In March 1981 Dallas police arrested a 25-year-old drifter named David Villarreal and charged him with three murders from 1979. Within days, according to the police, he had confessed to seven killings in Dallas and San Antonio, and he told reporters he wanted to be executed rather than spend the rest of his life in prison. United Press International, reporting from Dallas on March 13, 1981, described him as a self-described homosexual who had been working through labor pools and living in transient homes in the city.
The case connected a string of killings of men in two Texas cities across two years. Three of them had shared an apartment in Dallas. Two more died in San Antonio, the last of them only days before the arrest. Two others, by Villarreal's own account, had not been identified when the case first broke.
Villarreal was taken into custody in Dallas on a Tuesday that March. A tipster had recognized him as a suspect in three killings from 1979 and called police, according to UPI. Dallas detectives had been looking for him for about two years. For 14 of those 24 months, the wire service reported, he had been in a Texas state prison on a burglary conviction, which kept him beyond their reach for most of the time they sought him.
After the arrest, the Dallas police spokeswoman, Vicki Eiker, said he had confessed to seven slayings. On the Thursday, Dallas police filed three murder charges against him for the 1979 deaths, and his bond was set at $90,000. Police also said he was suspected in a further Dallas killing.
The three Dallas charges concerned Hispanic men who lived together.
Ernest Garcia was 26. He died in March 1979 after being beaten and stabbed, according to UPI's account of the police case.
In April 1979 his two roommates were killed in the apartment the three had shared. Tony Gutierrez was 32 and Charles Moya was 30. Investigators described the killings in the apartment as brutal, and a Dallas police sergeant, Bill Parker, said the severity of the violence was, in his words, "a strong indication of a sexually related murder."
Little is recorded of the three men's lives beyond their ages and the fact that they had been roommates, and no relationship between them and the man accused of killing them was described.
The confession reached beyond Dallas. Villarreal reportedly gave Dallas detectives the address of a man in San Antonio. Dallas police passed it to their San Antonio counterparts, who went to the house early on the Wednesday and found Robert Manley, 70, dead in his home. He was the most recent of the deaths linked to the suspect; how he died was not reported.
The other San Antonio death named in the March reporting was that of Joe Edward Duque, 18, of San Antonio, who was beaten to death on March 2, 1981. San Antonio police said they would file murder charges against Villarreal in three killings within a few days.
He said he had confessed because he wanted to be executed. "I would rather die than spend the rest of my life in prison," he said, according to UPI, adding that he knew he would never get out if he went to the state prison in Huntsville. He said he felt no remorse, and that he had been brutal because he wanted to be sure the men were dead.
The investigators who had worked the case offered their own reading. John Landers, a Dallas investigator, said that homosexual overtones were present in the killings. Asked about a motive, he could offer only one. "The only reason I can say he killed them is because he liked to," he told UPI, which headlined its report on the police view that he had killed for pleasure.
Two of the seven killings Villarreal described to police had not been tied to named victims when the case broke. Police listed one as the killing of a San Antonio man, age unknown, about seven years before the arrest, and the other as a Dallas man, age unknown, beaten to death in 1979. Neither was given a name, a date or a charge in March 1981. They rest on his own statements and on police attributions, and there is no record that either death was confirmed.
The figure of seven, likewise, came from his confession as relayed by the Dallas police spokeswoman, not from charges. As of March 13, 1981, the charges filed against him covered three deaths in Dallas, with San Antonio's to follow.
On March 13, 1981, David Villarreal was held in Dallas on $90,000 bond, accused of three murders there and facing further charges in San Antonio. He had said he wanted the death penalty. No record confirms how the Dallas and San Antonio cases ended.
March 1979: Ernest Garcia, 26, dies in Dallas after being beaten and stabbed.
April 1979: Tony Gutierrez, 32, and Charles Moya, 30, Garcia's roommates, are killed in their Dallas apartment.
Before March 1981: Dallas police seek Villarreal for about two years; he spends 14 of those months in a Texas state prison on a burglary conviction.
March 2, 1981: Joe Edward Duque, 18, is beaten to death in San Antonio.
March 1981 (a Tuesday): Villarreal, 25, is arrested in Dallas after a tipster recognizes him; police say he confesses to seven killings.
March 1981 (the Wednesday): Acting on an address he gave Dallas detectives, San Antonio police find Robert Manley, 70, dead in his home.
March 1981 (the Thursday): Dallas police file three murder charges; bond is set at $90,000. San Antonio police say charges in three killings will follow.
March 13, 1981: UPI reports that he says he would rather die than spend his life in prison.