A novelist who wrote about "How to murder your husband" accused of the murder of her husband

San Antonio is one of the oldest cities in Texas. So it should not be surprising that S.A. also has a dark history of heinous crimes. Here are 17 murderers whose crimes against children, city leaders and others will not faint from memory for the city of Alamo. Source: San Antonio Express-News Archives; Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Less

Tommy Lynn sells

Sells, a serial killer linked to the death of more than a dozen people, pleads guilty to strangling Mary Beatrice Perez, a 9-year-old girl he kidnapped at a Fiesta Event in 1999. Sells was killed in April 2014 for stabbing the death of a 13 year old Del Rio girl killed in December 1999.

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Joe Ball

Known as the "Alligator Man" and the "Elmendorf Butcher", Ball kept alligators behind his belongings during the Great Depression and fed them with live dogs to "entertain the customers" , according to the archives of Express-News. Manuel Ruiz Ibanez, a longtime Express-News reporter who died in 1995, accompanied a Texas Ranger who was trying to serve Ball with a warrant – not to feed his dog gators, but the bar waitresses who were disappearing. Ball immediately fired a gun under the bar and shot himself.

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Joe Estrada Jr.

Estrada, the neighbor of Viola Barrios, was surprised to have shot the famous restaurateur to the head with an arrow as she burgled her house in April 2008. Estrada was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of her parole for his horrific murder and is currently at Robertson Unit in Jones County.

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Ronnie Joe Neal and Pearl Cruz

In November 2004, Neal and her 15-year-old daughter, Cruz, were surprised by the credit cards of Diane Tilly, a teacher from the beloved Alamo Heights School District who did not show up for work. His home was ransacked, his car burned in a field, the case captivated San Antonio and made headlines across the country. His remains were discovered nearly two weeks later in the rural county of northeastern Bexar. Neal was sent to death row for the crime in 2006, but committed suicide in his cell in 2011. Cruz was sexually assaulted by his father and gave birth to his child behind bars. and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

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Robert "Beaver" Perez

Perez was really one of the most notorious killers of San Antonio. While the Mexican mafia boss was being tried for the murders of Jose Travieso and James Robert Rivas, he was linked to more than a dozen others – including the infamous assassination of West French Place. sentenced to death in 1999. Perez was executed in March 2007.

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Brian Vaughn

After the famous criminal trial lawyer, Leslie Vaughn, was found dead in November 1998 at his home in northwestern Bexar County, his son, Brian, told Express-News: Two months later , the police, believing that Brian had also shot with the gun, awarded a warrant for arrest against him. Brian was convicted at a trial in January 2000 based on the statement he had given to the police, according to which prosecutors did not match the evidence found at the scene. Brian, who was only 16 at the time of the murder, was sentenced to 33 years in prison. He is currently housed at the Hamilton Unit in Bryan, Texas.

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Charles Harrelson

The father of the actor Woody Harrelson, Harrelson was a contract killer who murdered San Antonio federal judge John H. Wood Jr. in May 1979 in front of the judge's home. It was the first murder of a federal judge in the 20th century. Harrelson, a professional gambler who, according to the trial's testimony, was paid $ 250,000 for the coup, received two life sentences. He died of a heart attack behind the bars of the "Supermax", a federal prison in Colorado, in March 2007.

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Angel Maturino Resendiz

The Mexican drifter, known as the Railroad Killer, confessed in September 2001 that he had killed three people in the San Antonio area – Michael White, a Jane Doe whose body has not yet been identified, and a Cuban whose the body will probably never be found. In total, the serial killer was linked to the killings of at least 15 people in six states during the 1980s and 1990s. Resendiz was put to death in June 2006 for the brutal murder of a Houston doctor in December 1998 .

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Ira Attebury

Attebury was responsible for the darkest Fiesta ever recorded, opening fire on the parade of the battle of flowers in April 1979. The PCP addict killed two people, Amelia Castillo and Ida Dollard, and injured at least 50 at the time. 39, intersection of Broadway and East Grayson Street. before committing suicide in his Winnebago bunker.

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Richard McFarland

McFarland was the main suspect after his wife, Susan, was last seen at the Central Market in November 2002. Susan's body was found two months later at a farm in Bexar County, southeast. The mountain of evidence found in the home of McFarlands' Terrell Hills, a nearby house and a stolen car involving Richard would never be revealed in a lawsuit; A few minutes before the start of the jury selection, McFarland knocked out the courtroom by pleading guilty, leaving the prosecution to defend itself. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison in February 2004. Mr. McFarland is currently detained at Ellis Unit in Walker County and will be eligible for parole in January 2023.

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Emma Burgemeister

You may not know his name, but Burgemeister was tried for the murder of Otto Koehler, president and CEO of the San Antonio Brewing Association, in November 1914. One of the largest employers in Alamo City at the time, the SA Brewing Association will later become the Pearl Brewery. Burgemeister, who admitted to shooting Koehler during a dispute over his attempted recovery, jumped on bail and escaped to New York soon after the crime. More than three years later, she returned to San Antonio for trial and was acquitted of murder.

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Richard Steven Merla

In a crime that shocked the boxing community of San Antonio and beyond, Merla, a member of the Bandidos biker gang, stabbed San Antonio's first boxing world champion, Robert Quiroga, in August 2004. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading without challenging the murder. In 2007, Merla pled guilty to a murder committed in 2002 in Atascosa County. Merla is currently housed at the Galveston County Galveston Unit Hospital and will be eligible for parole in April 2027.

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Genene Jones

Jones, nicknamed "the killer nurse," was working in a San Antonio hospital in the early 1980s, where dozens of babies died during her tenure. Although the allegations stole, Jones was convicted of killing a child, 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan, in Kerr County with an injection of muscle relaxant and sentenced to 99 years in prison. She is eligible for an automatic release in March 2018, but officials in Bexar and other Texas counties could try to get a new conviction to keep her behind bars.

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Otty Sanchez

Sanchez, a new mother with a history of schizophrenia, easily admitted to using a steak knife to stab, decapitate and mutilate her three-week-old son, Scott, telling the police that the devil had him killed in July 2009. A year later, Sanchez was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a maximum security psychiatric center.

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Tessie McFarland and Joshua Maxwell

After killing a man and shopping in Indianapolis, Maxwell and McFarland traveled to Texas, where they shot down the sheriff of the Bexar County Sheriff. Rudy Lopes II headed in October 2000, leaving his body behind a North Side mall before escaping to California. It took a jury three hours to sentence Maxwell to death in March 2002; he was executed in March 2010. McFarland pleaded guilty to the June 2003 murder and was jailed for life. She is currently housed in the Coryell County Brain Treatment Unit and will be eligible for parole in November 2040.

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