Murder in Rocksprings: Confidential Informant Breaks the Case

“There was an item that was kept secret—we all thought it was kept secret—from the public in that when she was redressed, she was dressed with a pair of boy’s Sear’s Best underwear,” Don Letsinger recalled clearly. “Her family members had sworn to [Sheriff] Guthrie that Patricia would never put on boy’s underwear.”

This is a continuation of yesterday's story, found here.

Boy’s underwear, a red dress, tan house shoes and stab wounds from a violent assault culminating in a gash across the throat were the signs left to law enforcement after the body of 35-year-old Patricia Torres Paz was found by a family member sitting in a chair in her living room on Feb. 28, 1996.

For years, Don Letsinger had mulled over those details, trying to find clues that he and others had missed that would give detectives some indication of who the killer was. The key was supposed to be the underwear: It was a detail that only someone present would know, an indicator of a viable suspect if brought up in conversation, and there were plenty of conversations.

“It turned out though that that had been revealed to the family within a week of the murder by one of the other officers that was investigating, so that kind of went down the tubes,” Letsinger said flatly. Three years after his retirement, the ex-Edwards County Sheriff still sounded a bit perturbed, but he had earned the right to be. For years, Letsinger had worked the case alongside Texas Rangers and other detectives, coming on as the elected sheriff just 10 months after the crime was committed in 1997 and working under its dark, cold shadow until retirement in 2012.

It took at least another half decade before chance revealed another detail deemed as valuable as the underwear had been, but it would be years before that fact would emerge from anyone involved in the case. That revelation finally came on July 7, 2015, one year to the day from the date when Captain Darrell Volkmann had reopened the Paz investigation at the order of Edwards County Sheriff Pamela Elliott.

It was June 21, 2015 at roughly 7:50 a.m. when Darrell Volkmann first met with the confidential informant who would make his case. According to Volkmann’s probable cause affidavit, which was filed with four arrest warrants, the informant wished to speak to him about the murder of Patricia Paz, and proceeded to tell a story marked with obscurity and punctuated with detail that named several people reportedly complicit in the crime, some of them now dead.

During that first meeting, the informant showed enough cards to reveal personal knowledge of the crime scene, but relayed nothing about the murder itself, according to Volkmann’s report. What was said was that Paz was a fan and loyal player of the “Loteria” and had not been seen for three days in February 1996 when her sister, Lucille “Lucy” Martinez, and someone else went by her house to check on her.

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According to the informant, Lucy knocked on the door several times waiting for her sister to answer, but there came none. The door was “padlocked” from the outside and the television set was on, the informant said, so Lucy and the other person pushed the door open and found Paz sitting in a chair, obviously dead. The informant continued to recall details about the room, including the placement of the heater, the dress Paz was wearing and the fact that the body had been cleaned, details from someone with intimate knowledge of the crime.

The specificity of these details was such that leant credibility, even if some of them were flawed. Paz had at least three sisters and, according to Letsinger, Lucy wasn’t the one who had found her dead.

“Martina found the body, Martina and Frank Torres,” Letsinger said after a brief pause over the telephone. “Martina lived at her mother’s place, which was about a half a block from the crime scene. That was the house where a bunch of those boys were the night before. Then on Tuesday morning she—(she said) in her statements to me—asked Frank if he had seen Patricia, and he said, ‘yeah, I went her house. The TV’s open but the door is locked, and she didn’t come to the door.’ Then on Wednesday morning, Frank was over at Martina’s place again, and she asked again, ‘have you seen Patricia?’ He said, ‘yes,’ same story. He had gone by, the TV was on, but she wouldn’t come to the door. So Martina went over with Frank and they kicked in the door and found her.”

Letsinger hasn’t worked the case since he retired in 2012, but still goes in to assist Volkmann and Sheriff Pamela Elliott from time to time, he said, since he’s got the longest history with the case and the community. The suspicion that the killer or killers came from within the family tree wasn’t new, but keeping the various names and relations straight was daunting when the list seemed to include half of Rocksprings.

Captain Volkmann’s affidavit insinuates that he was aware that his informant had misidentified Lucy as the one who had found Paz, as he noted during a follow-up interview on July 1, the informant “still insisted that Lucille ‘Lucy’ Martinez and another person found Patricia Paz’s body”. No other information was given at that meeting, but there was a keen exchange between the detective and the informant, during which he gleaned from a facial expression that Kim* knew more than she was letting on. *(Kim is a pseudonym we have created for informant. Neither the sex nor the actual name of the informant has been released in this investigation.)

The Makeup Artist

“No search warrant shall issue for any purpose in this state unless sufficient facts are first presented to satisfy the issuing magistrate that probable cause does in fact exist for its issuance,” Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Chapter 18, Article 18.01.

In Edwards County, probable cause is subjective. Sometimes it’s hearsay; sometimes it’s evidence that can’t scientifically prove one thing or another; sometimes it just comes down to how you wear your makeup on certain days. For Christina “Tina” Flores, it was the latter, and apparently her makeup application technique was one-of-a-kind.

On June 21, as Kim and Captain Volkmann discussed who she erroneously believed had located Paz’s body and other matters of detail, the informant segued into a description of the makeup Paz was wearing when her body was found on Feb. 28, 1996. That description, which seemed to imply Christina Flores had somehow been involved in Paz’s murder or at least the post-mortem cleanup, was noted with emphasis in Volkmann’s probable cause affidavit, the document he would later use to secure an arrest warrant against Flores and the others.

The statement, which effectively accuses Flores of developing a signature style of makeup application employed only when she is stoned, stood of apparent importance in Volkmann’s affidavit, inexplicably typed in bold and concluded with three solid asterisks for added emphasis: “The subject (informant) stated that, ‘Patricia Paz had makeup on, applied just like Christina “Tina” Flores puts her makeup on when Christina “Tina” Flores is high on drugs. ***”

And a judge signed off on it. Despite another asterisked note in the affidavit—this time in italics and underlined—that states: “***According to the photographs at the time her body was discovered, it did not appear she (Paz) had make-up applied to her face,” a warrant for Tina Flores’ arrest was signed by Edwards County Judge Souli Shanklin, and she was arrested for the murder on July 31. Flores was held for roughly 30 days.

According to the affidavit, Volkmann did ask Tina Flores once about the makeup, during an in-custody interview on May 18, 2015. In his affidavit, Volkmann described Tina’s story as consistent until he asked her about putting makeup on the body of Patricia Paz.

“At this time, ‘Tina’ Flores emotionally fell apart; she was crying and very emotional [sic] upset,” Volkmann wrote. “’Tina’ Flores became very nervous and I detected deceit almost immediately.”

Christina “Tina” Flores is now 40 years old and was dating George “Poche” Torres at the time of his aunt’s murder. Aside from missing a few interviews with Volkmann this year, adding the new tale about the blood on George’s boots in May, and having stated in 2003 that she and George were in Camp Wood during the murder, she wasn’t really a featured role in the probable cause affidavit. In fact, she was only mentioned a few times by the informant, who alleged to have overheard conversations about how her makeup job on the body of Paz was going to get the killers caught.

Several weeks after her arrest, Kerrville attorney David Black was appointed to her case. Black said that his client asked for legal counsel immediately, but that he wasn’t appointed until some 20 days later. He also noted that his client was never given a bond, which usually takes place within 48 hours of arrest, and said that she claimed that investigators kept “bringing her out and trying to talk to her” before he was appointed, despite her repeated requests for an attorney. According to Flores, ECSO detectives even once offered her a cheeseburger to comply, but she continually denied their requests.

“I was appointed to it and then when I saw the affidavit, I became very, very skeptical,” Black said. “I was one of four lawyers who asked for an examining trial. It seemed like that entire affidavit was based on information that they got from an alleged confidential informant. I’m a little fascinated with this confidential informant. I guarantee you if this case ever comes up again, that’s where I intend to go. I will find out who that is. From their account of this, they had to be with these people.”

In response to Tina’s claim that she was denied an attorney and repeatedly questioned, Edwards County Sheriff Pamela Elliott simply stated, “none of that is true. As soon as they requested it (lawyers), they were appointed.”

Another defendant in the case, however, made the same claims to his attorney. That defendant is now pursuing relief for alleged civil rights violations due to the way information was handled during the investigation.

Cash Money and Crack Cocaine

The confidential informant was quite a bit chattier a week into July. Exactly one year to the day from when Captain Darrell Volkmann had taken on the case, the informant told him it was “time to get this off [her] chest and out in the open,” that “God wants it this way”. What followed was a second version of a story told back in 1996 centering on money, this time with the names filled in and lots of sequenced, specific details.

According to the informant, Juan “Carlos” Martinez, Neri Garcia and George “Poche” Torres had been smoking a lot of crack the Monday of the murder and needed some cash to get some more. Carlos, the informant claimed, told the others that he had taken Patricia Paz to cash a check and knew she was at home passed out because he had picked her up from Rudy’s Place—a local bar—earlier that day. Carlos is the son of Patricia Paz's sister, Lucy, the same Lucy who, the informant claimed, found Paz's body.

The trio then went to Paz’s house in the 700 block of N. Well St. and knocked on the door. Patricia Paz answered. According to the informant, the three boys—then in their teens and 20s—then asked Paz for beer or money, but when she said “no,” Neri Garcia went around Carlos, entered the home and pushed Paz down. Paz, who was 35 years old and suffered what has been described as an intellectual disability, got to her feet and started fighting the 16-year-old boy, scratching and biting him, the informant said. Neri again pushed Paz to the floor, this time causing her to break her tooth, and the woman reached for his hand and bit him before rising back to her feet, the informant said.

After he was bitten, Neri slammed Paz into the wall, breaking a stretch of sheetrock before biting Paz back on her right shoulder, the informant said. The fighting continued on the floor and off of it, until finally, Neri pushed Patricia Paz down one final time and reached for a pair of scissors laying near the gas heater. He first attempted to cut at Paz’s neck like one would paper, the informant detailed, only to give up and break the scissors in half, then cut her throat with one of the arms.

“Evidence supports this statement,” Volkmann noted in his report.

“During my investigation, I had an officer that came and worked for free to help me investigate that [case] because I didn’t have hardly any deputies at the time,” Letsinger recalled. “He discovered something else from the autopsy that…only someone that was there would know that that happened. We did not know that there was a bite mark there for five or six, seven years.”

The bite mark on Paz’s shoulder did show in photos from the autopsy, although the markings had apparently been slight enough that no one had noticed for years. Given the obvious value of teeth marks, potential saliva and other evidence gleaned through the processing of that wound, the case might have been solved had it been seen earlier, but somehow it was overlooked for half a decade or more.

“We even, when we found out about the bite mark, we got the shirt she had on when she was murdered and had it tested in the bite mark area, and of course, it wasn’t maintained in a manner for DNA purposes in 1996,” Letsinger said defeated. “Had they known, I guess, that there was a bite mark there, they might have tested it right then, or they might even have swabbed the bite mark at autopsy, but they didn’t.”

Aside from the informant’s knowledge of its existence, the mark wasn’t mentioned again in the probable cause affidavit.

The Runaway

With Neri Garcia fingered as the primary aggressor in Paz’s murder—by a credible witness with intimate details of the crime scene from an accomplice’s perspective, no less—the hook was baited for his arrest. He was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico when the warrant was served on Aug. 4, then extradited to Rocksprings, where he was held, like the others, without bond.

Neri was 16 years old at the time of Paz’s murder and grew up in the juvenile system, a CPS kid. In February of 1996, he was “in the system,” a resident of a Kerrville boy’s ranch approximately 75 miles from Rocksprings.

“For one time, being locked up may have paid off for him,” mused Patrick O’Fiel, Neri Garcia’s court-appointed defense counsel. “He was actually in custody under the juvenile system when this murder occurred. We notified the sheriff, who never investigated it, eventually got in touch with the juvenile probation officer down in Del Rio who does the juvenile supervision for Edwards County. He still works there. [We] confirmed with him that he (Garcia) was actually at a youth ranch over in Kerrville [during the murder]. We notified the district attorney’s office about that. The attorney general’s investigator—or maybe the lawyer—investigated that, confirmed it, notified the sheriff, now all the cases have been dismissed.”

The revelation that Neri was confirmed to be in residence at the boy’s ranch during the murder blew a large hole in the informant’s already punctured story. The news should have been shocking to all who were actively working the case, and perhaps it would have been if Don Letsinger hadn’t already ruled Neri out as a suspect years before.

“I always dismissed him as a suspect in the case because he was supposed to have been over there and would not have been in Rocksprings. However, Sheriff Elliott…she and her investigators have determined that Neri Garcia had run off from that boy’s camp on more than one occasion during the period of time (of the murder),” Letsinger said to the sheriff’s defense. “They determined that he was not in custody when Patricia was killed on a Monday night…in February of ’96.”

O’Fiel stated that his research shows that Neri Garcia did in fact run off from the boy’s ranch during his time there, but that happened only once in the June or July following the murder. Prior to that, O’Fiel said, his record was clean.

“I have requested records regarding that to confirm it, but I think they might have some civil rights 1983 allegations, which I intend to pursue,” O’Fiel said. “If they had already confirmed that he could not have been there because he was in custody, it’s a civil rights violation. I intend to move forward against the county on that.

“The other concerns I had was I had to send the sheriff a letter to quit questioning my client after my client had invoked his 5^th Amendment and 6^th Amendment right to counsel, and they just wouldn’t quit,” O’Fiel said, echoing a story told by Christina Flores. “They’ve also taken money out of his commissary to pay for a broken TV; if he needed medical attention, they would take it out of his commissary. It’s almost unbelievable when I heard it.”

After leaving several messages at the end of unreturned phone calls, Edwards County Sheriff Pamela Elliott did finally answer for a short interview on Oct. 2. At that time, Elliott denied all allegations concerning the continued interview attempts made by ECSO detectives directed at Neri and Christina, then deferred further questions to the Attorney General’s Office.

Elliott said the AG’s Office had taken over the investigation, but would not speculate as to why. “It could be a myriad of reasons that the district attorney wants either the assistance or wants them to do it or whatever,” she said. “That comes from the request from the district attorney.”

She would not comment on Neri Garcia’s arrest and the previous finding that he was in custody at the time, but did agree to comment on a suit brought against her and several other defendants when she was working as a detective in Gilbert, Arizona.

In that case, a woman named Rachel Jernigan was convicted of robbing banks in Arizona after witnesses identified her in a photo lineup. While Jernigan was in custody awaiting trial, however, the bank robberies continued, and the suspect descriptions were nearly identical to those that had led to Jernigan’s arrest. At trial, circumstantial evidence led to Jernigan’s conviction and she was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Neither the defense nor the prosecution had been notified by any member of law enforcement before or during the trial that another bank robber hitting the same area—and one of the same banks—with a near-identical description was still active in the community.

Jernigan was exonerated after spending seven years in the penitentiary, when the woman convicted of committing the other robberies confessed. During the Oct. 2 interview with Elliot, she was asked why that information about an additional suspect or robber matching Jernigan’s description was never passed on to the defense and prosecuting attorneys prior to trial. Elliot grew angry and cut the question in half before it was even fully formed. “Did you actually follow up on this case?” she teemed. She then named off several individuals she believed might have been spreading information about the case and continued by stating, “If you followed up on that and…saw that I won that case, you wouldn’t be asking me that. I didn’t do anything wrong. And the original case is not that I didn’t include something in the case; she sued me because she wanted me to interject myself—and had I interjected myself into the FBI’s task force, she wouldn’t have been arrested.”

Jernigan’s primary complaint was that information was withheld that could have influenced a jury that ultimately wrongly convicted her and sent her to prison for seven years. She took the shotgun approach and filed suit against everyone handling the case. Court documents indicate that Pamela Elliott—then known as Pamela Brock—not only was assigned as the lead investigator for the city alongside a federal agent during three of six robberies, but continued to work on those cases while others were committed, with notices and information about a female robber with a very similar modus operandi and physical description continually being updated around her office space. Should she have seen it in all those months and meetings as a detective? Yes, the court said. Can we definitively state that she was aware of this information during the prosecution? No.

Sheriff Elliott ended the phone call about the case by abruptly hanging up. She maintained, before doing so, that she never concealed any information in Arizona, and struck down a noted a resemblance in the Arizona allegations and in the case of Neri Garcia, who had previously been found to be in custody at the time of Paz's murder.

*This story will be continued on Monday as part of a series titled Murder in Rocksprings, due to the vast amount of information acquired in research for this article.

To read the first segment of this story, follow the link below:

1. Murder in Rocksprings: Four Arrested in 19-Year-Old Capital Murder