Sisters Seek Answers on Slain Brother's 36th Birthday

A homemade vanilla cake with strawberry icing, 36 candles and a room full of family and friends will make up a party to be held on the weekend this year, in honor of a birthday that for Juan Florentino Ibarra, Jr., who hasn’t come for the past six years.

With notes and sometimes balloons and candles, the memorial tribute to Ibarra begins in the cemetery every Feb. 13, a day that for 29 years was celebrated as the brother, son, father and friend grew older; a count that stopped one winter night with the pull of a trigger.

On Dec. 12, 2008, Ibarra was murdered in the small white house he occupied with his family in the 700 block of Ave. D. For six long years his killer has roamed free, leaving his family with a hole in their hearts and a collection of words recited to a tombstone that marks his eternal resting place.

Now, with the case still open and a cold case detective searching for clues, the family is finally starting to move forward, holding their memories close to their hearts.

“The first few years, it’s like I really didn’t feel anything,” Delilah Ibarra, Juan’s older sister, said through tears into the telephone receiver. “My mom was mourning and I was helping to take care of my sister’s kids…One day it just hit me and it hit me real hard. For about a year, year and a half, I’ve been getting it back together.”

Juan was the middle child to two sisters, 37-year-old Delilah and 30-year-old Vanessa Ibarra. The three grew up close, both sisters relating how “Juanito” was the one who would cheer them up when they were down, the one they called when they needed advice.  

He was a family man, they said, one who was always smiling and making others laugh, a man who loved the outdoors, cars and children, and a person each could confide in when they were feeling down.

“I just miss his phone calls, his daily phone calls,” Vanessa said. “We did go out and eat, maybe every other week. We tried to make it where we would come and get him and we would go get Chinese Kitchen every time.”

Vanessa remembers how her brother would hit the buffet, sampling everything from beef and broccoli to stir-fry. He didn’t have a real favorite, but would take a plate full of all of it instead.

The mish-mash eating habit is something his older sister recalled, too, remember how regardless of what their mother cooked, he’d throw it all into a huge salad bowl and mix the contents all together, adding whatever he could find.

“He had to have ketchup on everything,” Delilah laughed.

For his birthdays, Vanessa said, Juan would usually plan something for the family, including going out to eat and sometimes barbecuing or going for drinks. The memories of the cookouts and nights out are what keep their brother alive now, the sisters said, both of whom are still struggling to accept that he is gone.

“It’s hard, you know,” Vanessa said. “I’m still trying to barely get myself to grieve and actually really deal with the fact that he really is gone. It’s really hard for me every day. I hadn’t been to his gravesite in about five years. I finally went this weekend and hung out.”

The tragedy of losing Juan tore each of them apart, the sisters said, challenging their faith in God as they questioned why he’d put their brother on earth if he only planned to take him away so soon.

Two girls, now grown to ages 17 and 20, were also left when he passed, daughters who have grown up without their father.

The youngest of the two, Savannah, has a tattoo of a quote from her father that is also inscribed on the back of his tombstone. “Don’t drown in your sorrows, swim in them,” the quote reads.

Delilah explained that the quote stemmed from a conversation the two had had just weeks before he was killed. They were sitting outside, she said, and he was listening as she relayed some problems she was having at the time.

“Don’t drown in your sorrows, swim in them,” Juan told his big sister.

“He was the only one I would talk to,” she said.

For years after his death, each of the family members suffered through their grief somewhat privately, none able to fully cope with the loss in the absence of closure.

“It was really hard for my mom,” Delilah said. “I never used to know, like for a few years, but I would hear music in her room, really loud and she would be asleep…I finally figured it out, she was crying.”

Delilah still dreams of her brother, and in her dreams, he tells her to keep her head up and smile like she used to. The two catch up and he shows her he’s still with her, and then the dreams fade.

“When I wake up I’m crying, but then my days are better…he [tells me] he loves me and he’s still here,” she said. “He loves my mother, too.”

San Angelo police detective Jim Coleman has been working the Ibarra case for a couple of years now, and has narrowed the list of persons of interest down to a few, some of whom are the persons detectives initially focused in on.

Still, without a break in the case or a hit on DNA, the person or persons involved in the homicide remain free, and Ibarra’s family is forced to cling to the hope of one day receiving justice.

“[I wish] for somebody to try and put themselves in our shoes,” Vanessa said. “We need that closure to know, you know, who did it and what happened. Just come forward and tell us something so we can get the people responsible that did that to him. For my nieces, for my mother, for my sister, my brothers and me. My nieces and nephews, they were all so close to him, he was pretty much their father figure in their lives.” 

"I just want the world to know that I didn't just lose a brother,I lost my very best friend. [That's a] hard pill to swallow. I am just now starting to put my life back together. I remember telling him one night when he was down that if I ever get married, I'd want to marry a man just like him. A family man, a hard working man, a sensitive, funny, giving, selfless man," Delilah added. "I have faith in God now, but before—I wouldn’t even go to church after [he was killed]. But I do have faith that one day we’re going to find the [person] that did this to him."

If you or anyone you know has information pertaining to the murder of Juan Florentino Ibarra, Jr., contact Crime Stoppers at 325-658-HELP. Tips may also be submitted online at  sanangelocrimestoppers.com, or via the SAPD website under  cold case investigations.