A second defendant has been arrested in the 1991 slaying of an unidentified victim.
Alejo Garcia Ramirez, 41, was arrested Friday morning in Oklahoma, said Angela Weltin, a prosecutor with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
Houston Police Department investigators went to Oklahoma to assist with the arrest, and arrangements will be made for Ramirez’s extradition to Houston, Weltin said.
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Ramirez is charged with murder in the death of a man whose body was found Aug. 31, 1991, in the 1400 block of Gazin in the Denver Harbor neighborhood.
According to court records, Ramirez is a cousin of Benito Ramirez, who was arrested June 5 and is also charged with murder in the case. Benito Ramirez, 49, remained Friday in the Harris County Jail on no bond.
Autopsy results showed that the victim was stabbed 12 times and was shot nine times in the back of the head.
According to court records, the witness said Benito Ramirez boasted that he and Alejo Ramirez and two other men saw “Mario” drinking on the night in question at the former El Rey bar in the 6900 block of Lyons.
They lured him outside, where Alejo Ramirez stabbed the victim in the torso, records state. The victim tried to run away but the men caught him and forced him, alive and bleeding, inside the trunk of Benito Ramirez’s 1979 Chevrolet Impala, records state.
Then the men drove to a field on Lathrop near some warehouses and removed the victim from the trunk, according to the arrest warrant. Benito Ramirez allegedly shot the man in the head multiple times with his nine-shot, 0.22-caliber revolver, records state.
According to court records, the men left the body in a field at a location described as the intersection of Lathrop Street and Old Clinton Drive (near the 1400 block of Gazin).
Benito Ramirez was identified as a suspect after a man told police he had heard Benito Ramirez threaten to kill a man known to the witness as “Mario.”
“There’s the guy who took my papers. I’m going to kill him,” Benito Ramirez said several weeks prior to the August 1991 slaying, according to court documents.
Later, at a birthday party, the witness said he heard Benito Ramirez brag about killing “Mario.” Benito Ramirez also implicated a third man, who has not been charged, Weltin said.
According to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science, the victim was Hispanic, between the ages of 25 and 35. He was 5 feet, 3 inches tall and weighed 141 pounds.
He was wearing a navy blue uniform shirt that said “CSB Asphalt” over the left pocket and “Marc” over the right pocket. His pants and socks were also navy blue, and he wore blue, beige and tan cowboy boots.
Weltin said police visited CSB Asphalt but don’t believe the man worked for the company.
Anybody who might have information about the victim should call Houston Police Department homicide investigators C. Cardenas or M. Burrow at 713-308-3600.
