2022-10-10

Late on the evening of July 10, 2018, Latrece Latele Black went to the home of Abagail Gonzalez. She arrived in a car that looked like a Cadillac. Black was frantic and kind of freaking out because her boyfriend was in jail and she needed money to put on the phone. .

Black and Gonzalez were acquainted by virtue of the friendship between their boyfriends. Black wanted to borrow a credit card in order to be able to communicate with her boyfriend in jail, and Gonzalez found this request shocking. Although Gonzalez would not accede to the request to give her credit card to Black, nevertheless, she decided to help out, and Gonzalez went with Black to a couple of different stores to put money on the jail phone.

Throughout the time they spent together that evening, Black was texting someone. When they parted ways late that night, the last thing Black told Gonzalez was “I have to go get this money.”

Black was desperate. She was also involved in prostitution. According to phone records, Appellant and Black began communicating via text message and ultimately exchanged 20 texts and three phone calls between that same evening at 11:18p.m. and 12:05a.m. on July 11, 2018, although the substance of those communications was unknown.

Also on July 11, 2018, Canyon Police Department Officer Jeremy Luetkahans was sitting stationary, just running traffic on Highway U.S. 87 in Canyon as a vehicle passed him, and he observed that there were no taillights on the vehicle, so he initiated a traffic stop for that violation. The vehicle was a silver Cadillac, registered to a Duncan Ventura, and being driven by Appellant. This was around 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning.

Appellant provided multiple addresses to the officer, one of which was 709 N. Roberts, and he consented to a vehicle search.. During the search, the officer found multiple cell phones, one with GPS directions pulled up for Mexico. He also found a female's purse in the car and some women's jewelry.

Appellant indicated the car belonged to his sister, but there was no identifying information for his sister located inside the car. Instead, the purse contained multiple items of an identifying nature for a black female with the last name Black. During the stop, Officer Luetkahans requested dispatch to try and get ahold of Latrece Black, but those efforts were not successful. Appellant claimed the girl who owned the wallet was his sister’s friend. Officer Luetkahans felt something was off, but was unable to find any contraband during the vehicle search.

Ultimately, he did not have evidence of Appellant committing a crime, and he allowed Appellant to go on his way. Later that morning, the body of a black female was discovered in the alley behind Fiesta Foods in Amarillo, Texas. The body, without clothing or any identifying information, was identified on-scene by fingerprint scan as Latrece Latele Black.

After Black’s body was identified, as a part of the victim notification to Black's mother, officers found that the mother missed a phone call in the middle of the night from the Randall County Sheriff's Office. This was in regards to them attempting to find some good contact information for Latrece Black. As a result, the video of the stop was obtained, Appellant was identified and officers were led to the address of 709 N. Roberts, Amarillo, Texas. Appellant lived there with his father, who consented to a search and directed officers to Appellant’s bedroom, where officers went to look for Appellant.

Once in Appellant’s bedroom, they found several items of women's clothing, an open condom wrapper, an open condom and several blankets strung throughout the room. Outside the residence, officers found drag marks, as they did at the crime scene at Fiesta Foods. Marks on Black’s body indicated she may have been moved. Drag marks were also located in the alley where Black’s body was discovered. Investigators believed Black had been killed at 709 N. Roberts.

Based upon the information developed in the investigation, a murder complaint was filed against Appellant. An arrest warrant issued based upon the complaint. Appellant was arrested and charged by indictment in Cause No.76,251-E-CR with the first-degree felony offense of murder, enhanced.

As a pretrial matter, approximately a year after trial counsel was appointed, the trial court granted a Motion for Appointment of Interpreter , shortly after the motion was filed. Neither the Reporter’s Record nor the Clerk’s Record contain any evidence, testimonial or otherwise, of who was appointed as interpreter, the qualifications of the interpreter, or how any interpreter might have been compensated.

An Elvira Johnson was present and sworn at the beginning of proceedings on February 28, 2022. However, there is no indication whatsoever that any interpreter was present at the pretrial hearing on February 8, 2022. Similarly, the trial court recessed proceedings and reconvened without any record of interpreter being present no less than sixteen times.

On February 28, 2022, when the jury was empaneled and the trial court called upon the State to read the indictment, the language from the Motion to Amend Indictment was read, rather than the actual indictment. Appellant announced “not guilty” and proceeded to a jury trial.

Phone records connected Appellant to Black. DNA swabs taken from the left arm and hand swabs from the Latrece Black, the DNA profile was a mixture of two individuals with the Black as an assumed contributor since it came from her body. The probability of obtaining this profile if the DNA came from the victim and Appellant was 9,680 times greater than the probability of obtaining this profile if the DNA came from the victim and one unrelated, unknown 14 person.

According to the DNA analyst, this likelihood ratio indicated support for the proposition that Appellant was a contributor to this profile. Similarly, analysis of swabs taken from Black’s right and left breasts yielded probability ratios of 3.5 quintillion and 72.6 septillion times greater that Appellant was a contributor to the resultant DNA profile than the probability of obtaining this profile if the DNA came from the victim and one unrelated, unknown individual.

Due to the fact that the clothing collected from Appellant’s bedroom was soiled, and the policy of the DNA lab not to accept potential biohazard material for testing, the clothing was not submitted for DNA testing. However, the clothing found in his bedroom was identified as the same clothing Black was seen wearing on the evening of July 10, 2018.

The car Appellant was stopped driving was a silver Cadillac, and Black was known to drive a silver Cadillac. Although Appellant had no prior plans to go to Mexico, apparently, he did in fact travel to Mexico. The silver Cadillac was never recovered.

A ten-hour video was entered into evidence purporting to show a car "drive through the alley going south. It gets just passed [sic] the camera. The vehicle stops. It sits for several minutes and then you can see the brake lights come back on and then it appears the vehicle continues south down the alley."

At the time, Appellant's sister lived at 1003 South Garfield, just on the other side of the fence from the alley where Black's body was dumped.