Raul Meza case: Field search finds tarp, clothing, no body

An investigator takes photos at a site in a case connected to accused serial killer Raul Meza Jr., inset. (Meza’s mugshot from the Pflugerville Police Department; crime scene screenshot from ABC Austin affiliate KVUE)

Authorities investigating a convicted murderer suspected in a series of killings in Texas found a burial site with clothing and a tarp, but no human remains while searching a field outside Austin for the body of a woman they believe he killed and discarded in March 2022.

A detective looking back into an old report became suspicious about a location in Pflugerville after reviewing local police body camera footage of Raul Meza Jr. and his Ford F-150 pickup truck near the scene during a March 2022 call about a suspicious man, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by ABC Austin affiliate KVUE.

In the body camera video, officers noted Meza had wounds to his hand and face but “offered no logical explanation for his injuries.” Near his truck, police found brass knuckles, a bag, a smashed-up smartphone and two cellphone cases, the affidavit said.

The document says Meza initially told officers he didn’t know why he was parked there before trying to convince them his vehicle was stolen, then saying he had just dropped off a woman, who was not identified in the affidavit.

“(Inaudible) I gave her a lift, and she’s going towards Hutto,” Meza said, according to the affidavit. Hutto was more than 8 miles from where Meza’s truck was parked.

Meza was not arrested then, but Austin police Detective Patrick Reed said in his affidavit he “became suspicious that the woman Meza claimed to have arrived in the area of Old Austin Pflugerville Road with was murdered and discarded in one of the fields or overgrown areas on either side of the roadway where Meza’s truck was located.”

Meza, 62, was arrested in May after allegedly confessing to killing his roommate, Jesse Fraga, 80, police said in a news conference. During that phone call to Detective Reed, Meza also “implicated himself” in the 2019 murder of Gloria Lofton, 66, authorities said.

“I answered the homicide main line, and the caller stated, ‘My name is Raul Meza, and you are looking for me,'” Reed said when he took his turn at the dais. “Meza then went on to detail his relationship with Jesse Fraga and detailed the manner in which he murdered Mr. Fraga – including details that had not yet been released to the public. Meza described his life in and out of prison and said, I quote, ‘I get out in 2016. I end up murdering a lady soon afterwards. It was on Sara Drive.'”

Reed said Meza shared enough case-specific facts about the death on Sara Drive for the case to be reopened. The detective and his partner determined the victim’s name after conferring with other members of local law enforcement, and the APD issued an arrest warrant for Lofton’s strangulation murder. Reed then sent the nearby Pflugerville Police Department a copy of the phone call, and an arrest warrant was issued for Fraga’s murder.

Meza had already served over a decade in prison for the murder of 8-year-old Kendra Page, whose body he left in an elementary school dumpster in southeast Austin on Jan. 3, 1982. He was also accused of raping the girl but pleaded guilty to a murder charge and received a 30-year state prison sentence, local NBC affiliate KXAN reported. Due to the mandatory application of good behavior credits, Meza served just over 11 years of that 30-year sentence.

Austin’s Interim Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills was the primary APD investigator of Page’s 1982 rape and murder. During the press conference, he noted that Meza is now a suspect in multiple cold cases with similar modi operandi – while running down a list of his crimes dating back to the 1975 New Year’s Eve robbery of an Austin convenience store that left the store manager shot in the back.

“He nearly killed a gentleman when he was 15 years old – certified as an adult. Later commits capital murder, pleads to murder, is released 11 years later and has killed how many people we don’t know?” Mills asked out loud. “So, here’s a serial killer that justice was not served. So, it was a travesty of justice, all told, in this case.”

“We don’t know how many more people he killed or would have killed,” Mills added later during a question-and-answer session with local media. “Somebody made a bad decision 41 years ago and let this guy, for whatever reason, manipulate the system.”

Meza was released from prison in June 1993, the Washington Post reported. After a year-and-a-half and several failed attempts – due to several angry would-be new communities – to relocate the child killer to different halfway houses, he violated a term of his parole and was returned to prison until 2002. Then Meza was sent to the minimum security wing of the Travis County Jail for over a decade.

According to U.S. Marshal Brandon Filla, Meza was arrested after he confessed to the murders of Fraga and Lofton on the phone, with the help of the Lone Star Fugitive Task Force after a request from the PPD.

“We were able to establish more intelligence that we knew,” Filla said – explaining that the defendant was armed with a pistol, ammunition, zip ties, a flashlight, and duct tape in a bag. “Raul Meza was considered armed and dangerous, he was suicidal and had violent tendencies.”

Meza is being held on $3 million bond at the Travis County jail on multiple first-degree felonies including capital murder.

Law&Crime’s Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.

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