DNA expertise by local lawman helps to lock down suspect
(Seguin) After her unsolved case sat on the shelves in Comal County for almost 42 years, justice for 18-year-old Carol Deleon and her family in San Antonio has finally arrived.
One of the key players who helped identify a suspect in the case is Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office chief deputy Joshua Ray. Ray, who worked as a Texas Ranger before retiring and coming on board at the sheriff’s office last year, says he is honored to have finally found closure for Deleon’s family.
“It’s a good feeling especially when you put so much work and time into this case and then for a victim’s family who has had no sense of justice, it finally gives them some aspect of that and so it’s very fulfilling in this way as sort of as you can of bringing her back,” said Ray.
Ray says the Texas Rangers Unsolved Crimes Investigators identified suspect Larry Allen West, 68, in the most technically advanced way.
On Thursday, West was handcuffed and taken into custody in San Antonio by Chief Ray, who was invited to come along and assist in the apprehension.
It was on June 4, 1981, when Deleon’s body was found along IH 35 in Comal County just south of the city of New Braunfels. An autopsy later determined that her body, which was a Jane Doe at the time, had died from multiple gunshot wounds.
Ray says her body remained a Jane Doe until 2008. Ray credits Texas Ranger Lt. Trampas Gooding for his diligence in working with the University of North Texas Center for Unidentified Human Remains and linking the Jane Doe and missing person’s report together.
Landing a suspect took another 14 years. It wasn’t until 2020 when Ray was transferred to New Braunfels, that one of his assignments was to bring a fresh set of eyes to the DeLeon case. Gooding, who had done a lot of work on the case, passed on the unsolved murder to Ray after Gooding promoted to lieutenant.
Ray and his team utilized grant money awarded to DPS to help further along the investigation. In doing so, Ray relied on DNA and ancestry geneology to help identify a lineage of potential suspects.
“It’s a different kind of DNA testing than what has traditionally been used for law enforcement methods and there’s a lot of science behind it but they use that testing and then eventually they work with a geneologist and similar to what people see in their family trees and stuff, you put together a tree and you tie these names together and it eventual helps them funnel it down to a couple of potential persons to look at and once I got that information back, I had a couple of key persons of interest through that testing and then through that we narrowed down to the one person to focus due to his previous documented violent criminal history and his known whereabouts in the San Antonio area at the time of the homicide,” said Ray. “And it just so happened that after I obtained this DNA, the first one we looked at, our suspicions that led us to him initially were validated through the DNA testing.”
This type of DNA testing, however, was no stranger to Ray, who is documented as part of the investigative team that first used this crime-fighting tool in Texas.
As part of the Texas Rangers Cold Case Task Force, Ray helped to conclusively solve another 1981 murder. The task force worked with The Brazos County Sheriff’s Department to solve the murder of real estate agent Virginia “Ginger” Freeman.
The case was unique in that the suspect, James Otto Earhart, was convicted a few years later, in 1987, for the murder of a 9-year-old girl Kandy Kirtland. After being executed in 1999, Earhart’s body was exhumed in 2018. At that time, a DNA sample was collected, which matched the DNA preserved at the crime scene 38 years earlier.
Despite relying on that experience to break through the Deleon case, Ray credits a team of investigators who, over the years, never gave up on the Comal County case. The pursuit for the truth began with Ranger Ray Martinez, who was the first lead investigator in 1981, and then later Gooding, who in 2008 connected the dots, identifying the Jane Doe as Deleon.
He says today, his own experience is challenged by Gooding, making him one of the most knowledgeable in this specialized field of solving crimes.
“I was an active Ranger in Bryan/College Station and was working cold cases on the side, but Trampas was so good at DNA, and I knew he was, I was always blowing up his phone, saying ‘how do you this, how do you do this, who do you talk to?’ So, I got better at it and then when I solved the Virginia Freeman (case) with Kenny (Elliot), we were the first ones to do ancestry and honestly, Trampas was calling me, ‘going, hey how did you do this?’ When the Rangers were awarded the grant, Trampas was among the ones that was interviewed for a lieutenant potion to run that project and honestly, I don’t know if they’ll say this out loud, he got that because of his knowledge and work with DNA an then eventually, he became so emerged in the finite details of ancestry and genealogical research that he far surpassed my knowledge of it. He can honestly sit her and give you a class on it. I’m good at it. I have a good investigator working knowledge of it, but he is way beyond me at this point,” said Ray.
Deleon had graduated from Thomas Edison High School one week before her body was found. Reports at the time placed her in attendance at a San Antonio club the night before on June 3.
Ray says being able to close this chapter for the Deleon family is what makes his efforts and time in law enforcement worth it. He says this type of crime fighting illustrates investigation advancements, hopefully reminding those who think they might have gotten away it, not to be so sure.