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The 15th anniversary of Heidi Seeman's murder is a reminder of Bexar County's
1,600 cold cases, some more than 50 years old. February 12, 1993
was a work day for Sheila Smith-Ramirez, so the best she could do was to walk her 15-year-old daughter, Emily Garcia, who
was three months pregnant, to the bus stop that morning. Emily had a
doctor's appointment to discuss prenatal care. She was in and out of trouble, and on probation, but on this morning she
cooperated with her mother and boarded the bus. She never made it to the doctor's office. Later that night, San Antonio
police officers told the frantic mother that she had to wait 48 hours before she could report her daughter missing.
On February 23, 1993, a road crew clearing brush on Old Cranes Mill Road near Canyon Lake,
found the nude body of a young female who had a baby boy in her womb. Investigators determined she had been tortured, sexually
assaulted, strangled, and bound with rope, and dumped along the roadside. There were no personal items, clothing, or identification
on the body that had been discarded eight to ten hours earlier, so Emily was listed as Jane Doe, and buried in a pauper's
grave in New Braunfels. More than a year later, one of Sheila's friends watched an unsolved
crimes news segment and recognized the backward four that had been tattooed on one of Emily's hands. Sheila was now living
in Missouri, but she returned to Texas with Emily's fingerprint card. After her daughter was positively identified, her body
was exhumed and buried in the family cemetery in Somerset.
Emily's case remains unsolved. She is one of many homicide victims whose killers have never
been brought to justice. In most cases, the victims' corpses were found and autopsied, and evidence was collected by the Bexar
County Sheriff's office, San Antonio Police Department, or other law enforcement agencies. For lack of witnesses or enough
solid evidence to connect suspects to these crimes, the cases have gone cold. Two of the
City's most famous cold cases are those of 11-year-old Heidi Seeman and 7-year-old Erica Botello. Heidi was abducted 15 years
agoon August 4, 1990 as she walked along Stahl Road after spending the night at a friend's house. Erica was snatched outside
her residence at the West End Baptist Manor Apartments on West 35th Street on August 23, a day after Heidi's body was found
on a ranch near Wimberley. Both cases were high profile, as thousands of volunteers who had organized to search for Heidi
also turned their attention toward finding Erica. Both had been sexually assaulted, then strangled and discarded by their
captors. Suspects were named in both homicides, but in Heidi's case, there was not evidence for a conviction. One man accused
of murdering Erica was deemed mentally retarded and incompetent to stand trial and was sent to San Antonio State Hospital.
Another suspect provided an alibi that he was at work during the time of the abduction, and a third was released for lack
of evidence. Heidi Seeman's murder was the catalyst for the founding of the Heidi Search
Center, which last Thursday organized a memorial walk to commemorate her 26th birthday. SAPD
Detective George Saidler is currently assigned to investigate Heidi's murder. He has been on the force since 1975, has worked
in the homicide division since 1992, and in 2000 was assigned full-time to cold cases. A second detective was added to the
SAPD cold-case unit in 2002, and a third was assigned part-time in 2005. While the sheriff's office lists 15 missing persons
and cold homicide cases on it's website and SAPD lists 47, there are 1,600 cold cases dating back to 1952. Police have reviewed
hundreds of cold cases during the past 15 years, and since 1996, solved more than 20. "I
guess some of it's luck, and sometimes time is on our side." says Saidler. "DNA has been extremely helpful...and witnesses
have decided to come forward, and we have confronted suspects on some things (they) had done. There are any number of ways
these cases are solved."
Saidler says a homicide case goes cold when a detective
is transferred to another department, and a case is more than a year old. "Normally when they come to us, there are things
that lead to a quick resolution, such as minute pieces of evidence, to give us that one little lead to a suspect."Saidler says the cold-case squad investigates all unsolved murders: From an innocent child snatched from her
yard to gang members, whose lifestyle led to their demise. "As far as we're concerned, we don't care. We file cases on bad
drug deals, street hookers. Nobody has the right to take anybody's life." Time can work for
or against detectives working on cold cases. One example is the murder of Gladys Ramirez. The police and fire departments
were summoned to a house fire in April 1980. Once the flames were extinguished, investigators found her burned body, but soon
discovered she had been stabbed and strangled. They ruled her death a homicide. Twenty-four years
later, a former San Antonio resident read about the case on SAPD website, and called police. The witness identified Gladys'
spouse, Jose Angel Ramirez, as the murder suspect. He was arrested in October 2004 and is awaiting trial. Bexar
County Sheriff's detectives solved the case of 28-year-old Alma Salazar, who was abducted, raped, murdered, and dumped in
the Medina River at Applewhite Road. A DNA sample collected from Julian Lassere Jr. In 2000 was linked to the murder through
the National Combined DNA Indexing System. The DNA sample collected from Lassere while he was in jail led to his capital-murder
indictment in October 2004. "Some of these cases we reopened, and we have time on our hands.
When we investigate, we know they're 20 years old, with no leads, and nobody coming forward," says Bexar County Sheriff's
detective Ruben Arevalos. Yet, the sheriff's cold-case team remains determined to solve cases,
even old ones. "We start finding these witnesses who forgot they were scared, had a fear of retaliation from suspects. They
don't have that fear anymore. With the Natalie De Leon case ( a 16-year-old who was murdered after hitchhiking on Highway
46 near Canyon Lake) we have identified a lot more witnesses than those back in the 1980's. We will not stop and put them
aside, we continue to work with these cases." But time also works against cold-case investigators.
Arevalos says in some of the 20-year-old cases, semen samples and skin cells collected from the crime scene cannot provide
enough DNA to be tested or have degraded over the years. "If we had had the technology back then, but of course we didn't,"
says Arevalos. "Sometimes we have only one shot, and if we use it up, we can't get any more. There are other tests that will
be developed in the future when there might be a possibility to get DNA profile out of evidence. There are instances where
we don't pursue it, we wait." Arevalos says the wait can be frustrating. Investigators might have
a suspect, but not enough evidence to solve the crime and win a conviction. Maybe the suspect chooses to remain silent, or
witnesses are afraid. "A lot of people don't want to get involved, they want to stay away from the situation, and don't want
to talk to the police."
Muriel Perry feels this frustration. Muriel
and her grandchildren, Michael and Nicole Blaskoski, were coping with the news that their father, Robert Blaskoski, had gone
missing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, after he met Donald Ray Ford at the airport after he returned from a job in Arizona. Authorities
couldn't charge Ford with murder because Blaskoski's body hadn't been found. But Ford was convicted for stealing more than
$72,000 from Blaskoski's bank and investment accounts and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was paroled after four years.
On December 13, 1996, the family was blindsided by another tragedy: Muriel's
youngest grandchild, 27-year-old Noelle Blaskoski, was found dead in her room at the Oakview Motel. Noelle had rented the
room only two weeks earlier, and told neighbors she was saving money to move back to Houston. Blaskoski was a dancer at the
Wild Zebra strip club on the Northeast Side. The motel manager found the
door ajar, and saw Noelle on the floor of her room wearing only a black T-shirt. Her hands were bound. The television was
blaring, and her car remained in the parking lot. The medical examiner determined her death was caused by "manual strangulation."
Muriel says she was irked by the frequent turnover of detectives on her
granddaughter's case. "In five years, we had six detectives. I would call each new detective, they would act surprised that
they had the case."
Muriel also says she could feel a coolness over the telephone whenever a new detective
reviewed Noelle's case. "I knew they were thinking, 'what do you think when she worked at that kind of job?"
But there was more to Noelle than what appears in the police report.
"She wasn't the easiest person to get along with," Muriel says. "I'm sure she did her share of drugs and her share of drinking.
She was a free spirit...very independent. Every family has someone who is completely different from everybody, that was Noelle."
Muriel says Noelle's motel door locks were broken
the night she was murdered, and she believes the motive was robbery. The autopsy revealed no drugs, liquor, and she wasn't
sexually assaulted. And she believes the police have overlooked some important, but missing, evidence. "The week before she came over to my house for dinner, and she was dressed very nicely in a new ruffled
blouse, new pants, and new shoes," says Muriel. "The odd thing is that when they (police) gave us a cardboard box with all
of her stuff, including jewelry she had purchased from her sister, Nicole, and more jewelry that her father had given to her,
none of the new clothes were in the box. I think it's possible that a woman was involved; a man wouldn't be interested in
those things." When Muriel asked to review the evidence that SAPD investigators
retained in the case, there was no jewelry or new clothes. Muriel has coped with
her sorrow over the untimely deaths of her son-in-law and her granddaughter by joining the San Antonio Chapter of Parents
of Murdered Children, where after six years as a member, she now serves as the chapter's secretary. She also underwent training
as a group counselor for the monthly gatherings of the support group. Even as
she disapproved on Noelle's occupation as an exotic dancer, she says she did not deserve to die. "She was full of joy. Her
name was a reminder of the holidays." Meanwhile, Detective Arevalos remains determined
to keep plowing through the pile of the cold homicide cases in San Antonio and Bexar County. "We're not going to sit on our
hands. Anybody walking on the streets, who has committed a murder, might get a knock on their door. We're going to put these
guys in jail."
By Michael Cary
San Antonio Current 2005
If anyone has ANY information,no matter how small, on the abduction,
rape, and/or murder of Emily Jeanette Garcia and her unborn son, please contact:
The Investigating Officer
Det. Sgt. Tommy Ward
Comal County Sheriff's Office
830-620-3400
Case # 93-00164
Or
Emily's Mother
Sheila Smith-Ramirez
Phone# 210-223-5317
Emily's Aunt
Theresa Yeary-Dontrich
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