‘Haunting’ crime-scene photos shown at capital murder trial in Fort Worth woman’s death
Nude and on her side, Angela Gagne’s legs were bent toward her chest as she lay dead on the carpeted floor of her spare bedroom.
Purple bruises coated her face. A bit of blackened material appeared to have burned on her chest. She had been shot four times in the head.
Blood pooled near her body, on which, when a police officer took a photo, sat a single fly.
Gagne was 41 and worked as a bar and restaurant manager. She was living in half of a south Fort Worth duplex in June 2017. A daughter in Canada could not reach her and asked that police check her welfare.
Inside the house in the 6400 block of Woodbeach Drive, police found a living room in disarray. An entertainment center was pulled from the wall, from which exposed wires protruded. There was a collection of drywall dust on the floor. An oven coil was on and hot. Glass in the back door was broken.
Music played from a radio in the dining room so loud that it could be heard from outside.
Two brothers were indicted on capital murder in Gagne’s killing, and the trial for one, Q’Juan Holmes, is underway this week in 297th District Court in Tarrant County.
Gagne and Holmes met on Facebook and had lived together for a couple of weeks before she was slain, a prosecutor told jurors in an opening statement Tuesday.
Marcus Hanna, a Tarrant County assistant criminal district attorney, girded jurors for the brutality he planned to show them.
“These photos will haunt you like they haunt me,” Hanna, who is prosecuting the case with colleague Collin Ashworth, said.
After the killing, Holmes took a bus to Florida, where he was arrested.
An expected central witness in the case, Cortez Simms, would be revealed to be a liar, said Steve Gordon, who represents Holmes with defense attorney George Houston.
“This is not a cakewalk,” Gordon said in his opening statement.
Homicide Detective Jerry Cedillo previously told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that Xondadric Holmes had been visiting his younger brother at Gagne’s house when an argument broke out. Cedillo said electronics and some of Gagne’s personal items were missing from the home when her body was discovered.
Xondadric Holmes was also indicted on capital murder in the case.
Gagne was a mother of five daughters.
Born in Canada, Gagne had called Texas home for about two years before her death.
During visits with her mother in Texas, April Azor-Gagne went shopping and got her nails painted. On Wednesday morning, she sobbed from the witness stand as she recalled learning from a detective that her mother was dead.
This story was originally published August 3, 2022 at 3:36 PM.
CORRECTION: The correct spelling of the defendant’s name is Q’Juan Holmes. His name was misspelled in court records.
