Conflicting stories, hesitant witnesses cloud cold case

This is the final part of a two-day series.

Read the first part.

EDINBURG — Sgt. Rafael Garza knew the Mexican Mafia was a tight-knit and dangerous group.

But in solving the murder of 21-year-old Ann Marie Garcia, the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s deputy was about to learn how insular and vicious they could actually be.

Formed in the California prison system during the late 1950s, the gang of Mexican-Americans quickly spread outside jail cell walls to every state in the nation.

Today, the organization is more than 2,500 members strong and involved in drug-trafficking, murder-for-hire and extortion schemes, according to the FBI.

“These aren’t your run-of-the-mill criminals,” Garza said. “There’s a certain way of talking to them and a lot of ceremony to be observed.”

Members of the gang killed Garcia after a 2003 home invasion and dumped her body on the banks of a rural Edcouch canal.

More than two years later, Garza was determined to put them behind bars.

A new witness had come forward claiming to be Garcia’s ex-boyfriend and a witness to her murder.

Luis Carlos Mares, a then 31-year-old sergeant of the Mexican Mafia, told Garza of a raid he and other members had planned on Oct. 22, 2003.

They had hoped to storm a Starr County drug dealer’s home in La Casita, steal a ton of marijuana hidden inside and escape with no blood on their hands.

Instead, they found Ann Marie Garcia.

ANSWERS

Despite a haze induced by smoking crack-cocaine hours before, Garcia recognized her former boyfriend as he and his accomplices burst through the front door, Mares later told Garza.

That was a problem.

Should she rat Mares out to police, investigators could track him down, endangering other gang members. She had to be killed, his collaborators argued.

Mares, however, urged a different course. He knew of his ex’s drug habit and suggested they try to buy her silence by offering her a cocaine rock.

As they stood arguing over what to do with the thin, dark-skinned girl, others loaded a waiting SUV with more than 1,000 pounds of marijuana.

In the end, they decided to put Garcia in the car like another piece of cargo, Mares said.

The men then drove to a home outside Edinburg to seek the guidance of a gang lieutenant, who quickly overruled Mares.

The man ordered another member — Juan Adames, then 52 — to inject the girl with enough heroin to kill her and then bury her deep underground.

Adames injected her twice, Mares said, yet Garcia still clung to consciousness. Eventually, he pulled a shoelace from her shoes, wrapped it around her neck and choked the life out of her.

Her body was found the next morning.

CORROBORATION

After more than two years of unanswered questions, Garza had finally found a plausible explanation for the murder.

Finding someone to corroborate it, however, would prove more difficult.

“Everything was like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Garza said. “We had to interview (Mares) a couple of times.”

In many cold cases, witnesses become more cooperative as time passes, said Rudy Jaramillo, a former member of the Texas Rangers’ cold case squad.

“One thing you have on your side is time,” he said. “You can go back and talk to associates, and people are not as afraid as they were before.”

But in Garcia’s case, the power the Mexican Mafia held over its current and former members far outweighed time.

Even tracking them down proved challenging. Although Mares identified 12 accomplices who participated in the 2003 home invasion and kidnapping, he only referred to them by gang nicknames.

Garza, one of only two cold case investigators in the sheriff’s office at the time, spent months compiling photo lineups and checking criminal databases in search of men known only by names like “Cricket,” “Rocky” and “Boo.”

He eventually found eight of Mares’ accomplices. Most were behind bars for various unrelated crimes. Almost all refused to meet with him.

Even those who admitted to knowing something about the murder were so afraid for their lives that they dared not speak.

One man, who was incarcerated in state prison in San Antonio, broke down in tears afraid he would be killed by other gang members inside.

“Within the Mexican Mafia, it’s a death sentence if they talk,” Garza said.

All the while, Garza’s every attempt to track down Adames — the man Mares had accused of killing Garcia — failed.

McAllen police and the Texas Department of Corrections offered no solid leads based on Adames’ prior criminal history.

And although he was registered in the Hidalgo County Adult Probation system, the address and phone numbers Adames had provided came up empty.

So when Garza finally received a call from the 54-year-old’s probation officer on Nov. 18, 2005, saying Adames had been arrested on drug possession charges, he hesitated before believing he’d finally found his man.

And as much as Garza wanted to find Garcia’s killer, a high-ranking member of the Mexican

Mafia wanted Adames more.

JUAN ADAMES

A 45-year-old gang inductee years before, Juan Adames joined the Mexican Mafia relatively late in life. He never seemed to capitalize on his age, though.

Nine years later, he was still a gang foot soldier and taking orders like the one to kill Ann Marie Garcia.

Since her death, Adames had been inside more than a few jail cells. His almost constant state of incarceration may have saved his life.

The day after Garcia’s body was found in 2003, news of the discovery quickly made its way up the Mexican Mafia hierarchy. The way her body was disposed of upset leaders in the higher echelons.

After years of killings and countless bodies, the group had learned to cover their tracks. Bodies were to be disposed of subtly, and Adames had ignored orders to induce a drug overdose and bury the girl deep underground.

As witnesses would later tell Garza, Mafia Capt. Wilford Padilla was so upset by Adames’ mistake he ordered a hit on the man’s life.

Armed with information about the death threats, Garza hoped to convince Adames to talk more than two years later. On Nov. 18, the two finally met in a Hidalgo County jail cell.

The detective danced around the topic initially, asking Adames about his family and condition in jail.

“He knew I had been looking for him,” Garza said. “Word had already spread among his friends.”

It took news of the gang-ordered hit to finally get him to talk.

LAST MOMENTS

After receiving the order to induce a heroin overdose and bury Garcia’s body, Adames got greedy, he told Garza.

Although he’d been given enough drugs for two injections, he gave the girl just enough to pass out and kept the rest for himself.

Just after 3 a.m., Adames, Mares and another gang member loaded her into a Yukon and drove east toward Edcouch while discussing what to do with her.

Adames, meanwhile, claims he snuck furtive glances through the rearview mirror of Mares raping and choking the girl.

Eventually, they pulled over about two miles south of Edcouch, shoved Garcia out of the car and left her there to die.

Hours later, deputies made their gruesome discovery.

RESOLUTION

The facts of what exactly transpired during the early morning hours of Oct. 22, 2003 may forever remain a mystery.

Adames’ version of events significantly differs from Mares’. Both point the finger at one other in the case of Garcia’s murder.

However, two years, numerous interviews and countless dead ends later, Garza finally found two men who confessed to witnessing Garcia’s death and playing a role in the events that led up to it.

Between March and April 2006, sheriff’s deputies arrested Adames, Mares and a third associate — Jesus “Cricket” Gonzalez Jr., 26 — and charged them all with capital murder.

Mares pleaded guilty and received a 60-year prison sentence.

Adames took his case to trail in 2006. Despite reports that his fellow gang members tried to intimidate jurors, he was convicted later that year. He is currently serving a life sentence in a state penitentiary.

“I have to hand it to that jury,” Garza said. “They were really brave and stuck to their guns.”

Gonzalez’s case still awaits trial.

Before closing the case file that covered more than a year of his career, he called Garcia’s mother to tell her that her daughter had finally received justice.

“She was just overwhelmed,” Garza said. “She never thought this case would be solved.”

For every case like Garcia’s, though, there are dozens of others that remain unsolved.

And some other investigator will have to solve them.

After putting the Mexican Mafia case to rest, Garza moved off of cold cases to investigate public corruption. He is currently a patrol sergeant for the sheriff’s office.

“It’s not that I’ve forgotten those people,” he said. “Their cases are always open.”

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4437.