The chilling story of a serial killer with a Border Patrol badge | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on August 15, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: In 2018, four female sex workers were brutally murdered in the span of 12 days in Laredo, Texas, shocking their small border community. A few hours after the last victim was murdered, an unlikely suspect was arrested: a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. During his trial, the prosecution argued that Juan David Ortiz used his role as a Border Patrol agent to methodically stay one step ahead of the investigation all along, an argument that eventually led to his successful conviction. What made this border guard decide to target four innocent women and carry out this heinous serial killing? USA TODAY National Correspondent Rick Jervis spent nearly five years getting the full story. He joins The Excerpt to share his reporting, all detailed in his new book, “The Devil Behind the Badge,” out on bookshelves now.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, August 15th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. In 2018, 4 female sex workers were brutally murdered in the span of 12 days in Laredo, Texas, shocking their small border community. A few hours after the last victim was murdered, an unlikely suspect was arrested, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. During his trial, the prosecution argued that Juan David Ortiz used his role as a border patrol agent to methodically stay one step ahead of the investigation all along, an argument that eventually led to a successful conviction. What made this border guard decide to target four innocent women and carry out this heinous serial killing. USA Today national correspondent Rick Jervis spent nearly five years getting the full story, the result of which he shared in his new book, The Devil Behind the Badge, out on bookshelves now. Thanks for joining us, Rick.

Rick Jervis:

Thank you Dana.

Dana Taylor:

First, Rick, tell us what compelled you to write this book? What drew you into this story?

Rick Jervis:

So this is a story that I initially covered for USA today. It was an assignment for me. I'm based in Austin, Texas, and so I actually went down to Laredo, Texas to cover Juan David Ortiz's initial arrest. I went to the press conference there and covered it as a story for like USA today. But what really drove me to expand this into a book was when I started meeting some of the victim's families. There was a sense early on in the initial press conference, yes, this was a tragic situation that these four women were killed, but they also were sex workers, and so they kind of put themselves into these dangerous situations. But when I started to talk to victims' families, a much different picture emerged. I started learning that they were mothers and sisters and daughters, and they were beloved by their families. And so the sort of compulsion to tell their kind of broader stories, that's what really pushed me to write this book.

Dana Taylor:

And I know you spent a lot of time digging into Ortiz's background. What can you tell us about him?

Rick Jervis:

Juan David Ortiz was 35 years old. At the time of the murders, he was married, he had three young kids. He was a ten-year veteran of border patrol. He was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas down on the border. Brownsville is Texas' southernmost city, right on the border there with Mexico, raised by a single mom, three sisters. He was a devout evangelical Pentecostal Christian in high school. He even led bible studies. But he also had trouble at home. His mother told him when he was in high school or so that his father had actually killed himself and the mother also apparently was being abused by different boyfriends at home. So David Ortiz joined the actual military. He joined the Navy soon after high school. He was only 18 years old, and this happened in 2001, just two months before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was a Navy corpsman, which is like a medic, and he was attached to a Marines unit.

He was deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. So he was in Iraq. And as a medic, he unfortunately saw a lot of the gruesome details of a war and was on the front lines for a lot of the things that happened there back in Iraq. He comes back to the U.S. and joins Border Patrol in 2009, and he's kind of a rising star. He's a base first in Cotulla, Texas, later transferred to Laredo in 2017, and he becomes a supervisory agent at what is known as a joint intelligence center. And this is a place a number of different agencies gather to share information on some of the biggest cases there on the border.

Dana Taylor:

Were there signs that Juan David Ortiz was capable of murder? When and how do you think he might've shifted from an officer interested with safeguarding this border community to a cold-blooded killer?

Rick Jervis:

This is one of the questions that I really tried hard to answer. It seems like in so many other serial killings, there are some signs of something that happened to that person. That was a turning point. And I dug hard into Juan David Ortiz's background just to see if there were any signs. But really throughout his life, there really wasn't much. He was a really good student in high school. Like I said, he was very church oriented. His personnel file at Border Patrol is basically spotless. He was getting several promotions, so there were no obvious signs, nothing in his personal life or in his personnel file pointing to anything like this. But around February of 2018, that's when things start to turn for him. He basically starts complaining to colleagues and to friends of his that he's having migraines, nightmares, he has bouts of anxiety. Complains to friends that pressures of the job are really getting to him, and that he is really seeing a lot in the field that is not sitting well with him.

He starts drinking heavily. He goes to the local VA where he basically talks about all these things. He's diagnosed with PTSD and he's prescribed this cocktail of psychotropic medications. So friends and co-workers notice that his erratic behavior just increases. They basically see him mixing some of these medications with beer and alcohol. He starts boasting to colleagues that he basically knows where some of the sex workers in town work. He starts bragging about picking some of them up. Some of these co-workers see this really declining condition of Juan David Ortiz, and they really see him start to deteriorate.

Dana Taylor:

So I want to stick with this decline that his friends and co-workers noticed. Nothing made it into Border Patrol records. How did this change in demeanor and his crimes get passed the agency?

Rick Jervis:

The short answer is that we just don't know. And the reason that we don't know is because Border Patrol as an agency has never talked to me about this case. Since 2018, I've asked sort of repeatedly for interviews, I've filed various Freedom of Information Act requests for documents or information that might give us a clue. In Ortiz's background, all of them were actually denied. They kept saying that this is under internal investigation still. Even though he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the case apparently remains under investigation. So were not exactly clear what lessons the agency learned through all of this. CBP officials point out that he's only one of nearly 20,000 agents at the agency at the time and not actually a representative of all the other agents. Immigrant advocates have actually complained for a long time that the agency has a real problem with transparency and specifically transparency of how it disciplines its own agents.

Dana Taylor:

What led up to the moment that Ortiz was apprehended, and then to his full confession?

Rick Jervis:

So he kills his first two victims, Michelle Ramirez and Claudine Loera in a 10-day span, and then he kills Shelley and then Janelle within hours of one another. But the main reason that he's apprehended is because he pulls his gun on a would be fifth victim, Erika Peña. And she somehow manages to escape his clutches, pops out of his truck and runs away basically alerting police and that's how the manhunt for him begins. And there's this long manhunt for him that takes place for several hours, but they finally catch up to him and he's hiding in the bed of a pickup truck on the fourth floor of a hotel parking garage and that's how he's finally arrested.

Dana Taylor:

How can the Border patrol better police its own agents and keep them accountable? You wrote that there's still one answer you wanted to find out even after five years. What lessons did they learn?

Rick Jervis:

Border Patrol has had a real issue with transparency over the years. You talk to immigrant advocates, and they've complained about this for years. They've filed lawsuits trying to get information. And Border Patrol was just sort of constructed differently, it basically started in 1924. From day one, they've used warrantless arrests to pick people up. They work in sort of remote rural areas, hundreds of miles from their supervisors. So there's a sense that they're kind of on their own out there in these rural stretches. I have to say, I have covered border patrol for years. The vast majority of the agents that I've met are trustworthy, they're hardworking, they have integrity, they're really professional. But every once in a while you get people like Juan David Ortiz working among them, and people are questioning, "Why is it that you get folks like that popping up in Border Patrol?"

Dana Taylor:

This case was one of several in that year that involved Border Patrol agents. How has this impacted the way the community views the Border Patrol?

Rick Jervis:

In 2018, there were three separate agents. Juan David Ortiz was actually one of them who were investigated for agent related shootings. So in one sector, there were six deaths at the hands of border patrol. And so you would think that would create a really black cloud over the agency, especially in places like Laredo. But Border Patrol is such an intrinsic part of border communities. Many are from there, they live there, children go to school there. And it's seen as a coveted job, it's well paid, it's mostly respected. But if you talk to law enforcement agents in those communities, they all tell you, and I have talked to them privately and they tell me that Border Patrol is just different. That they feel like they have a longer leash, that they get away with things that other agents wouldn't. And so there's a sense among other law enforcement agents that Border Patrol just does things differently.

Dana Taylor:

Why should people read this book? What do you want people to know?

Rick Jervis:

I think people reading this book might get a glimpse into a world that very few people know, this kind of underbelly of a border community with all its struggles. I also hope that people read this and realize that law enforcement is ultimately run by humans, and sometimes those humans are flawed.

Dana Taylor:

Rick, thank you for being on The Excerpt.

Rick Jervis:

Thank you for having me.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Greene for Production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at USAToday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.