Austin Police Department (APD) is requesting the public’s help in identifying a suspected serial killer whose DNA has been linked to the murders of two women in the metropolitan area.
On June 21 at about 4 a.m. police received a call from a man who said he saw a body in a home in the 2600 block of Metcalf Road.
When officers arrived they found a dead woman, later identified as 34-year-old Alyssa Rivera, inside an abandoned home.
A brief investigation by homicide detectives and crime expert Investigators became convinced that Rivera was murdered at home by an unknown suspect.
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The Austin Police Department is asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspect in the murders of Alyssa Rivera and Alba Janice Aviles. (Austin Police Department)
On July 3, police released video and photos of a man involved in Rivera’s murder. The video showed a Hispanic man walking next to a woman who was taller than him.
As the investigation progressed, investigators found a DNA connection between Rivera’s case and the unsolved murder of Alba Janice Aviles on April 14, 2018, in the 300 block of Old San Antonio Road in Bastrop County, Texas.
The Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the murder of Aviles, who left Club Caribe on Felter Lane in Austin the night of her murder.
The Austin Police Department is asking for the public’s help in identifying a suspect seen on surveillance. (Austin Police Department)
The club is just 3 miles from where Rivera was killed, and both killings appear to be sexual in nature, police said.
Police said although no suspects have been identified in either case, DNA evidence suggests the suspect in both cases is the same.
Austin is notorious for serial killers.
Last year, Texas police and US Marshals announced the arrest of Raul Meza Jr., 62, in the murders of former probation officer Jesse Fraga, 80, who gave Meza a place to stay for years, and Gloria Lofton, 66, who was found dead in her home in 2019.
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Raul Meza, 63, allegedly killed at least two people, but law enforcement officials say he is linked to at least 10 murders in Texas. (Austin Police Department)
Meza is a child killer who has been in and out of prison for decades.
On May 20, 2023 he allegedly strangled Fraga with a belt, stabbed her, and broke her spine, promoting human hunting Which ended with the suspect calling the police and surrendering.
Meza has a long rap catalogue that goes back to 1982, when he sexual harassment and strangled an 8-year-old girl to death outside an Austin elementary school.
In 1982, Raul Meza raped and murdered 8-year-old Kendra Page and dumped her body behind Langford Elementary School in southeast Austin, Fox 7 reports. (Fox 7 Austin)
He served 11 years of a 30-year sentence before being released. He violated parole in 1994, went back to prison and was released in 2002. Meza was on parole until 2016.
In January, law enforcement issued a search warrant for Meza’s Google account from Nov. 1, 2016, to May 29, 2023, looking for information related to a 2018 cold case in Austin, as well as his connection to at least two murders in San Antonio.
“Meza committed additional sexual assaults after his supervised release ended in 2016, and I believe the data associated with the Google LLC account will assist investigators in confirming Meza as a suspect. slaughter “Information was also being sought regarding the murders of Gloria Lofton, Jesse Fraga and the San Antonio shootings, as well as other cold cases,” the search warrant states, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
There is speculation that one of Meza’s victims is college student Nicole Coleman, whose nude body was found with signs of injury in a wooded area of Austin in 2018.
According to police and local news reports, 62-year-old Raul Meza Jr. is accused of multiple murders dating back to 1975, but police are also investigating other killings he may have been involved in. (Pluggerville Police Department)
Her unsolved murder case has loomed over the city like a storm cloud for years.
Meza’s arrest made him Austin’s first known serial killer, according to city officials, after the “Servant Girl Annihilator,” who was believed to have killed eight women in 1885, though the killer was never caught.
Police were looking into Meza for other deaths in Austin, though they told Fox News Digital at the time that the deaths were not connected to the drownings at Lady Bird Lake near Rainey Street, where four people were found dead in a span of a few weeks.
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Detectives also said at the time that they found no evidence of a serial killer or foul play in the Rainey Street and Lady Bird Lake incidents.
Still, independent investigators, concerned residents, web sleuths and thousands of members of a Facebook group tracking the series of events have expressed concern about a possible killer lurking behind the killings of people on Rainey Street, where there is a strip of bars about a block from the water’s edge.
APD told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the deaths of Rivera and Aviles are not connected to the deaths near Lady Bird Lake.
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Austin police homicide and missing persons detectives, the lake patrol unit and crime scene experts investigated at Lady Bird Lake last year. A body was found in the lake on Monday. (Fox 7 Austin)
Police said the homicide unit investigates every death in the city to determine if it is suspicious, and after the initial investigation, a medical examiner conducts a physical examination to determine if there are any signs of physical injuries. After that, a toxicology exam is conducted, which can take months.
“Through this process, a death that occurred near Lady Bird Lake in December 2022 was ruled a homicide,” police told Fox News Digital. “In that particular case, the victim was shot while he was driving and an argument was taking place between two groups. Due to the results of these investigations, the other deaths in and around Lady Bird Lake are not considered suspicious.”
Police also said there may be other murders linked to the suspect in the killings of Rivera and Aviles. However, APD said it does not have “any unsolved murders that match what happened to the two women.”
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Investigators are continuing to pursue leads about the man shown in the video and are urging anyone with information to contact them at 512-974-TIPS.
Anyone who wishes to remain anonymous can contact Capital Area Crime Stoppers by visiting austincrimestoppers.org or calling 512-472-8477. Tips leading to an arrest could result in a reward of up to $1,000.
Fox News Digital’s Chris Eberhart and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
