Patrick Wood Crusius was 21 when he came to El Paso from Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, on Saturday, August 3, 2019, and killed 23 people. Twenty-two died that day. The twenty-third died nearly nine months later, in April 2020. Twenty-two others were wounded. In federal court, under oath, he admitted that he had chosen his victims because of the actual and perceived Hispanic national origin of the people he expected to find, that he meant to kill everyone he targeted, and that he had picked El Paso, a city on the border with Mexico, to frighten Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants away from the United States. Eight of the first 22 dead were Mexican nationals.
He never stood trial. In February 2023, after the Justice Department chose not to seek his execution, he pleaded guilty to all 90 counts of a federal indictment built largely on the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and that July a federal judge sentenced him to 90 consecutive life sentences. The state case, a single capital murder charge that the El Paso County District Attorney had promised to take to a jury and a death sentence, outlasted four district attorneys. It ended on April 21, 2025, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder in a state district court in El Paso and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
The dead were Andre Anchondo, Jordan Anchondo, Arturo Benavides, Jorge Calvillo García, Guillermo García, Leonardo Campos, Angelina Englisbee, María Flores, Raúl Flores, Adolfo Cerros Hernández, Alexander Hoffmann, David Johnson, Luis Alfonso Juárez, María Legarreta Rothe, Maribel Loya Hernández, Iván Filiberto Manzano, Gloria Irma Márquez, Elsa Mendoza Márquez, Margie Reckard, Sara Regalado Monreal, Javier Amir Rodríguez, Teresa Sánchez and Juan Velásquez. That is the list the Justice Department set out when he pleaded guilty, one name for each of the 23 counts of a hate crime resulting in death.
They came from both sides of the border. Many of the dead carried Latino surnames, and eight of the 22 who died that day were citizens of Mexico. Crusius admitted he had come looking for exactly those people.
One victim survived the day and lived on for almost nine months. He died in April 2020, and his death raised the toll to 23. In June 2020 an El Paso County grand jury reindicted Crusius to cover that death and the injuries to the survivors.
The 22 people who were wounded and lived became the 22 counts of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill in the federal case, and the 22 counts of aggravated assault in the state case. They are identified in the charging papers by count.
Crusius lived in Allen, a Dallas suburb in North Texas. El Paso lies at the far western tip of the state, more than 650 miles away and a trip of more than ten hours. He had dropped out of a community college near Dallas.
The guilty plea he entered in 2023 contained his own account of the purpose. He admitted that shortly before the killings he had posted a statement online about his motive. The federal grand jury that indicted him in 2020 found that the crimes came after substantial planning and premeditation.
Crusius surrendered to police a short time after the killings and was arrested. He told officers that he was the one they were looking for. He later waived his Miranda rights and spoke to detectives, and he told them, according to the authorities, that he had set out to target Mexicans.
He was booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility and held without bond. He was kept apart from the general population.
The investigation ran on two tracks at once. The FBI led the federal inquiry, working with the ATF, the El Paso Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office and the El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office. Because Crusius came from North Texas, the Allen Police Department and the Dallas Police Department also took part. The El Paso County District Attorney's office built the state case alongside.
On Thursday, September 12, 2019, an El Paso County grand jury indicted Crusius on a charge of capital murder, the most serious offense in Texas law. At that point the count of the dead stood at 22. The district attorney at the time announced the indictment in a press release and said his office would seek the death penalty. In Texas, a conviction for capital murder carries one of two sentences: death, or life in prison without parole.
The indictment charged a single count of capital murder of multiple persons. Texas prosecutors chose to pursue only one charge that could lead to a death sentence, an approach that set the state case apart from the federal charges that came later, in which each count tied to a death carried a possible death sentence.
On October 10, 2019, Crusius appeared in court for the first time since his arrest. The case had been assigned to the 409th District Court in El Paso. He pleaded not guilty, and he spoke only to enter the plea and to confirm the spelling and pronunciation of his last name.
After the twenty-third victim died in April 2020, prosecutors announced that they would seek a further capital murder charge. On June 25, 2020, the El Paso County grand jury returned a new indictment that took in the death and the injuries to the survivors. Crusius remained in custody without bond.
The federal charges came in February 2020. On Thursday, February 6, a federal indictment returned by a grand jury in the Western District of Texas was unsealed in El Paso. It charged Crusius with 90 counts. Federal prosecutors said the indictment accused him of targeting people because of their actual and perceived national origin.
The structure of the case was set out in a superseding indictment dated July 9, 2020. Half of its 90 counts were brought under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act: 23 counts of a hate crime resulting in death, one for each of the dead, and 22 counts of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill, one for each of the survivors. The other 45 counts were tied to the same acts under a separate federal statute, 23 of them resulting in death.
The United States Attorney for the Western District of Texas announced the charges with the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. Federal prosecutors said at the time that the counts tied to the dead could carry the death penalty and that the counts tied to the survivors carried up to life in prison. The decision on whether to seek death belonged to the Attorney General, and the Justice Department said it would consult the defense and the families of the victims before making it. His first federal court appearance was set for February 12, 2020.
The two prosecutions then moved side by side. Crusius had pleaded not guilty to the state charge, and the federal and state cases were set to proceed in parallel, with the state's stated intent to seek death and the federal decision still open.
The state case stalled. The pandemic slowed the courts in 2020 and 2021, and in 2022 the district attorney's office and the state district judge were in open conflict over the pace of the case; the judge imposed a gag order and declined to set a trial date before the federal decision on the death penalty. The district attorney resigned in December 2022, and the governor of Texas appointed a successor, who said the state would still seek death and that a state trial might not come before 2025.
In January 2023 the Justice Department decided that it would not seek the death penalty. Within days the defense said Crusius would plead guilty.
On February 8, 2023, he stood before a judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas in El Paso and pleaded guilty to all 90 counts of the indictment. He answered "guilty" to each count. He was 24 and had been in custody since August 2019.
Under the plea agreement he accepted 90 consecutive life sentences, one for each count. In the factual basis of the plea, he admitted that he had killed and wounded the people in El Paso because of the actual and perceived Hispanic national origin of the people he expected to find there, that he had intended to kill everyone he targeted, and that he had chosen El Paso, a border city, to deter Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants from coming to the United States. The Attorney General, the Director of the FBI and the head of the Civil Rights Division each issued statements on the plea.
On Friday, July 7, 2023, after two days of hearings at which Crusius did not speak, the federal judge sentenced him to 90 consecutive life sentences, one for each count, as the plea agreement required. The judge recommended that he serve the sentence at a maximum-security federal prison in Colorado.
The federal sentence did not end the case. The state capital murder charge remained, and the district attorney's office said at the time that it would go forward and that it still intended to seek a death sentence. No date for a state trial had been set.
Under the state judge's direction the state case finally acquired a schedule. On September 23, 2024, he issued a scheduling order that set pretrial motion hearings beginning on January 13, 2025, written jury questionnaires in the second half of 2025, and individual questioning of potential jurors from January 12, 2026. The order set no trial date. The earliest a jury could be seated, on that timetable, was the middle of 2026. If a jury could not be found in El Paso, the judge could consider moving the trial, although both sides wanted it held in El Paso.
The defense had by then filed motions seeking records that, it argued, would show prosecutorial misconduct since 2020, and it asked the court to dismiss the case or strike the death penalty on that basis. The defense also argued that the state should drop the death penalty because the federal government had declined to seek it. The appointed district attorney said the defense claims lacked legal merit. A hearing on the records request was set for October 31, 2024.
The office changed hands again in January 2025, when a new district attorney took office after the November 2024 election. He was the fourth district attorney to oversee the case. In March 2025 he announced that the state would no longer seek the death penalty and offered Crusius a plea to capital murder with a sentence of life in prison without parole.
On Monday, April 21, 2025, nearly six years after the killings, Crusius appeared before the state district judge in El Paso. Asked how he pleaded, he answered "guilty." He pleaded guilty to capital murder and to 22 counts of aggravated assault, one for each of the survivors, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole. He was 26.
In exchange for the plea, the State of Texas withdrew its intent to seek the death penalty. Under the agreement the sentence of life without parole followed automatically from the plea. Crusius said nothing further to the court.
The guilt of Patrick Crusius is not in dispute. He admitted the facts under oath in federal court in 2023 and pleaded guilty again in state court in 2025, and both pleas covered every one of the 23 deaths. The questions left open by the two prosecutions are procedural. The defense accusations of prosecutorial misconduct in the state case were never decided at a trial, because the plea ended the case before one began, and the defense claim that the death penalty had been sought for political advantage was answered only by the appointed district attorney's denial.
Crusius is serving 90 consecutive federal life sentences and a Texas sentence of life in prison without parole. When he was sentenced in state court in April 2025, he was expected to pass into the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and to serve the state sentence in a Texas prison.
August 3, 2019: Crusius kills 22 people and wounds others in El Paso, Texas; he surrenders to police the same day.
September 12, 2019: An El Paso County grand jury indicts him on a charge of capital murder; the district attorney says the state will seek death.
October 10, 2019: He pleads not guilty in the 409th District Court in El Paso.
February 6, 2020: A 90-count federal indictment is unsealed in El Paso.
April 2020: The twenty-third victim dies.
June 25, 2020: An El Paso County grand jury reindicts him to cover the twenty-third death and the injuries to the survivors.
July 9, 2020: A federal superseding indictment sets out the 90 counts.
December 2022: The El Paso County District Attorney resigns; the governor appoints a successor.
January 2023: The Justice Department decides not to seek the death penalty.
February 8, 2023: He pleads guilty to all 90 federal counts.
July 7, 2023: He is sentenced in federal court to 90 consecutive life sentences.
September 23, 2024: The state judge issues a scheduling order with jury questioning from January 2026.
March 2025: The district attorney withdraws the death penalty and offers a plea.
April 21, 2025: He pleads guilty in state court to capital murder and 22 counts of aggravated assault and is sentenced to life in prison without parole.