Ortiz with the girl the night she was killed) might have persuaded prosecutors to take the case three years before, might have been enough to get the killer off the streets for good. If another witness had come forward, Krystal Minjarez might still be alive. Reluctant witnesses were a fact of life for a homicide investigator, but rarely in his 16 years of investigating murders could Brannan remember a scenario like this, one in which the victim's parents might have been complicit in the silence.

Brannan said he needed to talk to Ann immediately.

"We'll ask her mother to see if that's all right," Graciela Garcia said.

"No," Brannan said. "That's not how this works. I'm going to go talk to her whether her mama wants me to or not."

He left and drove around the block to the house Juan Garcia had pointed out. There was no answer at the front door, so Brannan left his business card in the mailbox, adding a note saying that Ann's parents needed to contact him as soon as possible.

Brannan's mind was spinning as he drove away. The detective began to speculate that the Garcias might have been exaggerating, which was common in such circumstances. After all, what were the odds of a key witness living just across the alley from where Armida had died?

A living reminder of the tragedy

Brannan returned to Ann's house later that Friday afternoon and again on Saturday morning, but there was still no answer when he knocked. On Monday, remembering that Ann would now be high school age, Brannan called North Side High School.

"I get in touch with a police liaison officer up at the school, and, bingo, she's a student," Brannan remembered. "I decided to bypass the parents, go to North Side High and talk directly to Ann. They went and got Ann out of class and had her waiting for me when I got there."

It was 12:30 p.m. when Brannan entered the police liaison office at the school and found the pretty, petite Hispanic girl sitting quietly. She was not surprised when the detective explained his presence.

"My mom told me you were looking for me," Ann said. "She told me to go ahead and tell the truth about what I know."

The girl smiled, made eye contact and seemed to trust Brannan from the beginning. When she started telling her story, the detective's pulse quickened, because it was much as Armida's parents had told it.

The night of the killing, the girl said, she and her mother had walked to a convenience store on Northside Drive and were heading home when the young man came sprinting past them down the alley from the direction of Armida's house. Ann's mother, Cynthia, did not get a good look at him, but the 11-year-old girl had seen him clearly. She noticed the tattoo on his arm, his sleeveless white shirt and a darker shirt he carried over his shoulder. Not long afterward, Ann heard sirens, ran to the Garcia home and saw Armida lying in the back of an ambulance.

Ann agreed that day at North Side High to ride with Brannan to the homicide unit. (Her mother had given permission to the school liaison officer.) The detective and teenager chatted on the way, and Ann described her friendship with Armida. Ann said she spent almost as much time in Armida's home as in her own. She always attended Armida's birthday parties and loved listening to her friend sing. A deep sadness came over Brannan as he listened. In looks and demeanor, this girl could have been Armida, he thought, could have been Krystal Minjarez. Ann seemed to embody the girls who had been killed, a powerful reminder of the tragedy.

By 1:15 p.m., Ann was sitting in the homicide unit, where she repeated her memories in a formal statement. But there was more. A few days after Armida's death, Ann said, she saw Ortiz's face on the television news and called to her mother.

"Look, that's the guy!" she cried.

Ann's mother quickly called Graciela Garcia, who hurried across the alley to the girl's home. The two women and Ann discussed what the girl had seen and what they should do about it.

Graciela Garcia "said she knew that I was afraid, and she told me that if I didn't want to [come forward], I didn't have to tell it," Ann told Brannan. "I never told anybody, even any of my friends, and I never talked to any police officers about it until now."

Ann told Brannan that within the past few weeks, she had seen Ortiz's photograph on television again, this time after his arrest in Brenda Salazar's murder. Then the girl learned that the detective was looking for her. Her mother asked Ann whether she wanted to talk this time.

"I said, 'yeah,' because I know that he is in jail now and I don't have to be afraid of him," Ann told Brannan. "I didn't want to say anything before because I knew if he found out, he would come and get me like he did Armida."

As Ann completed her statement, Brannan was quietly furious, mostly at Ann's mother and Graciela Garcia. (In a later interview with Brannan, Ann's mother confirmed the girl's memories.) What had they been so afraid of? Was it the police? Was it Ortiz?

Back in 1997, Ortiz had been arrested a few days after Armida's killing. Then he was in prison for more than a year because of a parole revocation. He'd been in no position to hurt anyone. Brannan also remembered the night at Marine Creek Lake, when he stood over the decomposing corpse of Krystal Minjarez.

"There's a lot of reasons this could have been rationalized," he remembered. "Maybe they didn't understand the gravity or the importance [of what Ann saw]. But obviously they did. They had this meeting to hush it up. I remember thinking at the time that this foolishness may have cost the life of another girl."

In a recent interview, Ann said she "was more comfortable with telling him because I was a little bit older." But even more than a decade after Armida's murder, Ann said she was still afraid.

"His family was there. I was afraid his family would come for me," she said. "[Detective Brannan] told me, 'Don't worry about it. We'll be watching out for you.' I didn't believe him. I was still scared."

But on that afternoon in 2000, when Brannan came for her at North Side High, Ann did not hesitate to help when the detective showed her a sheet of paper with six numbered photographs. There were six unsmiling Hispanic men, each with short hair and a goatee. She went right to Andy Ortiz's photograph and circled his mug shot.

"That's the guy from the alley," she said.

On the way back to the school, Brannan bought Ann lunch at a Taco Bell. At 3:15 p.m., Brannan pulled up to North Side High and escorted her inside. Ten minutes later, he was sitting in chief felony prosecutor Alan Levy's office with a copy of the girl's statement. Levy did not hesitate. With the new witness, he agreed to pursue an indictment of Ortiz on a capital murder charge in the killing of Armida Garcia.

The prosecutors "were as anxious to do this as we were," Brannan remembered. "It wasn't like an 'I told you so' type deal ... well ... OK ... maybe, when I threw the statement down there [on Levy's desk], maybe there was some of that. There was certainly a great deal of satisfaction in going over there."

Brannan shook Levy's hand before heading out of his office, closing a difficult chapter in the relationship between police and prosecutors. Clearly, Ortiz would never be free to rape or kill girls and young women again. But there was one more bitter disagreement still to come.

Tomorrow: Two murder trials and a final twist.

TIMELINE

Sept. 4, 1991: Andy Ortiz is accused of kidnapping a 13-year-old girl. 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 isn't tried.

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

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.

July 9, 1997: A 12-year-old girl is raped by a man matching Ortiz's description; she doesn't 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 is unable to get Ortiz to confess.

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

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

July 1999: Ortiz 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 listed in Minjarez's address book, Detective Curt Brannan gets a search warrant.

July 26, 2000: Ortiz talks with Brannan and implicates a friend, Michael Olguin, in the Minjarez killing.

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

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

Aug. 13, 2000: Olguin wears a wire but is unable to get Ortiz to confess.

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 tell Brannan that they were raped by Ortiz; aggravated-rape charges are added.