Brutal & Gruesome Capital Murder Trial Underway in San Angelo

SAN ANGELO, TX –– After more than four years on the docket, the trial against Stephen Lynn Jennings finally began on Monday in Tom Green County. Jennings was in the court room wearing glasses, sporting a longer hairstyle, and a clean shaven –– a very different look then when he was booked into the Tom Green County Jail.

The day kicked off with District Attorney John Best laying out the timeline investigators pieced together after the victim, Eric Torrez, disappeared in July of 2017. His remains were found weeks later in a neighboring county with multiple gunshots wounds, including one to the head.

According to Best, this entire ordeal began when Jennings, his wife Kristen, and his father Gary allegedly hatched a plan to get Torrez to San Angelo.

Kristen Jennings and Eric Torrez shared two children –– with one of the children residing with their father in the City of Abilene. The alleged plan was to lure Torrez away from the city, so Kristen and Gary could pick up the child from daycare and bring them back to Tom Green County. The problem was they did not know what daycare the child attended.

Then the trio set their plan in motion with Jennings allegedly taking on a fake identity and asking Torrez for a bid for a construction project in San Angelo.

Posing as a man named 'Derrick', the defendant made arrangements to meet the victim in Abilene, only to cancel the meeting at the very last minute. According to the prosecution, the meeting was just a ruse to allow the three Jennings the chance to follow Torrez home and figure out where he lived.

During this time, Kristen and Gary allegedly began to search for the child in different daycare centers of Abilene but had no luck.

Jennings would then ask Torrez to visit a home in Duckworth Rd with the pretext of the construction bid. Upon arriving at the location, he would allegedly be kidnapped and held against his will by Jennings and co-defendant David Navarro.

"Eric didn't know his fate was sealed," when he entered the home, said Best during his opening statement.

Jennings and Navaro would eventually get Torrez to tell them where the child was, so Kristen and Gary rushed back to Abilene to the Pioneer Baptist Church, but they would be too late. The four-year-old had already been picked up by their paternal grandmother and taken to their dad's home.

Knowing where the Torrez home was located, Kristen allegedly barged into the house and took the child with her back to San Angelo on Friday, July 21st.

The next day, Torrez's mother reported him missing to the Abilene Police Department after being unable to contact him.

She would tell authorities that her son's second iPhone was at his house and that she had seen messages about visiting a home in San Angelo during a work-related trip the day before. She would provide them with an address at Duckworth Rd., prompting APD to reach out to the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office for assistance. A deputy was then sent to conduct a welfare check to the home.

Bodycam footage presented during the trial showed the first welfare check was unsuccessful after no one appeared to be home. Hours later two deputies would make contact with Jennings and his wife.

While the audio was substantially garbled due to the ambient noise and a windy day, the deputy on the stand stated they discussed the victim with Kristen Jennings. She would allege Torrez had not been at that property recently.

She did tell deputies that two children were inside the home playing.

The prosecution would then call a witness that would take up the vast majority of the day -- the crime scene technician who had been in charge of collecting and processing all the evidence in Torrez's disappearance.

For hours the former crime scene technician described in great detail the hundreds of photographs entered into evidence and the process of completing three search warrants in the home on Duckworth Rd as new information was uncovered in the course of the investigation.

He would describe what appeared to be small blood smears, and blood spatter detected by luminol and other chemical agents used to detect the presence of blood –– even when it may have been cleaned.

Investigators would also discover a variety of shell casings, ammunition, and a pink .22 rifle with the words "My First Rifle" on the gun. Various burn pits that contained a variety of items were also found around the property.

Navarro's home was also searched and several electronics were seized, but none appear to be connected to Torrez's disappearance.

Several other witnesses would later take the stand and discuss how police obtained video evidence that is expected to be re-introduced later in the trial.

For their part, the defense focused on a different aspect of the case. They asked the jury to consider that the multiple co-defendants who had reached an agreement with the state in exchange for their testimony couldn't be trusted. According to attorney Kimberly Brown, they were "going to point the finger at Jennings" and asked the jury to "pay attention to their agenda."

Brown argued that "nobody saw what happened at the house definitively" and that each co-defendant could have killed Torrez as they spent time with the victim.

"This is a case about lies and deals," said Brown.

The socially distanced trial will resume on Tuesday at 9:00 a.m.