TX - Elizabeth Barraza, 29, murdered setting up garage sale, Harris County, Jan 2019 #2

New Posts

Status
Not open for further replies.
acehard said:
I maintain the yard sale has nothing to do with the killing. They were so bold to come to her house and shoot in the front yard during daylight. They didn't care if the neighbors saw or if they were caught on cameras. IMO
Click to expand...

This. And the fact no one knows that truck or who leads me to believe it was someone outside her circle and out of town.
 
Hi all - long time lurker, first time poster.

A few thoughts to add to the discussion; hopefully these aren't re-hashes:

1. I've read a lot of theories on the outfit the shooter was wearing. To me, it looks like it could be something like a disposable rain poncho. This would be useful if the perp wanted to avoid blood spatters and allow them to quickly transition to their street clothes to resume daily activities and avoid arousing suspicion.

It's hard to tell from the videos, but there is enough of a pause when the shooter gets back to their truck that they might have even removed the poncho (e.g. and bundled it up) before getting in. There may be video angles I haven't seen that would throw water on this theory tho.

2. The parking location seems like an odd choice unless the shooter knew about the ring camera. They were willing to stray much further from the truck than they strictly needed to - and the fact that they sprinted back to the truck indicates they *were* nervous about being out in the open and spotted.. which makes their willingness to walk and run further all the more noteworthy. They very likely knew of or suspected the camera.

3. Where I live, Friday yard sales are unusual. Friday yard sales that don't continue through the weekend and aren't advertised? Not sure i've ever heard of one. This, the timing of the hit, the timing of DH leaving for work, the timing of the anniversary... If it's coincedental, it's stunningly so.. but fwiw, from other posts I understand she did yard sales annually- I'd be curious if the format was consistent with others.. (e.g. might she have been compelled to hold this yardsale or does it match her typical behavior? )

As an aside, i'm not a collector, but the storm trooper helmet shown at the sale doesn't look like high end gear to me, it looks more like a toy. Not sure this is indicative of other items, but if so it wouldn't be specifically attracting the interest of 501st members looking for specialty pieces that would translate to nice profits for vacation spending.. making some big leaps here with minimal info, but it calls into question the target audience of the unadvertised yardsale and its merits. And while i'm at it making big leaps, I'd wonder if the yard sale signs themselves couldn't have been some kind of message for the hitman - "it's the house with the yardale signs" or "if the signs are out, it's on". This would be a rudimentary way of green-lighting a hitman who left their phones off or at home to avoid tracking.

All conjecture and my-opinion-only.
 
A user on the missy bevers thread just mentioned the use of anonymous hitmen hired via anonymous/encrypted browser over the darkweb for crypto... And wow. It so fits here.

I read an older article on business insider (not sure I can link here?) that describes the process and shows some examples of people offering services.

Questions answered by this theory:
How could someone find a hitman?
How could someone afford a hitman?
Anyone who put a couple hundred into crypto more than a year ago probably has plenty of untraceable play money to hire a killer now.. and they just need the tor browser or equivalent to make a connection (and some luck that they hire a "real" hitman rather than a scam or LE. There are probably more of the latter two than the former)

No-one recognizes the car?
It's not local, nor is the perp.

Scoping out the neighborhood the night before?
One of the hitmen describes showing that he's in the target area in exchange for one of the payments. A picture of the house the night before would do the trick. Plus this person has never even been to the town before so would want to get their bearings.

Driving back around after the shooting?
The killer doesn't know who hired them, the hirer doesn't know who they hired. A photo of the scene would be proof the job was done.

No suspects?
This type of crime has all of the detective challenges of a random shooting with none of the randomness. I'm thinking now that LE knows who hired the killer, but has no way to prove a connection. Unless federal or international authorities happen to stumble on the shooter, and that person gives up info as part of a plea deal or somesuch, this case may never be solved... even if they do find that person, and that person does plea - it may not be easy to prove conclusively who hired them. (even the shooter doesn't know for certain...).
 
KindMind1ofA said:
A user on the missy bevers thread just mentioned the use of anonymous hitmen hired via anonymous/encrypted browser over the darkweb for crypto... And wow. It so fits here.

I read an older article on business insider (not sure I can link here?) that describes the process and shows some examples of people offering services.

Questions answered by this theory:
How could someone find a hitman?
How could someone afford a hitman?
Anyone who put a couple hundred into crypto more than a year ago probably has plenty of untraceable play money to hire a killer now.. and they just need the tor browser or equivalent to make a connection (and some luck that they hire a "real" hitman rather than a scam or LE. There are probably more of the latter two than the former)

No-one recognizes the car?
It's not local, nor is the perp.

Scoping out the neighborhood the night before?
One of the hitmen describes showing that he's in the target area in exchange for one of the payments. A picture of the house the night before would do the trick. Plus this person has never even been to the town before so would want to get their bearings.

Driving back around after the shooting?
The killer doesn't know who hired them, the hirer doesn't know who they hired. A photo of the scene would be proof the job was done.

No suspects?
This type of crime has all of the detective challenges of a random shooting with none of the randomness. I'm thinking now that LE knows who hired the killer, but has no way to prove a connection. Unless federal or international authorities happen to stumble on the shooter, and that person gives up info as part of a plea deal or somesuch, this case may never be solved... even if they do find that person, and that person does plea - it may not be easy to prove conclusively who hired them. (even the shooter doesn't know for certain...).
Click to expand...
I believe hired hits are not very common. It could have happened in the Missy Bevers case but it is near the bottom of my list of scenarios - just above a killing by an alien from other than Earth. Here, though, yes, I can definitely see it as a possibility. And the chance that neither the shooter nor the person hiring the shooting know each other is a disturbing thought I had not considered.
 
I am not of the “hit man” theory...but a Dateline or similar show had a episode of spouses arranging meetings with alleged hit men who were undercover cops and there were several...all seemed bold and stupid but of course, we knew they were dealing with cops, they didn’t. So it is not out of the realm and would be harder to trace if the killer was otherwise a stranger, especially if a throwaway phone was used and cash came from a source other than known bank accounts. Though some “hits” have occurred for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars.

The biggest factor of similarity for me in this case and that of Missy Bevers is that the perp is on video in both, yet there is uncertainty as to the sex of the shooter, in both cases the perp wearing unusual clothing and/or a disguise or costume.

It is shocking, imo, that both remain unsolved. I fear that unless someone close to the victims was involved, neither will be solved. Jmo
 
I agree a darkweb hit is a super unlikely scenario in general and someone looking to off their spouse or what-have-you is much more likely to hire LE by mistake (quick google search returns plenty of these in the news...) or be scammed..

But.. if there *were* an otherwise unexplainable darkweb hit, theres a good chance we'd be talking about it here... and after years of following posts I'm not sure I've seen a case that is more likely to be one. If it happens at all, this is as likely as it gets. MOO.

Hopefully this is an allowable link:
How To Hire An Assassin On The Secret Internet For Criminals

It's an old article and most of these smell like scams. Are all of them scams? Not so sure. Some insist you will never meet, they don't want to know who you are, nor why you want the job done. Those arent the types of restrictions i'd imagine LE putting forward - but maybe they have sufficient tracking and this is a way to make perps more comfortable submitting a payment.

Anyway hopefully it's something more mundane and the family will ultimately be able to have closure.
 
There have been so many instances where a suspect or POI skates along without ever even being formally arrested because maybe evidence is circumstantial or whatever. The cops know but can't do anything but watch and wait.

I suspect that's what's going on here. I think they have a strong suspect and just can't do anything about it.
 
We've had about 3 murders for hire that I can remember in our area.
Here is a double murder from 2004 with the arrests coming in 2018. The husband's trial isn't till Sept and the other man has yet to be sentenced.
Man pleads guilty to killing woman, son and setting their Virginia Beach home on fire in 2004 | WAVY.com

We've had 2 others here where a military person hired someone to kill their wife. Both in Virginia Beach. One was a botched attempt and the gun for hire was arrested. Those who have heard me talk on other cases have heard my story about the 3rd case. I was sitting in a bar with an officer whose wife was strangled and the house set afire at the same time hundreds of miles away. One of his senior enlisted men killed the wife, but LE figured it out. I still find it weird that I was near a person who was involved with murder that was being committed at that same time.

These are the only 3 I can recall in the past 30 years, but I wouldn't doubt there may be others.
 
cluciano63 said:
I am not of the “hit man” theory...but a Dateline or similar show had a episode of spouses arranging meetings with alleged hit men who were undercover cops and there were several...all seemed bold and stupid but of course, we knew they were dealing with cops, they didn’t. So it is not out of the realm and would be harder to trace if the killer was otherwise a stranger, especially if a throwaway phone was used and cash came from a source other than known bank accounts. Though some “hits” have occurred for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars.

The biggest factor of similarity for me in this case and that of Missy Bevers is that the perp is on video in both, yet there is uncertainty as to the sex of the shooter, in both cases the perp wearing unusual clothing and/or a disguise or costume.

It is shocking, imo, that both remain unsolved. I fear that unless someone close to the victims was involved, neither will be solved. Jmo
Click to expand...

I don’t have anything to add. Just agree with all of the points you make. Hard to believe there are two similar (on video, disguise, uncertain gender) murders in the same state.
 
I keep thinking how utterly lucky this killer seems to be. Just before 7 AM on a weekday/school day can be kind of bustling in a residential neighborhood. In my own neighborhood, some people walk/walk their dogs around the block around that time every morning. A school bus stops outside my house around that time. People are leaving to go to work. Most people with an 8-5 job or a kid heading to school would be at least awake and getting ready for the day by the time she was killed. Yet no one was outside at this precise time or even apparently looked out a window or anything around this time. I can't believe this person's luck.

It makes me wonder if they scoped out this scenario earlier in the week to see what the neighborhood would be like just before 7 AM. Maybe they even had a different car for that trip? MOO
 
MntnHiker said:
I keep thinking how utterly lucky this killer seems to be. Just before 7 AM on a weekday/school day can be kind of bustling in a residential neighborhood. In my own neighborhood, some people walk/walk their dogs around the block around that time every morning. A school bus stops outside my house around that time. People are leaving to go to work. Most people with an 8-5 job or a kid heading to school would be at least awake and getting ready for the day by the time she was killed. Yet no one was outside at this precise time or even apparently looked out a window or anything around this time. I can't believe this person's luck.

It makes me wonder if they scoped out this scenario earlier in the week to see what the neighborhood would be like just before 7 AM. Maybe they even had a different car for that trip? MOO
Click to expand...
I find it amazing, too. Neighbors may have heard the shots and then looked out the wrong window or in the wrong direction. But as you point out, no one at a school bus stop, no one walking a dog, no one walking to their car? According to LE they left no spent shell casings behind (used a revolver?) so if the bullets are too mangled to accurately ID the rifling marks LE may not have any decent ballistics data outside of the gun caliber. Even if they do, it's like DNA - they have to have something to compare it to.

Caught on video and a general description of the vehicle is known and yet no arrest.
 
MntnHiker said:
I keep thinking how utterly lucky this killer seems to be. Just before 7 AM on a weekday/school day can be kind of bustling in a residential neighborhood. In my own neighborhood, some people walk/walk their dogs around the block around that time every morning. A school bus stops outside my house around that time. People are leaving to go to work. Most people with an 8-5 job or a kid heading to school would be at least awake and getting ready for the day by the time she was killed. Yet no one was outside at this precise time or even apparently looked out a window or anything around this time. I can't believe this person's luck.

It makes me wonder if they scoped out this scenario earlier in the week to see what the neighborhood would be like just before 7 AM. Maybe they even had a different car for that trip? MOO
Click to expand...

We sit in our front room drinking coffee from 7-8, we see people leaving for work, taking kids to school, walking their dogs, etc plus we are sitting there looking out the window. It blows my mind that not one person saw this, that there were ring cameras throughout the neighborhood but none of them got a better pic.
 
One thing I've been wondering about is red light cams; Tomball is a town that does/did use these, so am curious what paths in and out of the neighborhood would have passed by a traffic light. We can hopefully assume that LE has already reviewed that footage and that they have a good idea by which direction the shooter left town, and presumably more pictures that haven't yet been shared. (Along with footage from neighboring towns, tollbooths, etc...)

And.. if the shooter avoided traffic lights, did they need to work their way through other neighborhoods to do so, and in which case theres a path of additional private cameras that ought to have been reviewed.

Surprising that through all this, we wouldn't have a plate number...
 
KindMind1ofA said:
A user on the missy bevers thread just mentioned the use of anonymous hitmen hired via anonymous/encrypted browser over the darkweb for crypto... And wow. It so fits here.

I read an older article on business insider (not sure I can link here?) that describes the process and shows some examples of people offering services.

Questions answered by this theory:
How could someone find a hitman?
How could someone afford a hitman?
Anyone who put a couple hundred into crypto more than a year ago probably has plenty of untraceable play money to hire a killer now.. and they just need the tor browser or equivalent to make a connection (and some luck that they hire a "real" hitman rather than a scam or LE. There are probably more of the latter two than the former)

No-one recognizes the car?
It's not local, nor is the perp.

Scoping out the neighborhood the night before?
One of the hitmen describes showing that he's in the target area in exchange for one of the payments. A picture of the house the night before would do the trick. Plus this person has never even been to the town before so would want to get their bearings.

Driving back around after the shooting?
The killer doesn't know who hired them, the hirer doesn't know who they hired. A photo of the scene would be proof the job was done.

No suspects?
This type of crime has all of the detective challenges of a random shooting with none of the randomness. I'm thinking now that LE knows who hired the killer, but has no way to prove a connection. Unless federal or international authorities happen to stumble on the shooter, and that person gives up info as part of a plea deal or somesuch, this case may never be solved... even if they do find that person, and that person does plea - it may not be easy to prove conclusively who hired them. (even the shooter doesn't know for certain...).
Click to expand...

To me the whole dark web thing is really made to be bigger than it really is. First you have to realize the every day internet user doesnt know how to even buy crypto, I imagine the amount that can access the dark web is way small. Secondly finding an assassin on the dark web that isnt a scammer would be insanely hard.

Honestly, if someone is gonna do it by the web, you could search your local KIK groups and have a better shot at finding someone than the darkweb. If it ends up being a paid hit, I'll be extremely surprised if it comes from the darkweb.

Everything else on your post I agree with. Killer came from out of town. Thats why no one recognizes the truck. He scoped the house out the night before. I still wonder if he had a hotel nearby or just slept in his truck. I imagine LEO have already checked this though.

I kinda doubt it was a hired hit. If it was, it would have to be the hubby. But the police have indicated they dont believe he had anything to do with it. I cant conceivably see anyone paying to kill this woman.

Thats why I believe it was a crazy person from one of her social media groups that had a spat with her. probably over the cosplay stuff.

Edit - I also believe theres a possibility of a thrill killing. someone from out of town just wanted to kill and she was chosen at random.
 
I do believe LE has referred to it as a "hit" in the past, but not certain if this is their latest thinking.
 
KindMind1ofA said:
One thing I've been wondering about is red light cams; Tomball is a town that does/did use these, so am curious what paths in and out of the neighborhood would have passed by a traffic light. We can hopefully assume that LE has already reviewed that footage and that they have a good idea by which direction the shooter left town, and presumably more pictures that haven't yet been shared. (Along with footage from neighboring towns, tollbooths, etc...)

And.. if the shooter avoided traffic lights, did they need to work their way through other neighborhoods to do so, and in which case theres a path of additional private cameras that ought to have been reviewed.

Surprising that through all this, we wouldn't have a plate number...
Click to expand...

I am surprised they didn't find the truck/plate as well. I'm sure they made a BOLO right away and stopping those that fit the criteria. Honestly, I don't think the perp thought this through to come up with some clever path. They just got lucky.
 
KindMind1ofA said:
One thing I've been wondering about is red light cams; Tomball is a town that does/did use these, so am curious what paths in and out of the neighborhood would have passed by a traffic light. We can hopefully assume that LE has already reviewed that footage and that they have a good idea by which direction the shooter left town, and presumably more pictures that haven't yet been shared. (Along with footage from neighboring towns, tollbooths, etc...)

And.. if the shooter avoided traffic lights, did they need to work their way through other neighborhoods to do so, and in which case theres a path of additional private cameras that ought to have been reviewed.

Surprising that through all this, we wouldn't have a plate number...
Click to expand...

Red light cams were banned in Texas in 2019, but I think it was after Elizabeth’s murder.
Ask 2: Why did Texas outlaw red light cameras when red light running is rampant and increasing?

ETA - Tomball had 3 red light cams in 2019, and they were turned off in June 2019.
Following ban, Tomball turns off red light cameras
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 46 more.
Total: 4,228 (members: 47, guests: 4,181)

Online statistics

Members online
47
Guests online
4,181
Total visitors
4,228
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
592,490
Messages
17,969,787
Members
228,789
Latest member
Soccergirl500
Back
Top