Suspect: I watched UTPA student die

EDINBURG - Alfredo Valdez led police through the apartment where he says he watched 23-year-old college student Larissa Cavazos die.

Months after the fatal shooting, he described the botched 2005 drug raid that ended in the University of Texas-Pan American student's final moments.

"I feel bad," the 33-year-old Pharr resident said on the tape. "It wasn't supposed to happen. Nobody was supposed to get hurt."

A videotape of that interview and Valdez's audio-recorded confession became the primary point of contention Thursday at a pretrial hearing in his capital murder case.

His attorneys argued both pieces of evidence should be thrown out because his statements were allegedly obtained with a promise that he would be protected and under threats that his family members could face prosecution if he didn't talk.

"They were the product of threats imposed upon my client," attorney Jaime Alemán said. "(The confession) had the effect of a contract between the state and (Valdez)."

TALE OF THE TAPE

The statements were taken in the days after Valdez's January 2007 arrest in Dalton, Ga., near the state's border with Tennessee. In them, he admitted to witnessing Cavazos' slaying, but said his co-defendant - Mario Quintanilla, 26, of McAllen - actually pulled the trigger.

Police found Cavazos dead Dec. 21, 2005, at her Edinburg apartment. But it took months to link Quintanilla, Valdez and two other accused accomplices to the crime.

After Valdez's arrest, however, he required little convincing to talk about happened, Edinburg police Investigator Robert Alvarez testified Thursday.

"His main concern was not having it on the record," Alvarez said. "It was that other people might hear it - especially other gang members."

Both Quintanilla and Valdez are suspected members of the Hermanos Pistoleros prison gang.

CAVAZOS' LAST MOMENTS

In the grainy recording played Thursday, Valdez told Alvarez that he and Quintanilla arrived at Cavazos' home in search of drugs. Moments before they had been at a hotel with strippers and had run out of cocaine.

Quintanilla proposed they raid an apartment in Edinburg where he had previously purchased drugs from two black men. But somehow, the men ended up at the wrong building.

"I just heard a shot when I was coming in and wanted to take off," Valdez said on the tape.

In the video recording, he walked officers back to the bedroom where he first encountered Cavazos, hunched over on her bed.

He took her by the arm and demanded to know where the money and drugs were hidden.

At some point during the break-in, she had sustained one bullet wound to the abdomen, but Valdez was unaware that the girl was injured. She said nothing, he said.

"Her head was down and her hair was hanging in her face," he said. "She didn't tell me that she had been hit."

Then, Quintanilla spotted her. He watched Cavazos fall to her knees, Valdez said, before pistol-whipping her, causing the gun to go off again.

Within moments, Quintanilla, Valdez, and their third accused accomplice - Jesus Oscar Arcos, 31 - had fled the scene, leaving Cavazos to die.

MOTION DENIED

Throughout Thursday's hearing, Valdez sat quietly in handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit while his attorneys fought to have his confessions suppressed.

Alemán argued that statements officers made on the recording could be interpreted to be promises that they would charge him with a lesser crime if he cooperated with investigators.

He also said his client believed his family members could be prosecuted for helping him evade arrest if he didn't confess.

But state District Judge Bobby Flores disagreed, finding that the officers' statements did not reasonably suggest promises for leniency or threats of prosecution.

Both confessions will be permitted as evidence in Valdez's trial, currently scheduled for later this year.

Quintanilla also faces capital murder charges. If convicted, both men could face up to life in prison or death.

Due to lack of evidence, the Hidalgo County District Attorney's Office dropped charges last summer against Arcos and Gilberto Martinez, who was accused of loaning a car to the suspected killers.

Because there is no statute of limitations on murder, both men could be re-indicted if more evidence is uncovered.
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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.