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SANTA FE – Noe Torres sent Gov. Susana Martinez a letter last month professing his innocence, asking for clemency and revealing he had been “self-exiled” for six years.
Wrong move. The letter was hand-delivered the next day by Martinez to the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Mexican authorities then arrested Torres on Jan. 25 outside a religious compound in the city of Chihuahua.
Torres, 32, one of five men implicated in the September 2005 killing of a 10-year-old Clovis boy, had been on the run for more than six years. He is now in custody in Mexico and is expected to be extradited within three months to New Mexico, where he will face first-degree murder charges.
“This guy wanted me to send him a message, and he wanted me to send him a message through the media,” Martinez told a news conference Tuesday at the Capitol to announce Torres’ arrest. “Well, Noe, here’s my message through the media – I don’t help child-killers.”
The four other individuals linked to the murder of Carlos Perez have all been convicted. However, one of the four, Edward Salas, escaped from the Curry County Adult Detention Center in 2008 and remains at large.
Carlos, a fifth-grader, died after shots were fired through the bedroom window of the Clovis apartment complex he lived in and struck him while he was sleeping. Police believe his older brother was the intended target.
Torres, who has been featured on “America’s Most Wanted,” is believed by authorities to have fled to Mexico shortly after the shooting.
Gov. Susana Martinez holds a news conference Tuesday to announce the arrest of Noe Torres in Mexico. Torres is accused of killing 10-year-old Carlos Perez of Clovis in 2005. (ADOLPHE PIERRE-LOUIS/JOURNAL)
Matt Chandler, chief prosecutor for the Clovis-based 9th Judicial District, said Torres “taunted” law enforcement in recent years by making calls to the FBI and his office and asking for charges to be dismissed.
“Each time Noe Torres would call us, we would indicate to him that we were not going away, that we were not going to turn our heads and that we would continue to diligently search for him,” Chandler said.
Martinez, a Republican who served as Doña Ana County prosecutor before being elected governor in 2010, met privately Tuesday with members of Perez’s family.
Patricia Perez, Carlos Perez’s sister, then spoke at the news conference while holding a framed picture of her younger brother, describing Carlos as an easygoing child who loved football, particularly the Oakland Raiders.
“This has left us traumatized, sad, angry. … (It’s) something hard to believe,” Patricia Perez said.
Torres’ letter to Martinez – typed in all capital letters – was received by the Governor’s Office on Jan. 18.
In the letter, he asked Martinez to communicate with him through the New Mexico news media.
“I ask you please help, I have a family to look after,” Torres wrote. “God knows I’m innocent & has been protecting me all this time, I could not have kept dodging the authorities if I was guilty.”
The letter did not describe his exact whereabouts or the crime he was accused of, but a staffer in the Governor’s Office recognized the name.
The day after receiving the letter, Jan. 19, Martinez met with Chandler to talk about its contents.
That same day, she gave a copy of the letter and a packet of information, including surveillance photos from the U.S. Marshals of Torres’ believed hiding spot, to Chihuahua Gov. Cesar Duarte, who happened to be in New Mexico for an economic development meeting at Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino.
The information helped Mexican authorities track Torres to the religious compound in the city of Chihuahua, about 230 miles south of El Paso.
Chandler said Torres, also known as “Little Loco,” is believed to have been at the religious compound for an extended amount of time, though he declined to speculate on whether he was being sheltered there.
He also said the six-day delay in announcing Torres’ arrest was due to concerns about the safety of the Mexican officers involved in his arrest.
Martinez cited good diplomatic relations with Duarte and other Mexican border governors as a key factor in Torres’ arrest.
She said the letter from Torres was the first of its kind she has received as governor, though she said she received similar letters when she was a prosecutor.
“He was very mistaken,” Martinez said. “He wrote to the wrong person.”
It remained unclear Tuesday where Torres will be held once he is extradited to New Mexico. Chandler said he would prefer Torres be housed in a state-run facility until he is put on trial.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
Reprint story -- Email the reporter at dboyd@abqjournal.com. Call the reporter at 505-992-6281
