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Inside. We turn now to that developing
news. In an alleged murder spree out
of Laredo tonight, a Border Patrol agent is under arrest.
Channel 5's Valerie Gonzalez tells us four women were killed.
On Labor Day weekend, a woman's body was discovered in a remote
part of Laredo. This week, again, another female
body was found in the same area. Isidro Alaniswad, County
District Attorney, said a pattern slowly emerged.
Well, with the 1st 22 murders, there were some similarities,
but obviously things began to, to become more clear as each
murder took place and the MO and, and the way the bodies
were, were discomforted and where the injuries were and the
type of people they were. And so, you know, things started
to match up that that we did have a serial killer.
The spree was confirmed this morning at one AMA woman escaped
the grasp of a kidnapper. She sought safety with a law
enforcement officer. Information she provided during
interrogation LED officers to Juan David Ortiz.
Authorities found them at a gas station of his fled.
He was caught at a nearby parking lot.
At 2:00 AM Webb County Sheriff's Office and DPS investigators
found a third female victim at 1:00 PM this afternoon, they
found a fourth woman. District Attorney Alani says
there were similarities between the crimes I.
Do believe that these were people up the street either
engaging in or or in some sort of prostitution.
It seems that he was seeking out his victims, targeting his
victims and that they were killed in similar fashion and
and their bodies disposed of it in similar fashion.
So it has all the indicators of being a a a a serial murder
spree. Elanie says Ortiz is a 10 year
veteran with Border Patrol. This is the first time his
office simultaneously handles 2 homicide investigations
involving Border Patrol agents. The other case involves an agent
accused of killing a woman and their child in April.
It's. Very unusual that something like
this happens, especially around the same time.
You know, we're currently still prepping on the other capital
murder case. And now we, we have a, a
multiple murder case with with, with this, with this agent.
So unfortunate that that's the situation.
I don't think it's any reflection on on Border Patrol.
Alaniz believes our thieves to be a dangerous suspect, he said.
He'll be asking a judge to keep off these behind bars.
Border Patrol released a statement today, reading in
part. Our sincerest condolences go out
to the victim's family and friends.
While it is not CVP policy. While it is CVP policy to not
comment on the details of an ongoing investigation, criminal
action by our employees is not and will not be tolerated.
The Texas Rangers and Webb County Sheriff's Office are
investigating. Hello Mike Demon Insiders and
welcome back to the Demon Inside.
I'm your host, John Venom, and today we will be doing the case
of 1 David Ortiz. Now I'm here in San Antonio, TX.
This is South Texas and about 2 1/2 hours away is a small town
called Laredo, which sits on the border between the United States
and Mexico, is probably one of the busiest border crossings in
the nation. So in 2018 there was a serial
spree killer. He had killed 4 sex workers.
These murders occurred in Laredo from September 3rd to September
15th of 2018. At that time, Juan David Ortiz
was a supervisor of the Intelligence Department of the
Border Patrol and he was asked by the Laredo Police Department
to look into one of the cases. Little did they know at that
time that Juan David Ortiz was the killer they were looking
for. But before we get into that, let
me give you some background on Juan David Ortiz.
He was born in Brownsville, TX. He was the oldest child of four
to a single mother. He was a good student in high
school and he was part of the swim team and in cross country.
He was a member of the Fellowship of Christian
Athletes. He was active in all aspects of
the church and grew up with a strong faith.
Ortiz was married to his high school sweetheart, and they had
three children and were active members in the Assembly of God
Church. It's a, it's a Pentecostal
church. A month after his 18th birthday,
after he graduated from high school, he joined the US Navy.
Ortiz was stationed as a Navy student at Fort Sam Houston here
in San Antonio. As we know here in San Antonio,
Fort Sam is a medical training facility for branches of the
service. It's where they train the
majority of the medical personnel for the Army, Navy,
and Marine Corps. And let's not forget, just
throwing this out there, Jeffrey Dahmer was also trained here at
Fort Sam Houston. So Ortiz was assigned to two
commands in California. They were both Marine Corps Base
Camp Pendleton. He was transferred to the First
Marine Division detachment in California's Marine Corps Air
Ground Combat Center. It's the Marine Air Ground Task
Force of the United States Marine Corps.
It's made-up of the First Marine Division, which he was in the
third Marine Aircraft Wing and 1st Marine Logistics Group.
So the IMEF, which is the Marine Expeditionary Force, provides
forces to the US Central Command and US Indo Pacific Command as
directed. Ortiz, graduating from his
school at Fort Sam and doing these trainings, became a combat
medic. He served tours in Afghanistan
and Kuwait, and he was in the middle of many confrontations
overseas where he had to save many lives.
Ortiz was actually a hero who saved soldiers overseas.
He was there until April 5th, 2005.
He was then assigned to the Navy Element Defense Medical
Readiness Training Institute Detachment at Fort Sam Houston
on April 25th, 2005 and he stayed until April 1st, 2008.
So to me this meant that he was actually training other soldiers
on how to become combat medics. He was awarded the Joint
Meritorious award, the National Service Award, and the Rifle
Marksmanship Medal. Given his military status, he
probably had a top secret clearance.
That's why when he was arrested, Navy investigators assisted the
local law enforcement but were tight lipped regarding the
specifics of their role in the Ortiz case.
When he got out of the Navy, he went directly into the Border
Patrol. So Ortiz joined the agency in
August of 2009, first in the town of Cotulla and then Laredo
while he was a border agent. He earned a bachelor's degree
from American Military University and a master's degree
from Saint Mary's University in Texas, which is here in San
Antonio, a former emergency medical technician for the US
Navy who had done a tour of duty in Iraq said.
One of his buddies from the Marines told me that Doc that
was Artesa's nickname, genuinely cared about the migrants
crossing the border. He wanted to use his medical
skills to help migrants who had been traveling for days in the
desert. That's what this Marine buddy
said. And a lot of people had
testified that he would give water to a lot of these people
that were migrating across the desert.
He would give first aid. He was very helpful to a lot of
these people. So doing that, Ortiz had
accumulated a vast variety of contacts and informants.
So over the years of being on and around the border and
working in some of the roughest streets in Laredo, he indeed
became a respected agent. So by 2017, Ortiz had been
promoted to the position of Intelligence supervisor.
This was located at South Texas Border Intelligence Center in
Laredo. So on September 3rd of 2018,
police found a dead woman on the side of the road.
She had been shot in the back of the head execution style and was
face down on the floor. So they started doing an
investigation. They found several shell casings
from a 40 Glock and they found tire patterns from a truck.
On September 13th of 2018 there was a second female shot and
left near the first crime scene and around her crime scene the
same evidence was found, 40 caliber shell casings and they
found tracks from a truck nearby.
Police began to wonder if they had a serial killer, and they
knew that both of these cases were connected because of that
evidence. Witnesses also described a white
truck in the area. Now, Ortiz kept going to work
during the day and going home to his wife and three kids, and
then he would go out at night and kill prostitutes.
On September 14th though, his wife and the three kids left the
house and he was alone at home. After he got off of work, he
went home, changed, grabbed his gun and went hunting at the San
Bernardo St. in Laredo. This is where the prostitutes
and drug dealers and everything where all this happens, all this
crime. He goes and picks up a woman
named Erica Pena, and they go to his house and she gets the
strangest feeling that something is not right.
As a matter of fact, it gets to the point where she feels like
she's getting sick. She goes outside and she throws
up on the sidewalk. He comes out realizing that he
either needs to get her back inside or he needs to take her
out of there because the neighbors.
And so he asked what can I do and Erica says take me to the
store. So they go to the store.
He parks way behind the store, not even in the parking lot
across the street from the store parking.
He then takes out a gun. He points it at her.
She starts fighting for her life.
He grabs her blouse. She takes it off and runs.
She goes to the fueling station where she sees the Texas Highway
Patrol officer. She's shirtless.
She has a bra on, and she's crying and she's freaking out.
And she tells the patrol officer, the Texas Highway
Patrol officer, that a man named David pulled a gun on her and
she escaped from him. So this is a clip from the show
2020 with John Quinones of Erica Pena, who survived, and the
Texas State trooper Francisco Hernandez, who she started
talking to and this is from his body Cam.
So listen to this. She begins to get panicked and
she's trying to leave the vehicle and a struggle happens
and he ends up ripping off her shirt.
It was at this service station that investigators got their big
break. A state trooper was pumping gas
here when a shirtless woman ran up to him saying that a man was
trying to kill her. And it was all captured on those
security cameras. So on that night I finished
refueling, all of a sudden I see the lady coming from the side of
the store kind of rapid walking towards my patrol.
Car help me help me. You said where she had mentioned
to me that she just had gotten assaulted by an individual and
that this individual pointed a gun at her.
I know because it's a shock. I mean, you just escaped from a
from a possible kidnap. The police take Erica to the
police station to start getting her statement.
At the police station she starts saying that this guy David had
taken her to the house and she starts describing his house to
AT. They ask her is there any way
you can take us to his house? She says, I'm not exactly sure
where it's at, but I'll give it a shot.
So they start driving around and they're looking for the house.
And all of a sudden she sees it and says that's the house.
So they run the house address and they find out that it
belongs to Juan David Ortiz. Now they still don't know that
he's a Border Patrol agent. They see the vomit on the
sidewalk. They know it's his.
They get a search warrant. They go into the house and they
find all the guns that Juan David Hernandez or Juan David
Ortiz after she escaped. He goes back to the house and
starts getting all his guns ready for a gunfight with the
police. But when they don't show up, he
decides he's going to head back to the streets of San Bernardo
and Laredo to the street of San Bernardo where he had been
picking up his victims. He then picks up another woman.
This is the same night he picks up another woman and they start
to drive. According to him, he was crying
and he was saying that he was going to kill himself because he
had done things and he would never be forgiven.
She told him that she started or he said that she said OK that
she started to pray for him and told him that there was nothing
that he had done that God could not forgive.
She was trying to keep him from killing himself.
He drove until they ended up a little bit out of Laredo, down
35 between San Antonio and Laredo.
I mean, there's a whole bunch of other towns in between, but
basically going towards San Antonio.
So she, he tells her that he killed the two girls.
She still says that God can forgive you.
You need to turn yourself in. You know, I'm praying for you.
He tells her, get out of my truck.
I don't want you in my truck anymore.
Get out of my truck. Is this him because he's feeling
a conscious no. Is this the demon because they
don't want prayer possibly? Or is this just him trying to
get her out of the truck now? This is what he tells her.
He says get out of my truck, start walking and you're going
to either head right, which is going to take you back to
Laredo, or you're going to head left, which is going to take you
to San Antonio. He goes, I suggest you go left
and go to San Antonio. So she gets out of the truck and
she starts to walk away. Now, According to him, she
stopped. She actually turns around and
comes back to the truck. We will be right back after a
word from our sponsors. Hey guys.
And now it's time for the Uber shout out of the week.
So I have one Uber shout out, which is really strange.
I got a call to pick up a guy and I found out that he is a
sales manager here at Mazda at World Car Mazda N where I
actually work as a security guard.
So when I stopped to pick him up he looked at me and said aren't
you supposed to be doing security?
So we made a deal and I told him about the podcast as I was
driving him to his destination and I told him that I would give
him free publicity if he didn't say anything and if I didn't do
Uber anymore during my work shifts.
He agreed and hopefully that's the last we've ever heard of it.
But, and I knew this would end up happening eventually, but
this shout out is for Paul Blunzer and I usually don't give
a last name, but he is a manager here, a sales manager here at
World Car Mazda. So if you guys are looking for a
car here in San Antonio, if you come down 35 N near Pat Booker
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He's a great guy in in helping you and he will find you a good
car for a good price. And I wouldn't mention too much
about me, you know, picking him up as an Uber driver.
But hey, the second shout out I have isn't actually from Uber,
but the second shout out is to Matthew.
And Matthew is on my The Demon Inside group chat, which is on
Facebook. And he actually sent me saying
that he's been a long time listener and he enjoys the show.
And Matthew, I appreciate it. And I told him I would send him
a shout out on this one and he was very excited about it.
So Matthew and Paul, these are your shout outs.
I appreciate you guys listening and I hope you enjoy the rest of
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welcome back to The Demon Inside.
She actually turns around and comes back to the truck.
As she's walking back to the truck, he gets out of the truck
and tells her that she needs the leave.
And he said she says no God will forgive you and started praying
again. And he got upset because she
wasn't leaving. So he pulled out his gun and he
said that the monster came out. At this time the monster came
out. So he shoots her in the face
three times and his words were the monster came out.
Take a listen to this. This is from 20/20 with John
Quinones. And then it was it was an
interview that John Quinones was doing with Captain Federico
Cadron, who was one of the investigators who was
interviewing him. And this guy's from Webb County.
He's from the Sheriff's Office. And then also a Texas Ranger who
is who is EJ Salinas. Texas Rangers guys here in Texas
are the badasses. These guys are freaking amazing.
These guys deal with cases that you would not believe.
OK, so during this interview, I'm going to play it for you
right now, and you're not going to believe what the Ranger says.
Listen to this. Listen to Texas Ranger Salinas.
And he says these words around this time that were quite.
Just. Shocking this sort of monster
came. Out.
That's when the the monster came out.
You could see the monster coming out.
It. It kind of took.
Me back because I don't know. If you ever see the devil coming
out of. Somebody.
Kind of like that. Does he ever tell you?
Why? He killed these women.
His claim is that he was quote UN quote cleaning up the
streets. The first one was happening.
Correct, but after that. I I saw like.
Like this too good. Like I'm like clean up the
streets and then I hope it is going to.
It's quite a contradiction. Correct.
Absolutely. He's buying them drugs, he's
paying these prostitutes himself.
Correct. And then he claims he's trying
to clean it up. It was a poor attempt at
justification for the horrible crimes he had committed.
So I was like, you know, you're having two people.
So I convinced myself of that that was his mindset, that these
women, based on the choices that they had made, that they did not
deserve to live and that he was in a position to be judge, jury
and executioner. Did you hear Texas Ranger?
Selena said. You could see the devil coming
out of him. Now.
This is a respected Texas Ranger guys, and from the way he says
it, the way he sounds, he makes it sound like this isn't his
first time he's ever seen the devil come out of somebody.
I would love to interview this guy and see what other cases
he's done that he has seen the devil come out of these people.
So after he shoots and kills his fourth victim, by this time 4
hours have gone by and they had found the house that Erica
remembered like I said. And they end up finding out who
it belongs to. And now they end up finding out
that he is an actual Border Patrol agent.
Not only just a Border Patrol agent but a an intelligence
Border Patrol agent. So they're looking for his
truck. They send out a BOLO which is be
on the lookout for his truck. They find it at a gas station
and he's inside the store and they don't want to take him in
the store because they're scared there might be a hostage
situation. When he comes out they're
waiting for him and they start giving them commands and they
tell him to raise his hands. He doesn't.
He's freaking out and he decides he's going to run.
So he ends up hiding in a parking garage and runs up to
the 4th floor where he hides in a bed of a truck while he's in
there. And this comes from the
prosecutors because they released these Facebook posts
that he was sending during that time that he was hiding in the
truck. Facebook posts that Ortiz
allegedly wrote before surrendering and standoff with
law enforcement. One reads, Doc Ortiz checks out,
farewell. The other reads to my wife and
kids, I love you. So after they find him, they
pull him out. They start asking him if he is
or who he is. And he's saying, you know who I
am, you know who I am. And they're like, where is your
weapon? He says, I don't have one.
They end up taking them and they take him to the jail or they
take him to the police headquarters where the
investigators start talking to him.
And like I said, one is the Texas Ranger and the other is
the sheriff from Webb County. So they start talking to him.
And this guy, before they start talking to him, he's sitting in
the interrogation room. And if you guys want to see
this, it's actually on YouTube. He starts talking to one of the
agents or somebody out in the hallway while he's inside
sitting down and he's laughing and he's saying, hey, who were
the two guys that were chasing me?
You need to tell him that they need to start working out
because I lost them really quick.
He goes, they're really out of shape.
This guy was very cocky and he was very proud of what he had
done. So as investigators start
talking to him, he first says it wasn't him.
He didn't know them, he didn't know the victims, and he didn't
know what happened. One of the officers that's
interrogating him says we have proof that you did this.
We have your gun, we have the shell casings, we have your tire
tracks. We're going to find DNA, We're
going to have all this information about you.
So tell us that we have the wrong guy.
And he doesn't say anything. So then they ask him, why did he
do it? I just want to understand.
We know you did it. We just want to understand why.
And one of the investigators says possibly, maybe you blacked
out and you don't remember. So our teeth runs with it.
And this is what a lot of killers do.
They want an excuse so they don't have to take blame.
He runs with the whole I blacked out, I don't remember.
OK, now remember this. He doesn't remember because he
had blacked out. But when he was talking and he
was talking about the victims, he was very proud of what he had
done, very proud of what he had done.
He sounded like with conviction of I did this, I took her, I
killed her. He talks about the first victim
that she had taken drugs in his truck and he she passed out and
he got annoyed and he didn't know what to do and he ended up
killing her. The second victim, he says that
she started feeling like something wasn't right.
They started talking about the first victim.
She says she got a strange feeling and he shot her and
killed her. The third victim was Erica Pena
who escaped, and Erica says that she also felt something wasn't
right with this guy. Automatically.
She knew for whatever reason that he was the killer of the
two girls. Then he starts to say this.
He talks about the monster that comes out of him and he talks
about that he was trying to clean the streets of Laredo.
This guy was a vigilante who's killing prostitutes to clean the
streets. He said that no one else was
doing it. And for me, the demon that was
either possessing them or influencing them was probably
telling them, hey, all these people that you guys arrested
are getting out and nobody is doing anything about it.
This is your chance to do something, to be judge, jury and
executioner and actually make a difference.
So I want to give you a little insight to what I think was in
his mind at the time. Because to kill these women, he
was using his service weapon. And to me, that means that he
was doing something just, he was doing something right because as
a law enforcement agent, he should have known that they
would trace this 40 caliber weapon back to him or back to
any law enforcement officer. So when the police are almost
finished interviewing him, they ask him what most police love to
ask. Is there anything else you want
to tell us? Well, he says there's one that
you have not found. That was his fifth victim, 4th
killed. He said he again headed after
the third. He went back to San Bernardo St.
to pick up another victim. He picked up a woman who is a
transgender woman and he put her body behind a pile of asphalt
that was off to the side of the road where they had been doing
construction. This was again in a span of four
hours where he killed the last two victims.
In total, Juan David Ortiz killed four women and victimized
5. If not for Erica Pena escaping
there may never they may never have caught him because he was
actually doing investigations into his own murders and was
sabotaging or at least trying to sabotage the investigation.
He even says that when they asked him about some of the
people or some of the victims, he said he looked it up on the
computer and didn't find anything.
So my question is this, if a demon is inside a person or
influencing a person, can people sense that they are there?
Because two of these women sense that something wasn't right.
Could it have been there? Could it have been their
guardian angels or their intuition?
Or could they have felt the presence of evil?
Could they have felt the presence of a demon?
Now for me, guys, an evil person doesn't mean that they're
possessed. An evil person is just an evil
person. Sometimes when an evil person is
just evil, these demons like to watch, they like to hang around,
they like to see the destruction that people do to other people.
Could she the the two victims? Could they have sensed this and
knew that something wasn't right?
Also, it was also in two weeks that he created all this chaos.
He did a lifetime of good to end up two weeks of killing
prostitutes. Could that have been the demon?
Yes. So for me, guys, if I had to put
a name to this demon, I would say it was pride because he was
very proud of his work that he was doing and he wanted to do it
faster because he knew he was going to get caught.
He wanted to make a difference and he was very, very proud of
it. He was a spree serial killer
because he knew that his time was running out and he had to
hurry up and that's why he killed so many.
In that one day he could have killed 3.
But thank God that Erica Pena escaped and was able to testify
against him because if not for her, maybe he would still be out
there killing. Thanks for listening guys.
Talk to you all. Next week, don't forget to
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If. I don't get possessed.
The Demon Inside was written and created by James Porter.
It is a production of Venomous Entertainment.
Background music is by Lucas King and the title song Demon
Inside was produced by Rice Prover, composer lyricist Peter
Shelley and performed by Conjure 1.