District Attorney Isidro R. Alaniz believes that when taking a case to a jury, “The most effective structure for any argument will always be a story.” The 49th Judicial District of Texas, which he serves, is home to Laredo, where Alaniz led the prosecution of Juan David Ortiz, a married father of three and a 10-year member of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency who in September 2018 murdered four sex workers. In The Devil Behind the Badge: The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Jervis delivers the tragic, headline-grabbing story with staccato precision and emotional depth.
Jervis takes readers right into the heart of the San Bernardo Avenue district of sex workers, drug dealers and people with substance abuse disorders who live within a stone’s throw of the U.S.-Mexico border. Ortiz’s victims—Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Alicia Cantu and Janelle Ortiz—are painted vividly, thanks to Jervis’ many interviews with their families and friends. He carefully sets the stage for how each of these women’s lives intersected with one other and with Ortiz, who grew up as a Bible-toting Pentecostal Christian, served as a Navy medical corpsman in Iraq and eventually became a supervisor at the Border Patrol. Ortiz refused Jervis’ interview requests and has given scant clues to what may have sparked his spree, but the author notes that the agency “tolerated an environment of misogyny and impunity within its ranks during Ortiz’s tenure there.”
One victim’s sister addressed Ortiz in the courtroom, saying, “You gave your word to protect the border, yet you failed. You betrayed your badge.” Jervis excels at conveying the frenzy of Ortiz’s crimes and his dramatic capture. The Devil Behind the Badge is an unsettling account of a serial killer leading a double life: one masquerading as an upright citizen, and the other mercilessly preying on society’s most vulnerable.
