Gloria Lofton’s death at her Texas home in 2019 had been a mystery — until a murder suspect reportedly confessed to killing her and others last year.
An autopsy on Lofton’s death had been inconclusive. And family members, who said authorities provided few details about the death, came to believe an alcohol-related crash could be the cause.
Now one of her daughters is outraged after Austin police acknowledged this month that they failed to act on key forensic evidence that could have linked the suspect, Raul Meza Jr., to Lofton’s death four years earlier.
And the daughter, Christina Fultz, said authorities appear to have missed another key clue that provided an even more direct and direct link to Meza: a mysterious note she and her sister found at Lofton’s home six days after her body was discovered .
The note, which has not previously been reported, identified Meza by name.
Fultz, 35, said they found the note after police searched the house and that neither she nor her sister turned it over to them. She had forgotten about it and recently found images of the document while searching her phone for a video she had taken of Lofton’s home after her death.
“It was in front of us all the time, and who knows how many deaths could have been prevented if they had looked a little further and a little harder?” Fultz said.
In his alleged confession to a homicide detective in May, Meza also implicated himself in the killing that month of Jesse Fraga, a retired probation officer described by authorities as Meza’s caregiver and roommate, according to an affidavit supporting Meza’s arrest.
The affidavit states he also described a double murder he committed years earlier in San Antonio.
Meza, 63, served 11 years in prison for the 1982 murder and sexual assault of an 8-year-old girl. At a news conference after his arrest last year, law enforcement officials said they had as many as 10 unsolved murders from the 1990s in the area. Austin reexamined. Meza has not been charged with any other murders.
In July, authorities said they searched a field and found a possible grave linked to Meza, with partially buried clothing and a tarp, but no human remains. Authorities found the scene after learning that police in Pflugerville, north of Austin, had stopped Meza in 2022 as he walked along the field with blood on his face.
An Austin police spokesperson said there were no updates on the possible grave or other unsolved homicides.
Meza’s attorney, Russell Hunt Jr., said last week that he has offered prosecutors a plea deal of two 50-year prison sentences, to be served concurrently, for the murders of Lofton and Fraga.
A spokesperson for the Travis County District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors are evaluating the offer and would not comment further.
Police ‘deeply sorry’ for ‘DNA error’
Lofton, 65, was found dead in her bedroom in her home east of downtown Austin on May 9, 2019. Although the coroner found evidence that she may have been strangled, the cause and manner of death were listed as undetermined, police said. declaration.
Fultz’s sister, Sonia Houston, told NBC News last year that she was stunned by the finding. Authorities provided few details about what happened to Lofton, Houston said, and she believed her mother — who drank frequently and with whom she had long had a troubled relationship — may have been in a fatal accident while drinking .
Houston said she based that conclusion in part on what she and her sister found at Lofton’s home when they gained access on May 15. There was blood in the hallway and blood on a pillow, she said. They also found what appeared to be a used condom and lubricant wrapped in a latex glove, she said.
“Did she get drunk and hit her head?” said Houston. ‘Anyone who has been drunk knows that accidents happen. Did she try to get into bed?’
Houston has said she stopped questioning the police investigation as she focused on solving Lofton’s cases and putting her to rest. Fultz, who was given up for adoption as a newborn and reconnected with her birth family in 2012, said she was initially deferred to Houston on matters related to her mother’s death.
The siblings said they did not know what the affidavit revealed: A sexual assault kit was used on Lofton during her autopsy, and in 2020, a DNA profile from a vaginal swab provided a match to Meza, the affidavit says.
The sisters also said they had not heard from authorities about their mother’s death until last year, following Meza’s alleged confession. He told the detective he was responsible for the murder of a “lady” on the street where Lofton lived, according to the affidavit.
After the alleged confession, Lofton’s cause and manner of death were changed to homicide by strangulation, the affidavit said.
In a statement this month, interim Austin Police Chief Robin Henderson said the department “deeply regrets” the oversight related to the DNA report. No explanation for the error was given.
“We recognize the impact this has on the case itself, the community and most importantly the victims and their families,” Henderson said. “As soon as the error was brought to our attention, we addressed it as quickly as possible to identify how it happened and implemented policies to prevent these types of incidents from happening again. Since this incident, the Austin Police Department has added redundancies to the reporting process to ensure this does not happen again.”
The official responsible for oversight will not face disciplinary action, Henderson said, because state law prohibits discipline for actions that occurred more than 180 days earlier.
Fultz said she was outraged by the announcement. The department did not inform her family of the decision before reading about it in local media, she said, adding that it appeared authorities had not done their job after her mother’s death. (An Austin police spokesperson said the department did not warn the family before the announcement because the complaint about the DNA report came from within the department and was handled internally.)
“In a role like this, where you’re supposed to protect and serve, you don’t do that,” Fultz said. “I would suggest they work at McDonald’s, where you can mess up someone’s order and possibly not kill someone.”
“Who the hell is Raul Meza Jr.?”
Fultz said she was confused by what she and her sister found at Lofton’s home on May 15, so she started recording the scene with her phone. In a Snapchat video she shared with NBC News, Fultz captured the bloody pillow and a bloodstain on Lofton’s bed. In another she soaked up the lube.
Fultz said the district attorney’s office asked her to share the video after Meza’s arrest and that while searching for it late last year, she found another recording — one that she said showed her sister through a spiral notebook they found in Lofton’s kitchen. counter. (The district attorney’s spokesperson declined to comment. Fultz shared email correspondence showing a Travis County prosecutor asking Fultz to share a Snapchat video with her.)
The notebook was open to a page that Fultz said appeared to be in Lofton’s handwriting, which read: “I, Gloria Elizabeth Lofton, authorize Raul Meza Jr. to apply for a certificate of authority on my behalf for the purpose of “, where the line ends.
Fultz provided a time-stamped screenshot of the note, which shows a crossed-out word in the middle of the sentence. A contemporaneous video that Fultz captured and shared with NBC News shows her and her sister finding the note and her sister saying, “Who the hell is Raul Meza Jr.?”
When she heard Meza’s name in December, when she found the video, “it hit me like a truck,” Fultz said.
“I literally had a breakdown and a panic attack,” she said. “I got so sick of nerves and anger and just overwhelmed.”
Fultz said she was unsure of the note’s meaning, and authorities have not publicly identified a possible motive for Lofton’s murder. According to the affidavit, the homicide detective who spoke with Meza on May 24 said Meza claimed he had been promised 25% of an inheritance that would go to Lofton’s cousin and that he would be compensated for the killing.
The sisters have said Lofton had no cousins. Fultz said it is unclear whether another family member promised Meza money.
Fultz shared the video with the Travis County District Attorney’s Office in December, she said. The spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office does not want to comment.
The Austin Police Department spokesperson declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
Hunt, Meza’s attorney, said he was not aware of the note and would not comment further.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
