Sole Survivor

by Holly Dunn

Two days after Resendez-Ramirez hit the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, Kentucky prosecutors formally charged him with first-degree robbery, first-degree rape, and first-degree assault and murder for the attack on Chris and me. Lexington was also plastered with postcards and posters, and news outlets broadcast warnings to our community to beware of this train-hopping serial killer.

  Not long afterward, we received news that left us all stunned beyond words.

  At the start of June, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had Resendez-Ramirez in custody—and they let him go. They unknowingly released a wanted murderer back into Mexico.

  Knowing the attacker was an undocumented alien who had been detained and deported in the past, Texas detectives investigating the murder of Dr. Claudia Benton had notified the INS to be on the lookout in case he tried to cross the border again.

  But the vital alert was apparently never inputted into a primary computer database.

  On the night of June 1, Resendez-Ramirez was arrested trying to cross the border in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. He was held briefly and released the next day, despite an outstanding warrant for his arrest on burglary charges and that he was wanted for questioning in connection to several murders.

  I could just imagine Detective Sorrell and the team in Houston pulling their hair out, wailing, “We had him! They had him, and they let him go!”

  The FBI special agent in charge did his best to assure the public that this “slip-up” hadn’t hampered the case, and that we should focus on the benefit: We now had an up-to-date photo of the man. But the horrible truth was after Resendez-Ramirez was released, he turned right back around and returned to the US—and killed four more people. The deaths of Noemi Dominguez, Josephine Konvicka, George Morber, and Carolyn Frederick were all the tragic result of this egregious “slip-up.”

  Not only were more lives lost—but that many more relatives had found their loved ones mauled, bludgeoned, bloody. A terrible ripple effect followed violent crime, and these family members and friends might never fully recover from the grief and trauma. Widows or widowers might never remarry. There would be kids whose parents were too stricken to be present with them. Friends would back away from relationships with these families out of sheer fatigue. Whole neighborhoods, communities, and towns would be seized by fear and thrown into a panic. This murderer robbed the world of so much more than individual lives. He stole innocence, a sense of security, people’s well-being. And he would keep on doing so until he was taken out.

  My anxiety over his whereabouts was reaching a fever pitch, especially when police and FBI in Kentucky held a news conference to announce that he might be back, and that he was considered armed, violent, and very dangerous. News outlets reported that he’d been spotted in Louisville near the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a downtown homeless shelter, and that he’d apparently mentioned to witnesses he intended to return to Lexington to join other migrant workers. In response, Lexington authorities established an emergency command center near the tracks where Chris and I were attacked in case Resendez-Ramirez resurfaced.

  When I heard he was spotted in Louisville, I was scared out of my mind—certain he was coming to get me. He must have seen the news reports, my interview on America’s Most Wanted; he must know I was still alive. I was the only living witness, the only one he’d ever attacked who walked away and could attest to what he had done.

  My flight to England for my month in Lancaster simply couldn’t come soon enough. Until the day I was set to leave, I couldn’t rest, I couldn’t sit still, I couldn’t keep from feeling I was going to jump right out of my skin. Constant phone calls and visits from family and friends helped keep me grounded and sane until it was time to take flight. And then, not a moment too soon, I was staring out a small oval window at the tarmac where our airplane awaited takeoff. I was comforted by the roar of the plane’s engine, its expanse of wing. This was not a mode of transportation my attacker was known to take. There were no freight rails between here and where I was going—no way for him to hitch a ride and follow my trail.

  Even relatively safe in my seat, I was anxious, willing our plane to start its taxi and lift into swift ascent. But soon enough, my study-abroad classmates and I were airborne and crossing international boundaries.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but my attacker would be soon making one final border crossing of his own.

  CHAPTER 14.

  Surrender

  By the first week of July I had settled into my dorm room at the University of Lancaster, toured the city, and started our class in business statistics. Since it was summer, the campus was quiet—students were scarce and only two of nine pubs were open. In between classes on campus and pints at the pub, our group of thirteen students would spend the next four weeks touring the centuries-old Lancaster Castle and hiking the hills of the Lake District. We would explore the Scottish Lowlands in Edinburgh to the north of us and the famous sites of London to the south.

  I had been to England several times before, usually staying in London to visit a high school friend who lived overseas. One of the times I’d been in the country was during Thanksgiving break not long after the attack. The distance then and especially now—from the scene of the crime, the constant newscasts, the police’s continual pursuit—brought relief and room to breathe.

  Here among the dozen other program participants, I was blissfully anonymous—neither the American students nor our British hosts knew what I had escaped back in Lexington. Only our two professors from the University of Kentucky were aware of what had happened to me, and since they had better access to the Internet and television than I did, they kept me apprised of key developments back home. Two weeks into my program, my professors pulled me aside to tell me about the biggest, most unexpected turn of events since the start of the manhunt. I later learned how the day unfolded once I could scour the news articles and watch the video footage for myself.

  Around nine in the morning on Tuesday, July 13, Texas Ranger Drew Carter stood on the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge in El Paso, Texas. Ahead of him was the flat, sparse expanse of land that stretched past the Rio Grande into Mexico. Behind him stood the killer’s sister Manuela Maturino Karkiewicz, her pastor, a US Marshal, and an FBI agent. When I read this story, I could just picture Drew Carter standing tall, sporting that classic white cowboy hat, his silver badge glinting in the sunlight.

  Sergeant Carter was waiting on the fugitive himself, who was due to arrive at any moment.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of law enforcement officers had spent months scouring the country well into Canada and Mexico looking for the man who had wreaked such havoc, but in the end, the resolution to the manhunt came down to this one moment—and only a few people even knew it was happening.

  El Paso sits on the far western tip of Texas, about twenty miles south of New Mexico and only a few miles north of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. I had been to Ciudad Juárez once, when I was about ten years old, during one of the summers my family spent in Albuquerque while my dad worked at the radio station he owned there. My first-ever international experience was a day trip into the city, and what I remember most were the crowds of people begging, especially all the children trying to sell trinkets and candy to tourists and other passers-by. I bought gum from a little kid with bright eyes and an eager face.

  All these years later, Ciudad Juárez was now home to the fugitive’s mother and other family members. A few weeks before this meeting on the Zaragoza Bridge, Manuela gave Drew Carter the names of those relatives who could help him learn more about the infamous Railroad Killer—things like his real name. As it turned out, his birth certificate said Angel Leoncio Reyes Recendis, but he had taken his mother’s and stepfather’s surnames and called himself Angel Maturino Resendiz—the name that would go down in criminal history. Though his family members were stunned and incredulous that their precious “Angel” could be doing such terrible things, they began to believe and trust Sergeant Carter, and the conversation eventually s
hifted to how they might orchestrate Resendiz’s surrender.

  According to news reports, on Sunday, July 11, Drew Carter was enjoying a rare day off, fishing on Galveston Bay with his three-year-old daughter, Amber, when he was paged to contact police headquarters back in Houston. They had an important message for him: call Manuela Maturino Karkiewicz; she says it’s urgent that she speak with you.

  He called her right from the boat and determined he needed to go straight to Albuquerque and meet her face to face. The intense pressure of the manhunt was finally paying off—her fugitive brother had communicated through another relative that he was ready to give himself up. A flurry of negotiations over several days resulted in a written agreement from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston agreeing to his family’s requests that Resendiz would be treated humanely in jail, he would undergo a psychological examination, and his family would be allowed to visit him. The other condition of his surrender was that the only person who could take Resendiz into custody was the Texas Ranger who had worked so diligently to earn the family’s trust.

  I can’t say exactly what I was doing that afternoon across the pond in Lancaster while back in Texas, a white pickup truck driven by Resendiz’s brother was pulling up toward the US Customs inspection booths at the port of entry on the Zaragoza Bridge. Drew Carter probably recognized the fugitive’s face through the windshield—even before the two men climbed out and walked toward him. He approached the smaller of the two men and introduced himself.

  Drew Carter later told reporters, “He stuck out his hand, I stuck out my hand, and we shook hands. And then I handcuffed him, and he was in custody.”

  Angel Maturino Resendiz, the infamous Railroad Killer, had finally been apprehended. No high-speed chase, no violent shootouts. The hunt was officially over, and it happened to end on Drew Carter’s thirty-second birthday.

  As soon as the news broke, tens of thousands of people in communities near railroad tracks all over the country—especially where Resendiz had landed and taken lives—were beside themselves with joy and relief. Newspapers had reported that, as long as Resendiz was at large, these communities lived in perpetual fear—buying guns, adding extra locks, relocating their bedrooms, jumping at every nighttime noise, fearing to venture into their own backyards.

  But these residents had only a taste of the fear I was feeling the entire time he rode the rails, likely knowing he’d left me alive. I cannot even describe the relief that washed over me once I knew he could no longer track me down. The exhale of tension released an enormous weight I had been carrying far too long.

  The moment I learned my attacker had been caught was certainly worth a celebration—but I decided to just keep having fun with my classmates like I had been doing all summer. I wanted not one more moment of my life to be disrupted by Resendiz or anything to do with him. But it wasn’t long after Resendiz was taken into custody that the British media came looking for me.

  While the America’s Most Wanted crew had handled my interview with a lot of sensitivity, that’s more than I can say about many encounters with the media—whether in the US or abroad—from the start of my ordeal. Back home, the media had been crucially important to publicizing our case, but the publicity often came at a cost. Though they kept my name out of their publications, reporters had hounded me from the moment I left the hospital. Our family’s lawyers managed the influx of requests, fielding thousands of calls and keeping them at bay. Around the apex of the manhunt, a Lexington reporter called my home number at the apartment on Fontaine and manipulated me into an interview saying she would tell the story with or without me, and she “just might get parts wrong.” For ruthless news hounds like that, I did the minimum I could. I was feeling controlled by the media at that point, which only intensified when the Railroad Killer was finally making national headlines. Everyone wanted an emotional angle to the story, and I was it. I didn’t like feeling controlled—I wanted my involvement with this story to be on my own terms.

  Not long after the arrest back in Texas, my Lancaster classmates and I were taking an exam when someone knocked on our door. I sat hunched over the test, not really noticing as the door opened and closed, and heads bowed toward each other, whispering. A slip of paper was exchanged. The next thing I know one of my professors handed me a note.

  I straightened up and unfolded the piece of paper.

  “We would like to interview you,” it said, written by a reporter from a local media outlet. “We shall share the broadcast with our affiliates in the United States.”

  As soon as I read it I broke down in tears and wanted to scream. How did they find me here?! I was so mad. Just when I thought I was safe and unknown, a normal student like the rest of the young people on my program, what had happened to me back at the University of Kentucky caught up to me in a remote corner of the United Kingdom. Now that my attacker had been caught, I was the one being pursued. I pictured a mob of reporters outside the classroom, cameras and microphones poised, waiting to pounce as soon as I emerged.

  My professors felt terrible they’d relayed a note that upset me so much, especially in the middle of an exam. They assumed that since the guy had been caught, whatever was being communicated must be happy news.

  I decided to ignore the note, but I got up from my seat and walked straight out of class. The mob of reporters I’d envisioned was just a mirage born of fear. I walked through quiet and nearly empty halls until I was out the doors and making my way across campus.

  Later back at the dorm, I gathered some of my classmates around me. I confided to them that I was that girl who had survived the attack by the train tracks in Lexington—the one everyone on campus had heard about—and that the assailant had finally been arrested.

  Despite my fury and frustration, in the end I consented to the interview with the English media outlet. My classmate Beth and I met the reporters at a local hotel while the rest of our classmates went hiking in the Lake District. I don’t remember what they asked or what I said, except that I had to pay much closer attention to their questions because I had difficulty understanding their British accents. The whole process was a blur.

  The media maelstrom continued to intensify, so a few days after the arrest, my family released a statement to curb the flood of calls. Like we had done right after the attack, all requests from the media for comments or interviews were directed to our attorneys to filter and arrange as necessary. I was relieved once again when my role in the media machine was over, and I could get back to my life overseas.

  Following his surrender at the international bridge, Resendiz was taken to a brief court appearance in El Paso before the Texas Rangers loaded him onto a small, state-owned plane and flew him to his new home in the Harris County jail. Not long after the surrender, Sergeant Carter called Detective Sorrell to tell him the capture had happened quick and to meet them in Houston.

  The media rightly hailed Texas Ranger Drew Carter a hero, and seemingly overnight he was a household name. What I also knew to be true was how Detective Craig Sorrell was with Sergeant Carter during his talks with Manuela and working right alongside him throughout much of the three-month manhunt. Detective Sorrell told a newspaper reporter that he felt like he’d chased a ghost for two years with little to go on and that his friends and colleagues told him it was a hopeless cause. But he remained dedicated to our case from start to finish, chasing hundreds of leads that went nowhere. It wasn’t just a job for him. It wasn’t just paperwork and a case file to finally clear off his desk. It was personal—he wanted justice for Chris and for me, and he wanted resolution for our families. I will be forever grateful for the rest of my life for his unwavering, unrecognized dedication. He is truly the best of men.

  Detective Sorrell flew down to Houston to interview Resendiz and to read him the arrest warrants for all the charges filed against him back in Kentucky. It wasn’t until I was home from England that I caught up on the flurry of legal activity, but news outlets were in court to film his arr
aignment on July 14 for the initial burglary charge in Dr. Claudia Benton’s case.

  My sister Heather recorded the coverage so I could watch it once I was back in Evansville. The cameras centered on the diminutive Resendiz as he was escorted into the Harris County Criminal Court dressed in an orange jumpsuit and shackled in chains. I was both disgusted at the sight of him and content to see him clapped in handcuffs.

  After Judge Bill Harmon read him his rights, Resendiz said, “Can all this be done very quickly so I can say I’m guilty?”

  Judge Harmon didn’t respond to his apparent plea.

  “Mr. Ramirez, can you afford to hire a lawyer to represent you?” he said.

  “I’d rather not, no.”

  “I’m going to appoint Mr. Allen Tanner and Mr. Rudy Duarte to be your lawyers.”

  His two defense attorneys approached the bench to be presented to their new client.

  “Would you please tell me what your true and correct name is?” asked the judge.

  “Angel Maturino Resendiz.”

  “Is the name Rafael Resendez-Ramirez something you made up or does it belong to somebody?”

  “An uncle of mine.”

  Judge Harmon then introduced Resendiz to the person who would be one of my staunchest allies and his greatest nemesis during the course of the trial to come.

  “Mr. Resendiz, this is Ms. Devon Anderson; she’s the assistant DA. It’ll be her job to give me a summary of the facts of the case so I can determine whether there’s enough evidence to keep holding you in jail.”

  Devon Anderson stood at a podium a few feet back from the judge’s bench. She read aloud the gruesome details of how investigators had found Dr. Claudia Benton beaten to death in her bedroom and the forensic evidence that implicated Resendiz in the crime.

  The DNA samples from multiple crime scenes (including mine) all belonged to the same person. Fingerprints found in the Bentons’ home and in other crime scenes all pointed to Resendiz. Once he was finally in custody, Harris County officials took a blood sample so the crime lab could determine whether the DNA in evidence was in fact his.