Inset left: Leidy Guadalupe Hernandez (Tarrant County Jail). Inset right: Ulani Mable Nunes (Bexar County Jail). Background: The area near where a man's body was found bound and burning in San Antonio, Texas (Google Maps).
Two Texas women are behind bars after an octogenarian man's body was found burned in a ditch earlier this year.
On Thursday, Leidy Guadalupe Hernandez, 43, was arrested on charges of capital murder by terroristic threat/other felony and aggravated robbery, according to Tarrant County Jail records.
In July, Ulani Mable Nunes, 23, was arrested in a different Bexar County case. She has since been arrested and booked on the same suite of charges as Hernandez over the death of 84-year-old Manuel Gomez Mendez Jr., according to Lone Star State law enforcement.
The investigation began on March 28, when the victim was found burning, bound, duct-taped and wrapped in a jacket and shower curtain in a brushy area along Rigsby Avenue in San Antonio.
Authorities were first called to the area over what passersby believed to be a simple grass fire. Instead, they found a macabre scene.
"My daughter said, 'Mom, Dad, fire! Fire!' So my husband and I looked at each other," a woman told San Antonio-based ABC affiliate KSAT at the time. "Looked like it was going on for a bit. We thought it was just a fire. We thought we'd just report it and we'd leave and that's it."
Later, homicide detectives arrived at the woman's door and questioned the family about the grim discovery. That's when they learned they had happened upon a murder while out running errands.
Another task that day left multiple ropes, a dolly, and a melted plastic tote near the burned-out crime scene, police said.
When the smoke cleared, investigators found signs the victim had already been decomposing, according to court records obtained by the San Antonio Express-News. Mendez had also been bound with a bed skirt and wires, according to law enforcement.
Detectives initially connected the defendants to the gruesome crime using surveillance footage and phone records, according to a warrant obtained by KSAT. Later, investigators allegedly found the victim's identification and Social Security card inside a vehicle being used by Hernandez and Nunes, police said.
Nunes eventually provided a full confession after waiving her Miranda rights, according to an affidavit filed in the case.
On March 25, the women saw the man at an H-E-B grocery store, according to the charging document.
Hernandez previously worked for Mendez and recalled that he rented rooms on his property, police said. So, the women negotiated a lease and arranged to meet him at home. That's when they quickly developed the plan to kill the victim and take his money, Nunes allegedly confessed.
Along the way to meet the man, the women stopped at a Home Depot and bought the implements they would need and use to confine and kill Mendez, according to the charging document.
At the victim's residence, the pair attacked the man upstairs, held him down, and then used the duct tape and various other items to suffocate him over the course of some 30 minutes, Nunes allegedly told detectives. After that, the pair stayed at the victim's property for several days intent on stealing his money while the body decomposed, according to law enforcement.
Finally, when the smell of decay became overwhelming, the women allegedly put the corpse in the plastic tote, covered it with towels, and then hauled it to the wooded area where they would set it ablaze.
When asked why they did not just rob the man and opted to kill him, Nunes allegedly told a detective, "…we could get more money."
Eventually, police found the stolen car being driven in Fort Worth. Hernandez remains in the Tarrant County Jail as of this writing. Nunes appears to have been transferred out of the Tarrant County Jail after her bail was set at $1 million.
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