A US Border Patrol supervisor was on Sunday jailed on US$2.5 million bond in Texas, after being accused of killing at least four women and injuring a fifth who managed to escape.
Juan David Ortiz, 35, was in custody in Laredo on four counts of murder along with charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and unlawful restraint, Webb County jail records showed.
Ortiz was arrested a day earlier, after being found hiding in a truck in a hotel parking lot in Laredo, at about 2am on Saturday, capping what investigators portrayed as a 10-day string of violence.
Webb County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz on Saturday said that investigators “consider this to be a serial killer” whose victims were believed to be prostitutes.
Alaniz described how the US Customs and Border Patrol supervisor continued going to work as usual throughout that time.
“As law enforcement was looking for the killer ... he would be reporting to work every day like normal,” he said.
It all began with the discovery on Sept. 4 of the body of 29-year-old Melissa Ramirez.
Ortiz said he killed Ramirez a day earlier, a police affidavit said.
Like the other victims, Ramirez was shot in the head and left in a road in rural northwest Webb County.
She was a mother of two.
A second victim, 42-year-old Claudine Anne Luera, was found shot and left in the road on Thursday morning, badly injured, but still alive, according to the affidavit.
The mother of five died at a hospital later that day.
On Friday, Ortiz picked up a woman named Erika Pena, according to the affidavit.
She told police she struggled with Ortiz inside his truck, where he pointed a pistol at her, but that she was able to flee.
She made it to a gas station where she found a state trooper whom she asked for help.
Ortiz told investigators that after Pena ran off, he picked up his last two victims, whose identities have not yet been released by authorities.
Jail records do not list an attorney to speak for Ortiz, who had worked for US Border Patrol for 10 years.
Alaniz said the dead are believed to have been prostitutes and that one of them was a transgender woman.
At least two were US citizens; the nationalities of the others were not known, he said.
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