Thread: Family seeks answers in unsolved killing

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Family seeks answers in unsolved killing

By YOLANDA RODRÍGUEZ

Published on: 09/07/06

They pour water to clean the heart-shaped gravestone, shake dirt from cloth flowers in a vase. About every two weeks, Donna Cox takes her granddaughters — 2-year-old Savannah and 5-year-old Hannah — to visit their mother's grave in Marietta.

"This is a special time," Cox said at the cemetery recently.

Her daughter, Lisa Ann Bourquardez, died on Jan. 7, 2005. An attacker stabbed her 50 times and left her body in a bedroom closet in her Acworth home, robbing Savannah and Hannah of a mom.

Police say an ex-boyfriend killed Bourquardez, but they don't know where he is. Investigators say he vanished days after the killing. So now, at 52, Cox finds herself raising children again. She's changing diapers again just as she and her husband were on the cusp of retirement.

She's also waiting for justice.

Nearly every homicide leaves a legacy of hurt and grief among friends and relatives of the person who died. In the majority of killings, however, authorities quickly identify and arrest a suspect. That can provide varying degrees of satisfaction for victims' loved ones — or at least an outlet for their anger.

In cases in which investigators make no arrest, people like Cox must learn to live with not knowing whether the criminal justice system will ever punish their loved one's killer.

"I'm angry," Cox said. "What scares me is the next time — there's going to be a next time. He'll do the same thing again. And it'll be another poor woman or man that's killed."

From 2001 to 2005, there were about 170 homicides in unincorporated Cobb and its six cities. In most of those cases police jailed a suspect. About three dozen remain open.

Sgt. Mark Cheatham, a detective in the Acworth Police Department, who is investigating Bourquardez's death, said he's eager to make an arrest.

"I wish there was something," he said. "There have been no sightings. No tips. Nothing."

A typical new father

In 2003, Bourquardez met the man police would later accuse of killing her.

She was at home in Rockmart when she got to talking with a worker laying pipes across the street.

He introduced himself as Jaime Barcelata Morales, but police say he has at least two other aliases.

They went on a few dates and soon were living together in Acworth.

When Bourquardez gave birth to a daughter, Savannah, her mother's boyfriend seemed as nervous and concerned as any new father.

"He was scared to death seeing the baby being born," Cox said.

He held down two jobs, sometimes three, learned English and spoke it well. At home, he worked on his red Ford F-150 and helped out around the house, moving furniture and lifting things.

"He worked hard," Cox said. "He went to school."

In November 2004, however, Bourquardez and her boyfriend parted ways.

Cox said she's not sure why they broke up, but Bourquardez wanted to get married, and he wouldn't commit.

Cox said she saw no evidence that he was violent, but he did come across as possessive. She said he seemed to want to go everywhere Bourquardez went.

"That kind of got on her nerves because she was dominant and really independent."

Bourquardez lived with

her mother for a few months before moving in with a new boyfriend who talked about marriage.

"She seemed extremely happy — probably happier than I have ever seen Lisa," Cox said.

Yet sometimes Morales showed up.

"He'd beg Lisa to come back," Cox said.

On the day she died, Bourquardez called her baby sitter about 4:30 p.m.

The baby sitter later told Cox she heard Bourquardez talking with someone else during the call, presumably someone in the house with her, but she said Bourquardez did not seem upset.

Cox called her daughter's cellphone several times. No one answered.

Finally she got through to her daughter's boyfriend just as he was driving up to the home he and Bourquardez shared on Rockdale Drive. He told Cox that the Saturn SL2 she had been driving was gone. Then he saw blood.

Cox sped to Acworth.

"It was adrenaline that pushed me, pushed me, pushed me," Cox said.

She thought maybe her daughter had cut herself and gone to the hospital. Then she got to the house and saw a "huge area of so much blood" on a gold shag carpet.

"There were blotches of blood through the dining room and through the rest of the house," Cox said.

In the bedroom, she saw a smudged bloody handprint on the closet door.

Cox was about to open the door when her daughter's boyfriend saw a knife on the bedroom floor. She backed out of the room and dialed 911.

Investigators first asked her and Bourquardez's boyfriend to wait in the living room. Then they asked them to wait outside. Finally, they ushered them to a next-door neighbor's house.

Later, one of the officers told Cox they had found Bourquardez in the closet.

"I couldn't move. I couldn't cry. I couldn't talk," Cox remembers. "I finally said, 'Are you sure?' and he said 'Yes. I'm sure.' He stood there with me for a few minutes.

"And then I walked out to the road and broke down."

The trail of Bourquardez's killer went cold fast.

Eleven days after her death, police found the blue Saturn SL2 in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Oxford, Ala., about 25 miles from the Georgia line.

They found no sign of her ex-boyfriend, but police have learned a lot about him since. Among their discoveries: They aren't the only ones looking for him.

Police in Mexico have charged him with shooting a man in the head outside a Veracruz nightclub on Sept. 6, 2000. The Mexican warrant lists his name as Guillermo Peralta Castaneda.

Sgt. Wayne Dennard of the Acworth police said investigators believe that Bourquardez's ex-boyfriend has used a third name — Jose L. Bautista — as well as combinations of all those names. He said Acworth police have two possible birth dates for him: May 9, 1963, and Dec. 8, 1969.

Calls home may help

The FBI has issued a fugitive arrest warrant for Morales in connection with Bourquardez's death, said Stephen Emmett, an FBI special agent and spokesman for the Atlanta office, but investigators have been unable to find him.

Morales regularly sent money to his parents in Veracruz and called them often. Cox hopes those electronic ties will eventually help police put him in handcuffs.

Meanwhile, she's busy raising her grandchildren.

Cox confronted a new challenge a week after burying her daughter.

Just as she and her husband were planning how to spend their retirement, they found themselves raising Bourquardez's daughters.

"I never thought at my age I would be changing baby diapers and buying baby food again," she said. "The girls that I am raising —forever — changed mine and my husband's life."

Thoughts of downsizing from her two-story home in west Cobb were put on hold.

Her husband, Jim, had retired from Delta but went back to work. At 60, he took a job in Smyrna's finance department. Cox rises at 5:30 a.m. to get to work by 8 a.m.

A nanny cares for the children while she and her husband work. Her days typically end around 11 p.m.

Savannah is too young to remember her mother, but Hannah asks when Mommy is coming back.

"She doesn't comprehend what death is," Cox said. "It's hard to make a 5 year-old comprehend that. You just do your best."

Police haven't returned all of Bourquardez's belongings. They did return two packs of Winston 100s and 27 cents that were in her daughter's coat pockets. There are specks of blood on the packs.

"It was like a dream —a nightmare," Cox said. "And it still is."

http://www.mdjonline.com/articles/2005/ ... 170299.prt

Police issued warrant for Bautista in murder of 27-year-old woman

By Daniel Shuman
Marietta Daily Journal Staff Writer

ACWORTH - The suspect in the murder of an Acworth woman also is wanted by Mexican authorities in a four-year-old murder case, according to Acworth Police Chief Mike Wilkie.

Jamie Bautista, an illegal immigrant also known as Jamie Barcelata, Guillermo Paralata Castaneda and Jamie Morales, is wanted in the murder of his ex-girlfriend, 27-year-old Lisa Ann Bourquardez of Acworth.

Ms. Bourquardez's mother discovered her daughter's body in a back bedroom of her home near Lake Acworth on the night of Jan. 7, and on Jan. 12, police issued a warrant for Castaneda.

Authorities believe Castaneda is the suspect's real name because it is the name that is on his Mexican driver's license.

In the course of the investigation, Wilkie said police have discovered Castaneda is wanted in Mexico under another alias, Jamie Morales, in connection with a murder in Mexico.

"We came up with another name for him that's a variation on one that he's used," he said. "What we've been told by Mexican authorities is that he killed a man in a fight over a woman."

Police say that after Castaneda stabbed Ms. Bourquardez, he fled in her blue 1995 Saturn SL2 four-door sedan.

The car was discovered early Tuesday morning in a Wal-Mart parking lot by police in Oxford, Ala. - located about 60 miles east of Birmingham - and has since been turned over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to be searched for forensic evidence.

"At this point we're unsure as to how long the car had been in the parking lot," Wilkie said. "We're working with some law enforcement authorities in Alabama to find out where he may have gone after he abandoned the car."

Wilkie would not say whether police are focusing their search on any particular place, but it is believed that Castaneda may be trying to get back to Mexico.

The FBI issued a fugitive warrant for him, and Agent Jeff Holmes said they will be using their legal attaché in Mexico to follow leads and track him below the border.

As in incentive to would-be informants, the FBI has also put up a $5,000 reward for information leading to Castaneda's arrest, and Wilkie said he hopes to get that up to at least $10,000 with supplemental awards from the governor's office and private foundations.

"We want him badly," Wilkie said. "The fact that we've found that car has enabled us to pick up his trail."

Anyone with information regarding this crime or Bautista's whereabouts may call Acworth police at (770) 974-3111.

dshuman@mdjonline.com

So the guy is illegal? On the run from a murder warrant in Mexico?

Why didn't the article spell that out.

Well, we know why.

GRRRRR!!!!

This makes me so angry.

So this one guy has killed at least 2 people apparently that we know of...one in Mexico; the dear woman here; and we can only wonder how many others?

If people think these are isolated incidents....check this thread out about 25 American Citizens killed every single day by illegal aliens..about half in homicides and the other half in drunk driving accidents. According to Ted Poe on June 6, 2006...28,000 American Citizens have been killed by Illegal Aliens since 2003. That's over 9,000 a year every year....or 3 x the number of Americans killed on 9/11....every year. Link to thread below:

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=F ... ic&t=40523

Wake Up People!!

It's time to call your US House of Representatives and US Senate and demand Border Security and Enforcement of US Immigration Law including immediate Deportation.

It is scary to think how many there are out there. In Florida we regularly read about how many illegals ICE has caught and is deporting and there are many with violent or extensive criminal records. I have two Mexican peeping Toms in my condo complex. My teenage daughter and I witnessed one of the scum bags looking into a unit with small children while masterbating. I ran after the bastard but he hid somewhere. I called the police but because his cousin looks similar and also is a peeping Tom and I saw him from a distance, I could not make a positive ID. I am looking into both his and his cousins immigration status. If they is illegal I will make sure his ass gets kicked out of this country!

The morale of the story might include it is not a good idea to move in with someone who you have had several dates. So many women suffer from low self esteem. He hadn't appeared violent but was very posessive of her. Huge red flag right there. My heart go out to her mother and her children.