Borderland Crimes

El Pasoan Maria Luisa Corral was found dead on April 29, 2005.

The 20-year-old had been beaten and strangled; her lifeless body was shoved inside a bedroom closet of the Lower Valley home belonging to the mother of Corral's boyfriend, 19-year-old Richard Flores. 

Flores had thrown himself a birthday party at the house the night before, and was nowhere to be found. 

With a history of violence between the couple, El Paso polic...

ABC-7 anchor and Borderland Crimes podcast producer Stephanie Valle served as a media witness to an execution in Huntsville, TX.

On Dec. 4, 2001, the man behind a chilling crime that stunned the El Paso community was arrested. David Renteria was charged with capital murder in the death of Alexandra Flores, 5, who had gone missing more than two weeks earlier from the Lower Valley Walmart.

Renteria was ultimately convicted and senten...

At long last, there is a conclusion in the case centered around a deadly shooting outside an east El Paso bar in the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2017. The suspected shooter, Moises Galvan, was arrested at the scene. Galvan was accused of murdering RJ Franco, 22, and gravely wounding Franco's friend, David Ortega.

Galvan claimed the shooting happened in self-defense.

It took nearly 7 years, two trials -- one of those, a mis...

Sophia Martinez, 18, headed out to a blind date on Friday, March 10, 2000. But she never made it to the dance club in downtown El Paso. Sophia’s body was found in the desert just north of the city limits the following day; she had been shot numerous times. The only clue to what happened was a grainy ATM surveillance video showing someone shooting her while she pulled cash. The man in a black beanie then climbed into her car and for...

The peace and quiet in an affluent, historic Central El Paso neighborhood was shattered by gunfire during a violent attack in Nov. 2020. Georgette Kaufmann, a respected state attorney and beloved mother and wife, was killed. Her husband Daniel was shot, but survived. The gunman escaped into the night, not to be found for almost a year. The suspect’s alleged motive leads investigators – and many in the community – to believe he targ...

The date between Erika Gaytan and Ricardo Marquez to a concert ended with Gaytan not returning home. Her family immediately believed something terrible happened to the 29-year-old woman; her mother said there was no way she would abandon her 7-year-old son. Continuous searches throughout El Paso – including in the sprawling desert east of the city – did not yield her remains. Despite her body not being found and a cause of death un...

An Army vet who survived combat in Afghanistan was murdered in El Paso.  Tyler Croke was in the shower at a friend’s apartment when he was ambushed, held at gunpoint, then brutally killed.

A total of five people – some of them soldiers – were arrested and charged with Tyler’s murder. El Paso police investigators said they had wanted to rob Tyler of the drugs he had been selling.

And five years later, only two suspects have been sen...

In this special episode of Borderland Crimes, ABC-7 talks with one of the survivors of the massacre at Las Cruces Bowl on the 32nd anniversary of the crime.

Ida Holguin recounts the morning two men held her and six others at gunpoint, shooting them and leaving them for dead. Three of the five who died were children.

If you have information in the case, you can call Las Cruces Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS.

For a full retelling o...

RJ Franco was shot to death outside of a bar in east El Paso on Jan. 29, 2017. The moments leading up to the shooting, as well as the shooting itself, were caught on surveillance camera and the suspect was arrested at the scene. The suspect, Moises Galvan, told police he shot Franco in self-defense. Nearly 5 years after the shooting, Galvan remains in jail as both he and Franco’s parents await justice. There was a mistrial in 2019,...

A little girl got separated from her family during a holiday shopping trip to a busy retail store and seemed to vanish into thin air. Dread settled in for her family and the entire community once surveillance camera video emerged, showing the 5-year-old girl walking out of the store with an unknown man. The girl was found dead the following morning. It’s a case that traumatized a community and reminded parents that danger really ca...

The murder of Robert Rocha, 43, has remained unsolved for nearly three decades. The retired U.S. Navy veteran and father of three daughters was found shot to death at Mesilla Dam outside Las Cruces, NM, on June 28, 1994. The Dona Ana County Sheriff's detectives still haven't arrested and charged anyone with the crime. But Rocha's daughter thinks someone who was once close to her father -- and is well known by the entire family -- h...

When Gloria Marmolejo, a 54-year-old mom and grandmother, was found dead in the southern New Mexico desert in the summer of 2009, her family pleaded for the community’s help to find whoever murdered her. But investigators with the El Paso Police Department believed her son, David, was the killer -- and they learned he was hiding other secrets big enough to destroy his family.

If you are in a violent relationship or someone you know...

In the summer of 1987, a serial killer stalked the streets of El Paso, Texas. The bodies of six teenage girls and young women were found buried in the desert in the northeast outskirts of town. All had been reported missing earlier that year.

An extensive investigation led police to David Leonard Wood, a former convict recently behind bars for rape. Wood was sentenced to death. But 33 years have passed and he remains on death row, ...

On Jan. 26, 2019, Terrance Kinard Jr. was shot outside a house party in Northeast El Paso. The case has gone unsolved despite there likely being many witnesses to the murder of the 20-year-old father and aspiring rapper. His parents are opening up about their pain, their plea for justice and the troubling conflicts their son was experiencing in the months before his death.

If you have information about this case, call El Paso Crime...

In 1995, a woman’s spray-painted body parts, including her severed head, were found across town.

Police in El Paso, Texas, didn't know who she was.

Investigators made an unprecedented request of local newsrooms in the hopes of identifying her, and finding who killed and dismembered her.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: (800) 799-7233

El Paso Center Against Sexual & Family Violence Crisis Line: (915) 593-7300

Love Is Respect: tex...

On Feb. 10, 1990, two men shot seven people while robbing a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Four of the victims died. Three of the dead were children, ages 13, 6 and 2. All of the victims were shot at point-blank range. Thirty years have passed and the killers have yet to be brought to justice in what is now one of the bloodiest mass shootings in the nation. If you have information in the case, you can call L...

A college professor was found shot to death on a sidewalk. Detectives learn the victim and his ex-wife were in the midst of a custody battle so bitter, months before his murder she had secretly fled to Mexico with their daughter. Around that time, the professor's former father-in-law was looking for a 'sicario,' someone who would kill for money. The murder investigation expands into an international search for the victim's missing ...