Chapter 15: A frightening question: How many other victims?

A liberal dose

February 27, 2008

This series contains explicit language and graphic descriptions of violence.

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 24 chapters will continue through March 9, with a chapter published most days. If you miss a day, go to www.star-telegram.com/killer to catch up. The entire story will be published concurrently online.

The story so far

Fort Worth police suspected that Andy Ortiz, a north-side gang member with a long criminal record, killed 13-year-old Krystal Minjarez of Crowley. A judge signed a warrant for police to search the Ortiz home.

Chapter 15

Stella Ortiz had stood up for her son all his life, loudly insisting to anyone who would listen that Andy Ortiz was a good boy. No matter how many times Fort Worth police came by the family home on Lee Avenue looking for Andy, no matter how many times Andy was accused of crimes against young girls -- rape and even murder -- Stella would proclaim his innocence. She would say that Andy, the middle of her three sons, was harassed by police because he was Hispanic. She knew people. She would call the police chief or her city councilman.

The mother was no different on Wednesday morning, July 26, 2000. A team of police officers arrived about an hour after sunrise with a search warrant, looking for evidence that might link her son to the killing of another young girl. Stella Ortiz greeted them in her nightclothes with a big German shepherd at her side. The officers would not be allowed into her home, she shouted. Andy wasn't a killer. In fact, at that very moment, he was at work for a contractor doing odd jobs. This was racism. Yes, she was aware of all the girls going in and out of her son's room, but being popular with the ladies was not a crime.

But this time, the police had little patience for her protestations.

'Ma'am, you need to put that dog on a chain,' Curt Brannan, the homicide detective in charge, recalled saying. 'No ma'am, we're not going to wait out here while you call your attorney. That's not how this works. Here's a copy of the warrant. You see it's been signed by a judge. We're coming in, and we're going to search. We'll do it as professionally as possible, but please step aside.'

Piecing the puzzle together

Brannan had arrived at the house on Lee Avenue at 6 a.m., conducting surveillance more than an hour ahead of the rest of the search team. As he pulled up, he noted that the clapboard house was dark but that a light still burned in the garage apartment out back. The cars around the residence remained as they were late the night before, when Brannan and his supervisor had come by.

As he sat alone in his sedan, the veteran homicide detective's stomach tumbled with anticipation. He had been working murder cases for 16 years by then, hundreds of them, but most were pretty much open-and-shut. This was different. The strangulation of 13-year-old Krystal Minjarez was what Brannan referred to as a 'big deal,' a tragedy and bona fide whodunit of the sort that came along only so often in a detective's career. And the more pieces that fit together, the bigger the case became.

As he waited, Brannan went over the puzzle in his head. Eight days earlier, on July 18, the teenage victim had sneaked out of her aunt's suburban trailer home and called Andy Ortiz from a friend's house. Ortiz, a north-side gang member, had been the primary suspect in the rape and strangulation of another teenage girl, Armida Garcia, three years before. Frustrated Fort Worth detectives could not put Ortiz away in that case, could never find the evidence to satisfy prosecutors. But Brannan was convinced as he sat alone that morning that they would get him this time.

Speaker wire and flip-flops were at the forefront of the detective's thoughts. Five days before, Brannan had stood on the shore of Marine Creek Lake in northwest Fort Worth, looking down at the decomposing and barefoot body of a female who had a length of speaker wire coiled tightly around her neck. A few days later, after the body was identified, Brannan learned that Krystal was last seen wearing blue flip-flops. Where were they now? Where was the rest of that wire?

Wouldn't it be cool, Brannan thought, if matching wire or those flip-flops were inside the house on Lee? That would go a long way toward proving that the girl was in the Ortiz home before she was killed, go a long way toward finally putting Ortiz away. The minutes passed slowly as Brannan waited for the others. He was eager to get going.

Searching for clues

The search team arrived at 7:20 a.m., and 10 minutes later, Brannan knocked on the front door. When there was no answer, he led the officers around to

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