(L) Maria Gonzalez (KTRK screengrab), (R) Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez (Harris County jail)
A Guatemalan migrant who entered the U.S. illegally as a minor in January and found refuge in a Pasadena, Texas, apartment complex months later could face capital punishment in the death of an 11-year-old neighbor found sexually assaulted and strangled to death in a laundry basket under her father’s bed two weekends ago.
Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez is in Texas custody at the Harris County jail on the charge that he murdered Maria Gonzalez at the Main Village apartments on Aug. 12, just 12 days after he turned 18 and several weeks after he started living at the complex.
When confronted by investigators after his capture in Louisiana, Garcia-Rodriguez offered denials, but he shifted his story to say he was forced at gunpoint by two Black men to commit the unconscionable crimes, Houston-area Fox affiliate KRIV reported. Judging by his arrest and the possibility of capital punishment in this case, that version of events did not persuade authorities — and literal key evidence explains how investigators made breaks in the case, even before they obtained DNA from Garcia-Rodriguez and sent the sample off for testing.
A charging document filed in court revealed how a silver key, which belonged to no one inside apartment #204, where the crime occurred, was linked to Garcia-Rodriguez.
The victim’s father Carmelo Gonzalez, whose alibi in the case checked out from the start, told police that before he left for work that fateful Saturday morning, he recalled a “long haired” neighbor talking on a cellphone in a stairwell between apartment #204, where Maria Gonzalez was killed, and neighboring apartment #203 — just six feet away. The apartments share that stairwell.
Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez (images via Pasadena Police, court documents)
When police knocked on the door of apartment #203, they noticed that the locks seemed to have been changed. One of the suspect’s three roommates said he “in fact changed the locks to his apartment door because roommate Juan Carlos Garcia Rodriguez had moved out and refused to return his copy of the door key.”
Two days after the slaying, the roommate said, the defendant “stated he had gotten a new job and was moving out and refused to return his apartment key.”
The roommate handed police the old lock and cops tested the key they found on the floor of the crime scene. It was a match. Investigators tested another roommate’s key and, again, it was a match for the lock.
Family members of the suspect told police that Garcia-Rodriguez stayed the night in apartment #206 on Aug. 11 but that he left sometime before 9 a.m. the next day.
When news of the horrific case first emerged, it was revealed that Maria’s father Carmelo Gonzalez found her dead under his own bed. Cops said that Carmelo Gonzalez left the apartment Saturday around 10 a.m. for work and had kept in contact with his daughter.
Documents show that Carmelo and his daughter were communicating via WhatsApp in voice messages.
“Carmelo received a voice message on his cell phone via ‘WhatsApp’ from the decedent at 10:02 a.m. stating that someone was knocking at the door of the apartment. Carmelo stated that he responded via voice message asking if the subject at the door had entered or if she asked as to what they wanted to which the decent replied via voice message that, ‘she was still in her bed in the bedroom,” cops said.
That was the last time Carmelo Gonzalez heard from his daughter.
According to Gonzalez, speaking in Spanish in an interview with KTRK, he asked family members who also lived in the apartment complex to check on Maria, but those family members did not see or hear anything at the scene (the girl’s mother is reportedly living in Guatemala). The father reportedly said that he arrived home five hours after receiving the message about the person knocking on the door.
After that, he made the grisly discovery of his daughter dead in a plastic bag inside a laundry basket under his bed.
“Upon inspection of the decedent, [an officer] observed that the female decedent had been placed in a black colored trash bag and then placed into a white colored vertical clothes basket,” court documents said. “The clothes basket appeared to have been wrapped with a second black colored trash bag that appeared to have been torn open.”
Authorities said that Maria Gonzalez’s cause of death was ruled a homicide “caused by blunt force head and neck trauma and asphyxia due to strangulation.” Evidence also showed the victim had “had been sexually assaulted causing injury,” court documents said.
The defendant is charged with capital murder of a person older than 10 and younger than 15, which is punishable in Texas by life imprisonment or the death penalty. Garcia-Rodriguez remains held without bond.
Carmelo Gonzalez reportedly hoped in a statement that Garcia-Rodriguez “may he be burdened with the full weight of the law for what he has done to my daughter.”
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