Chuck Rosenthal: So Tough on Crime That a Suspect Goes Free

Carrie Ruiz called her sister and started crying over and over into the phone, "They said Felicia's dead! They said Felicia's dead!"

The last thing she remembers hearing that night were her sister's screams.

"You feel yourself die in that very instant," says Carrie Ruiz, "and you don't ever feel the life come back into you again. You feel like you've gone totally insane in that moment. And you can't breathe and you keep telling yourself, 'It's not true, it's not true. Just go get her and bring her home.'"

For the rest of the night and the following day, waves of police officers and news reporters flooded the Ruizes' yard and home.

Felicia Ruiz's parents still have never seen the crime scene photographs taken of their daughter. Carrie Ruiz's brother-in-law identified Felicia's body by the tattoo she had of her name written across her back atop a thorny rose. For months afterwards, he would wake up screaming from the nightmares.

"He said Felicia didn't even look human, Salazar had messed her up so bad," says Carrie Ruiz.

At this point, no one knew who killed Felicia or why. All her parents knew was that they last saw her driving off to a party with Salazar. The thought that Huerta was involved did not even enter their minds.

It was a Tuesday, four days after the murder, when Carrie and Lou Ruiz were at the mortuary getting ready for the funeral service scheduled for the following day. They had not been allowed to see their daughter until then because she suffered so many deep wounds that the embalming fluid was still leaking out of her. The funeral home staff had asked Lou Ruiz the day before to bring along a shirt with a high neck and long sleeves to cover up the many cuts.

The Ruizes, accompanied by family members and police, noticed a car slowly driving past. Carrie Ruiz couldn't believe who was inside. It was Huerta and two other girls. When Carrie Ruiz looked more closely, she saw Huerta was waving Felicia's obituary out of the window, laughing. Carrie went to rush out toward the car, but family members held her back. Huerta drove off after police told her to leave.

"At the time," says Carrie Ruiz, "we just figured Huerta was making fun of Felicia as some kind of gang thing."

The next day at the funeral, the church was packed full of friends, family, police and well-wishers who had read or heard about the tragic death on the news.

In fact, there were so many people that Carrie and Lou Ruiz did not even notice at first that Huerta and Salazar were there too. But by the time the parents did realize it, both Huerta and Salazar had left the church and disappeared.

Now convinced that the two lovers were involved in their daughter's murder, Carrie and Lou Ruiz returned home after the burial feeling a vicious mix of anger and pain. Motivated by a need to do something, anything, they grabbed their gun, jumped in the car and lit out along Interstate 10 to San Antonio where they knew Huerta had grown up.

"I was going to look for Lisa and kill her," says Carrie Ruiz.

They drove around but did not find Huerta. Instead, they spent the night in San Antonio and returned home to Houston the next morning.

"I was so out of my mind with grief at that point that I just didn't care," says Carrie Ruiz. "I wanted them to hurt the same way I was hurting. In the end, though, thank God we didn't find her."

It would be months before anyone would find out where Huerta and Salazar had gone.
_____________________

Covered in blood, Salazar and Huerta parted ways with Ferrel after stabbing Felicia Ruiz and walked over to a nearby motel.

The day before, Huerta had paid cash for a room at the Shoney's Inn on West Tidwell Road, just a few blocks from the murder scene. There, she, Salazar and Ferrel watched TV and Salazar taught Huerta how to make a person bleed to death faster by slitting his throat.

Now, safely back inside their room, Salazar and Huerta scrubbed their hands and washed off the knife. That night, Salazar slept in the bed while Huerta dozed off in a chair next to a window.

Salazar "acted like it was just another day," Huerta testified in court.