Cesar Manuel Cazares: Nabbed For A Stabbing Death 21 Years Later

Score one for the cold-case squad at the Houston Police Department — they’ve announced the arrest of a man suspected of stabbing a romantic rival to death 21 years ago.

Cesar Manual Cazares, 42, is accused of killing Leonides Ponce, then 27, back in 1989 (The Simpsons premiered that year!! The Berlin Wall came down!!)

Ponce’s body was found stabbed in what would now be a classic car in the 4700 block of the Gulf Freeway near the South Loop.

Cazares was a suspect from the start — he had warned Ponce about dating a former girlfriend of his — but no case could be made.

Until last year. That’s when, HPD says, “there was a kidnapping/robbery
investigation involving the Cazares
family and investigators in the homicide and robbery divisions doing
research on the case came across the 1989 murder investigation.”

Officers contacted the cold case squad, who gathered DNA evidence from
the 2009 and 1989 investigations and sent to to the lab.

When it came back, Cazares was charged with murder and surrendered to
authorities.