Convicted strangler of 3-year-old set to die
08/06/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The one certainty in a "he said, she said" case that put a Brownsville man on death row and a woman in prison for life is that a 3-year-old boy was murdered, sexually abused and strangled with the elastic from his own underwear.
"Not that any murder case makes sense, but this was just totally senseless," says Luis Saenz, the former Cameron County district attorney who prosecuted Jose Alfredo Rivera, condemned for the slaying of Luis Daniel Blanco 10 years ago. "It's hard to figure out motive or what these people were thinking."
Rivera, 40, faced lethal injection Wednesday night. He would be the 21st Texas inmate executed this year.
AP Jose Alfredo Rivera |
Zavala testified at her trial she held down the toddler's arms while he was being killed and performed sex acts on the child but also contended she was forced to participate because Rivera had threatened her.
"She tried to blame it all on me," Rivera said recently from death row. "She named me so she could get away with it."
Rivera, a construction worker, was on parole for burglary and parole violation when he was arrested for the killing. He also had a 15-year history of sniffing paint fumes to get high.
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"I was the bad apple in the neighborhood so they picked me up," said Rivera, who contended Brownsville police beat and threatened him until he confessed.
"They forced it out of me," he said.
"Absolutely, unequivocally, there was none of that," Saenz responded.
Zavala has changed her version of the crime numerous times and has written prosecutors to absolve Rivera.
"It goes beyond a tepid: 'He didn't do it,"' said David Sergi, Rivera's appellate lawyer. "This woman is really trying to correct a wrong."
In appeals to the federal courts, Rivera argued he was innocent and ineligible for execution because he was mentally retarded.
Zavala lived next door to the child's family, who had moved to Texas from Mexico. After Zavala visited to use the family phone late the morning of July 9, 1993, and while the child's mother was distracted by other telephone calls, the boy either accompanied or followed Zavala as she walked to nearby Lincoln Park in Brownsville. There she either met or was confronted by Rivera.
"They start partaking in a cocaine binge," Saenz said. "The next thing you know they're engaging in sexual conduct right there at the park in broad daylight. And the next thing you know the baby is floating in the water."
The boy's mother had called police after her son disappeared and she couldn't find him or Zavala, who returned home about three hours later and became agitated and denied knowing the whereabouts of Daniel Blanco.
His nude body was found the next day in the park pond.
At her trial, Zavala testified Rivera told her the boy had to die because he would tell of their drug and sexual activity, then told jurors how Rivera tore the waistband from the toddler's underwear and started choking him. Zavala said as the child screamed and struggled, she held down his arms to comfort him.
The photo of the child in the water is what Saenz particularly remembers about the case 10 years later.
"To this day, it just blows me away," he said. "It was just terrible.
"When one thinks about the death penalty, this is precisely why the state of Texas I'm sure has the death penalty, for individuals like Jose Rivera."
"If I had been there, that boy would be alive," Rivera argued from death row, maintaining his innocence. "If I have to, I get executed. My conscience is clear."
Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/tsw/stories/080603dntexexecute.fffcb03f.html
