Raul Meza Jr. was born in Travis County, Texas, on October 14, 1960, to Raul Meza Sr. and Elvia Ortiz. By fifteen he had several stepfathers and half-siblings. He started using drugs at eight, and his first arrest, for shoplifting and burglary, came in 1973; the next year he was accused of arson. On December 31, 1975, he robbed a convenience store on South Congress Avenue in Austin and shot the attendant, Derly Ramirez, who survived. He got twenty years and was paroled in February 1981. A psychologist who examined him in 1982 wrote that he did not seem to expect much of himself or his life and seemed a strong candidate for a life of recidivism or suicidal inclinations.
On January 3, 1982, he raped and strangled Kendra Page, who was eight. She had last been seen riding her bicycle around Langford Elementary School in Austin, and she was found dead in a dumpster at the school. Three days later Meza walked into Austin police headquarters and confessed. To avoid a trial and a possible death sentence, his lawyers and the district attorney agreed a plea, and he was sentenced to thirty years. Texas law at the time required release once time served plus good-conduct credit equaled the sentence, and in 1993, after about eleven years, he walked out. The release caused an uproar. Picketers drove him out of six cities, sometimes with threats of violence, and in August 1993 he called a news conference. "I can only tell you that in my heart, I know that I will not willfully bring harm to anyone again," he said, and he described himself as a born-again Christian who had paid his debt. In 1994 he was sent back to prison for breaking a midnight curfew and stayed until 2002, and over the next twenty years he was in and out of prison. The law that freed him no longer exists.
On the day he was arrested in 2023, Bruce Mills, who had been the lead investigator on the Page case and was by then Austin's interim assistant city manager, called it a travesty of justice and called Meza a serial killer.
On May 9, 2019, Gloria Elizabeth Lofton, sixty-five, was found dead in her home in Austin by her daughter. There was blood in the hallway and on her pillow and a used condom in the kitchen. The first autopsy was inconclusive; although there were signs of strangulation, her death was put down to an alcohol-related accident, since she was known to drink heavily. A rape kit taken at the autopsy matched Meza's DNA in 2020, and nothing was done with the match. Her daughter later remembered a note in the house: "I Gloria Elizabeth Lofton give permission to Raul Meza Jr to request a certificate of authority on my behalf for the purpose of," breaking off there. Meza told a detective he had been promised a quarter of an inheritance, with the rest going to a nephew of hers; her daughter said she had no nephew.
Jesse Fraga, eighty, was a retired Travis County probation officer who had befriended Meza after his release in 1993. Out of deep religious conviction the Fraga family invited him to Bible study and helped him find housing and work, and in 2021 he moved in with them. Fraga's wife and son then died of Covid-19. Meza agreed to move out on May 12, 2023. On May 20 Pflugerville police, asked by Fraga's niece to check on him after nine days without word, found him dead in a bathroom closet of his home, with a bloody knife and a great deal of dried blood. A doorbell camera had filmed Meza getting into Fraga's truck on May 13; the truck was found abandoned off Interstate 35 with what appeared to be bloody boots inside. Meza's own car, in the driveway, held a hammer, a hatchet, duct tape and gloves.
On May 26 Meza telephoned an Austin police homicide detective. "My name is Raul Meza," he said, according to an affidavit. "I think you are looking for me." He confessed to killing Lofton, saying he had been promised money for it, and Fraga, saying sexual activity between them had got out of hand, and to a double killing in San Antonio for which he has never been charged. He was arrested on May 29 carrying a bag with a handgun, nylon rope, duct tape, zip ties, a flashlight and a condom, and told police he was ready and prepared to kill again. Lofton's death was reclassified as homicide by strangulation. On August 10 a Travis County grand jury indicted him for her capital murder and for Fraga's murder. Austin police said they were examining up to ten cold cases going back to 1996 for a connection, two of them from 2018 and one from early 2019, and a search warrant said he had committed sexual assaults after his supervised release ended in 2016. None of that produced a charge.
The plea took eighteen months. In April 2024 his lawyers proposed fifty years. In August they proposed life for one murder and twenty years for the other, which would have left him eligible for parole at about a hundred and three. Judge Julie Kocurek refused to accept anything short of life without parole. Lofton's family, through their advocate, asked the district attorney not to take any plea and to seek death at trial. On September 30, 2024, at sixty-three, Meza pleaded guilty to the capital murder of Lofton, committed in the course of attempting aggravated sexual assault, and to the murder of Fraga. He received life without parole and life, and waived his right to appeal. In court he said he was pleading guilty because he was guilty. Asked whether he was sorry, he said it was too late: "What's the use if a person will not accept it?"
"A lifetime in jail will not be equal to the pain," Lofton's daughter, Sonia Houston, told the court. "By accepting this plea, we are giving Raul exactly what he wants." Her sister Christina Fultz said it was obvious he did not care, and that was fine, because they were not the ones behind bars for the rest of their lives. Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said his office's hearts continued to break for both families.
On June 24, 2026, detectives of the Austin police child exploitation unit charged him with one count of possession of child pornography, a third-degree felony, after a court-authorized examination of the phone Pflugerville police seized in 2023 found at least twenty images. A conviction could add nothing to the sentence he is already serving. "Would he have served his full sentence and everything, probably none of this would have happened," said Kendra Page's sister, Tracy Page.