Every story has a beginning and this had its starting point on August 25, 2012, at the very moment in which Ricardo “Ricky” Paniagua and Brenda Delgado they crossed paths and felt Cupid's crush. Only, in this case, Cupid was distracted and did not shoot his gold-tipped arrows to infect love (those that his mother Venus gave him according to the myth) but would have used the lead-tipped ones that instill the opposite.

Instant love

Brenda Berenice Delgado Reynaga (born June 18, 1982, in Mexico) had come from very humble beginnings. Luis, her father, a factory worker in central Mexico, decided that his family deserved a better fate and moved with his wife María and their five children to the city of Dallas, Texas, in the USA. They settled in a modest house in the southeast of the city. Luis got a job in construction; María found a job in a post office and, in addition, she dedicated herself to cleaning houses.

Brenda, the second of the couple's five children and the only girl, was an excellent student. After finishing high school, although she dreamed of studying medicine, her parents could not afford the university tuition. So she worked as a waitress in a restaurant and flower shop while attending the neighborhood evangelical church.

Every once in a while she went out with her friends. She liked trendy restaurants and she fantasized about dressing like the young women who went to those places. But she couldn't afford to live alone nor leave the massive clothing brands. In 2012, she managed to move in with a friendly couple. During those months, he downloaded a couple of applications for dating on his cell phone. That's how Brenda, 30, met Ricky, 38.

Ricky Paniagua was born in California and despite not having an easy childhood (he grew up in a small bungalow) with effort he ended up graduating from the prestigious Stanford Medical School. He got married, but things didn't work out. In 2011, already in the final proceedings of her divorce, she moved to Dallas to complete her dermatology residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Skinny, with short dark hair combed back, he was seen as a serious, calm and thoughtful man. When he discovered the beautiful Mexican brunette on the dating app, he was dazzled.

The first meeting was scheduled for Saturday, August 25, 2012, at the American Airlines Center, at 7:30 p.m. Ricky had invited her to the Jennifer Lopez concert.

With her five-foot-two height, long thick dark hair, almond-shaped eyes, and enterprising character Brenda had no trouble winning over the up-and-coming doctor. She too was captivated by that doctor with a bright future. She saw him as cute and similar to David Schwimmer, the actor who played Ross on the hit series Friends. He was the perfect candidate.

Marriage on the horizon

In November, just three months after their first meeting, Brenda moved in with Ricky. He had a very stylish apartment in Fitzhugh Urban Flats, very close to the neighborhood where she had always lived. dreamed of living He introduced him to his parents, Maria cooked for him, and Ricky tried to speak Spanish with them. The relationship flourished.

In April 2013, Brenda posted online: “Happy birthday to the smartest, most amazing man I know. Ricky, together we share so much happiness, you are my best friend, I love you with all my heart and I can't imagine my life without you”.

Two months later she became pregnant. The shock came after she told Ricky. It is not known what he said, but Brenda had an abortion and did not tell her family. She had catharsis by writing a message to herself in Notes on her black iPhone (detectives discovered this after the crime). There she told how anguished she felt and that she promised that she and Ricky would one day have children.

Except for this sad episode, those first two and a half years, the couple seemed to work out.

In the second half of 2013, Brenda began studying dental hygiene at Stanford-Brown College. Her classmates said that when she introduced herself on the first day of class, she only talked about Ricky.

In early 2014, Ricky gave her an engagement ring. On the horizon Brenda saw the word marriage written. Her boyfriend accompanied her to Mexico to visit relatives, and she got a job as a dental assistant to help with household expenses. But one day in July of that same year, Brenda came to class crying. She told a coworker that Ricky had asked her to quit and told her to move out.

Brenda moved in with a friend, but began getting low grades, missing work, and becoming obsessed with winning him back.

Of spies and coincidences

In September 2014, Ricky signed up at a dance studio to take salsa classes. Men and women danced and had fun intertwining their bodies. It was a new beginning for him who was alone.

One day he came to his class and among the women was Brenda. What a coincidence!, he thought. They danced with different partners and when she had to do it together the chemistry between them turned on again. “It was like getting to know each other again, and we decided to give ourselves another chance”, Ricky would recount some time later.

For a few months, everything evolved very well. Again, the relationship promised to end in marriage. But the more Ricky thought about it, the more doubts he had about the relationship.

As of 2015, Ricky was working as a professor at the University of Texas Hospital. Under the apparent calm, something happened that dynamited the foundations of the relationship. One day in February he made up his mind and asked Brenda to take some time off: he wasn't sure what he felt. He needed to think about whether he wanted to move forward with the couple.

Ricky thought they were on good terms. They sent each other civilized text messages to know how they were doing and, too often, they ran into each other without having agreed... He was going to run and she was right next to her exercising; he was eating at the Panera Bread restaurant with Mirlande, the nurse he'd asked out, and Brenda was showing up. “At the time I thought it was just a coincidence”, Ricky explained.

She still didn't realize that her ex's curiosity about her life had turned sick.

Brenda had set up a real spy operation. She had Ricky's email under her control and knew his iCloud passwords. In addition, he had in his possession the key to the apartment they had shared. He had alsodownloaded an application that allowed him to geolocate Ricky's phone. He had everything under control and always knew where his ex was. I took screenshots of Ricky's messages and photos. I kept track of who he was dating, where he was traveling, and even saw his plane tickets.

He was his shadow: she lived with him without Ricky's knowledge.

Of course: when they exchanged messages, she took great care not to reveal how much she knew about his life. Brenda was confident that she would be able to resume managing the relationship. She had done it once before and would do it again.

That certainty lasted until May 2015, when he met Kendra Hatcher. Within a few weeks, Brenda realized that this woman was different from the rest. This time, Ricky's relationship was serious.

Bitterness for the happiness of others

In the month of June he had confirmation of his presentiment: Ricky sent him an email where he kindly let him know that he was in a new relationship. The text hit Brenda in the middle of the stomach, it was devastating, she lost her breath. She refloated her insecurity. Her ex was not only telling her that the cut was final, but that he was dating a colleague.

The new woman in Ricky's life, Kendra Hatcher, was attractive and successful. She Originally from the state of Illinois, she had been a standout volleyball player and captain of the cheerleading squad in high school. After graduating as a dentist, she married a college classmate. The marriage failed and, in 2010, she moved to Dallas where she began her career as a dentist, specializing in children. At 35 years old, the pediatric dentist had a promising future. He lived at 17 Gables Park, a high-end apartment building in Dallas Uptown, a prime neighborhood. The complex had an infinity saltwater pool, a state-of-the-art gym, a gourmet cafe, an internet room, and a 24-hour concierge.

Kendra and Ricky met on the Tinder app. The first time they dated was on May 24, 2015. He took her to dinner at Kozy Kitchen, and they quickly realized they had the same values ​​and interests.

In those first three (and only) months of love, Ricky and Kendra were the postcard of perfect happiness. Getaways, expensive trips, romantic photos on Facebook, meals in trendy restaurants… everything was uploaded on the networks. They had already started talking about marriage and their families had met.

The problem is that happiness was exposed.

From the other side of the net, Brenda glared on. She couldn't take it. She was soured by Kendra's smile and her perfect teeth; she envied her enemy's green eyes and resented the high standard of living the couple demonstrated.

Because Kendra had her Facebook account without restrictions, Brenda could read all her posts. That's how she found out that Kendra and Ricky had traveled to California and also to a resort in Austin. His head was abuzz with bad ideas as he took screenshots. She was eaten up with anger: she had dedicated three years of her life to him, she was still wearing her engagement ring, they had lived together, she had miscarried a child… and now, she was replaced by a typical “American beauty”.< /mark>

The neutron hate bomb was almost ready.

However, on the few occasions he was with Ricky, he concealed his anger. In July, a month after the final breakup, Ricky needed to fix his car. It was Brenda who made an appointment with a friendly mechanic and drove him there. They left the car and then he drove Ricky to work. He was more than kind.

Deadly Contract

Brenda thought about it a lot: if Kendra disappeared, Ricky would come back to her. The problem was that woman. she needed to wipe her off the map. That would require a couple of hitmen.

How to Lower GGT Levels https://t. co/OEcbelvpb0 via @YouTube

— shazia athar Thu Jul 30 12:30:18 +0000 2020

He went for drinks with his cousin Moses Martinez. To the meeting he brought a baseball bat. She told him that she would buy him a new car or pay him if he threatened Kendra with the bat to scare her. Moses told her no, he thought his cousin was drunk.

Brenda then looked for a friend named Jennifer Escobar, whom she had met working in a mall. She knew of Jennifer's financial needs and invited her to move in with her. In early August 2015, Jennifer arrived with her bags. I hadn't finished disarming them before Brenda was already talking obsessively about Ricky and Kendra. Uncomfortable, Jennifer began to spend more and more time outside the apartment. I wanted to avoid her. To no avail, the vile offer came: he promised her drugs or a new car if he helped her get revenge on them. He confessed to her that he wanted to use the bat to knock out his ex into a coma and then wanted to kill Kendra by grabbing her from behind and “stabbing her in the chest with a hypodermic needle full of drugs or just beating her to death”, Jennifer recounted. Terrified, she looked for an excuse to leave the apartment.

Brenda went ahead with her plan. She reached out to a friend of Jennifer's, Crystal Cortes, who was a 23-year-old, low-income, single mother of a 6-year-old boy. Crystal admired Brenda, she seemed solvent, determined, she dressed well, she used MAC makeup, she had her own Lexus car and two big leather armchairs in her living room in front of a huge television... When Brenda offered her $500 to help her, Crystal said yes.

Three for a crime

Brenda started taking her out to good places to eat to plan the homicide. She bought herself some night vision binoculars and together they began to chase her victim: Kendra. At those meals they decided that the best way to kill her was to shoot her, but they didn't know about weapons. Brenda asked Crystal to look for "a shooter."

They started wandering around Crystal's old neighborhood and found an old friend of hers named Kristopher Love. At 31 years old and with a luxuriant background, he made a living selling small amounts of marijuana. On her tattooed body was one that read “1 MAN ARMY” and was accompanied by an image of the Soviet AK-47 assault rifle. He was the character they were looking for. Bold and fearless. Love knew about guns and wanted to start a business in the world of prostitution. For that he needed money. Crystal would drive the car and Love (what a last name for a murderer!) would shoot.

Brenda promised him a payment of $3,000 in cash and drugs. He took the offer. I would use a Smith & Wesson 40 caliber.

Double graduation

In August 2015, Ricky and Kendra were enjoying their lives, oblivious to the ex's cruel plans. In September they would travel to Cancun together.

Brenda, choked on her own rage, graduated on August 26th. She posed at Stanford-Brown smiling with her classmates, her family brought her flowers and they went to eat to celebrate. He imposed a happiness that he lacked. She was an expert at lying.

Ricky had texted him wishing him luck on his last test. But in the same message he announced to her that as of August 31 he would cancel the cell phone plan that he was paying for Brenda , since in October he would move to Sacramento for a new job.

This all decided Brenda. The time had come to finalize her plans. It would be on Wednesday, September 2, the day before they left for the beaches of Cancun.

For the crime, Brenda borrowed a silver BMW from a friend that Crystal was going to drive to take Love to Kendra's house. But the car that morning had a problem with the accelerator. They had to take it to fix. They left the BMW with Brenda's mechanic friend, José Ortiz, and he lent them his black Jeep Cherokee pickup so they could get around.

Crystal took Brenda to the public library where she would do the paperwork for certification of her recent degree. It was an excellent alibi.

Crystal then picked Love up and they parked the Jeep in front of Kendra's office. Crystal and Love spent the rest of the morning staring at the dentist's white Toyota Camry.

At around 2:30 p.m., Crystal realized she had to pick up her son from school. They went there, she picked up her son, she left him at the grandmother's house and they hurried back to the place. Kendra was still there. They breathed relieved, the plan continued.

When Kendra finished working, they followed her at first without a problem. At one point, she strayed from it (it would later be revealed that she went to a friend's apartment to look for a waterproof camera to take to Cancun) and they lost sight of her. Soon to graduate as assassins, the hit men went to the parking lot of Kendra's house to wait for her there. A few minutes later the lady of the house arrived.

Love, who was hiding in the backseat, got out of the Jeep after Kendra passed them in the garage. He calmly walked over to where she was parking. As soon as the woman got out of the car, she raised the pistol and shot directly at her head.

A neighbor, getting out of his vehicle, testified at trial that he heard Kendra's scream and explained that it sounded like an animal howl.

A bullet had pierced his skull.

Kristopher didn't hesitate: he grabbed Kendra's bag and camera and ran to the Jeep.

He and Crystal escaped from the parking lot. On the way they had to avoid the body that was lying face up on the cement floor.

Brenda's wish had come true: Kendra had been executed with a precise shot to the back of the head.

Media uproar

At the exact second the gunpowder entered Kendra's head, Brenda was having drinks at Chili's with a classmate. At 9:00 PM he took her to her house. Just then Brenda called Crystal to find out how everything had turned out and asked her to look for her to go get the BMW and thus be able to return the Jeep. When Crystal arrived, the first thing Brenda did was sling Kendra's bag over her shoulder and smile. She was already starting to take her empty spot.

The city was shocked by the news. At the dentist's garage door, people would leave offerings, lighted candles and banners with her photo.

At the beginning of the investigation, since Kendra's wallet had not been found, everyone thought it was a robbery gone bad.

A week later and after some statements from Ricky's acquaintances, the investigation turned 180 degrees and focused on Brenda Delgado. They said that, since the breakup, she had been harassing him, reading his texts, his emails, and chasing him around town. Brenda was called by the police to testify.

The case aroused the interest of all the media: successful professionals, a good economic level, a possible love triangle, jealousy, bullets... all were condiments for an excellent police report and a good rating. Television networks, true crime programs (48 Hours, Dateline and 20/20) competed for the best coverage of this story. London's Daily Mail sent a reporter. Everyone wanted to talk to Brenda and get exclusive photos.

Brenda's relatives insisted the police were wrong. Her mother Maria told the Daily Mail: “She is a beautiful person, very Christian…She has the best family values ​​and is not the jealous type of woman”. George Milner, a prestigious Dallas lawyer, was hired by her family to represent her. He maintained that Brenda had never been in trouble before and that she did not have any mental illness: “She is incapable of violence”.

Not even Ricky Paniagua suspected her. She said they had a good relationship. Even that same night of the murder, Ricky had sent a message to Brenda to tell her what had happened. Brenda wrote back the next morning and offered to bring him vegetables and fruit. Ricky said she was sweet and supportive, that she couldn't just turn into a cold-blooded killer overnight.

No one knew the real Brenda.

Investigation and leak

To the first interrogation, Brenda appeared dressed in a black cap, a colorful T-shirt, dark jogging pants, and white sneakers. She had her hair tied up in a high ponytail. Detective Eric Barnes saw that she was wearing a bracelet that said "I am second", they were the ones that some Christians used to wear, implying that Jesus Christ had arrived before. Brenda claimed to be a believer and looked Barnes in the eye. She asked him why they had come to her. When he told her of the crime, she took a neatly folded piece of paper from her wallet: it was the receipt from Chili's restaurant that showed that, at that hour, she could not have been in the bloody parking lot.

Barnes questioned her for two hours and found some inconsistencies in her account. Brenda claimed not to know too much about Ricky's relationship with Kendra, but the evidence said otherwise. Barnes then resorted to an empathy strategy to try to break it. In a kind voice he outlined his theory: “I think you hated the fact that you didn't feel convenient enough for Ricky. It could be that he didn't like how you dressed; it could be that he didn't want a dental assistant but a real dentist as a partner; it could be that your parents did not have enough money; it could be that their standards were too high for you. And that all of that was a hard pill to swallow! Look in the mirror and say: What does she have that I don't? I don't think you're a bad person, but you're a hurt person and you're out of options. Everyone has a breaking point. And this is what I think happened”.

She almost succeeded, but Brenda managed to pull herself together and shut up.

On police records, Brenda had only one traffic ticket. She paid for it and they had to let her go.

After the interrogation and frightened by the media uproar, she chose to elope. The entire country hated the person who had ended the life of the beautiful dentist.

He got on a bus to Mexico.

On October 7, 2015, a federal arrest warrant was issued for unlawful flight. On April 6, 2016, six months after she was charged with the murder, the FBI added her to the list of the ten most wanted fugitives and offered a reward of 100 thousand dollars. The poster with her photo said that she should be considered “armed and dangerous”.

Brenda was the 506th person to be added to that list (dating back to 1950) and the ninth woman.

During the judicial process several certainties arose:

-Brenda Delgado's constant harassment of her ex-partner.

-She tracked his iPhone, had his social security number, screenshots with his texts, and personal email messages.

-Attempts to hire various people to harm Kendra were proven.

-The car they exchanged with the mechanic was recorded on security cameras. José Ortiz himself, upon seeing him on the news, was terrified of the police to tell what he knew.

Crystal was arrested a few days later and the messages, between her and Love, were incriminating. In the glove compartment of his car they found the Smith & Wesson. He was also arrested. It remained to catch the brain of the band.

The obsession on trial

For six months, Brenda lived a fiction. She led a quiet life with her relatives in the city of Torreón, in Monterrey, Mexico. She tried to go unnoticed while the federal forces of the neighboring country searched for her unsuccessfully.

The FBI, in conjunction with the Mexican authorities, ended up finding her. She was arrested in Coahuila and put up no fight.

On October 6, 2016, she was extradited to Texas for trial. she avoided the death penalty thanks to the agreement between countries that did not allow a Mexican citizen (although she was also a US citizen) to be extradited to face a death sentence.

In the parade of witnesses, it was heard that Brenda was bitter about Ricky's new relationship with the dentist. The jury saw the photos that Brenda had on her cell phone of the couple and how they had been geolocating. Milton Martinez, a high school classmate, testified that he once took her out to eat and spent the night talking about Ricky and Kendra. At one point he asked him if he knew anyone who could hurt someone. .. A stupefied Milton advised him: “whatever you're thinking about… don't even think about it”.

Kevin Brooks, the prosecutor in the case, said in his address: “In a love triangle, the three individuals usually know each other. That beautiful soul Kendra Hatcher, I didn't know this woman”, he said pointing to Brenda Delgado, “The only person in that made up love triangle, was Delgado”.

First to go to trial was Kristopher Love, in October 2018. Based on Crystal's statement, which incriminated both Love and Brenda, it took the jury two hours to find him guilty of shooting Kendra . At the age of 34, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Crystal, who was driving the getaway car thanks to the plea agreement against Love and Brenda, was sentenced to 35 years in prison and could be released on parole in 2033.

In her pivotal testimony, she told the jury that Brenda Delgado envied Kendra and wanted to get rid of her anyway.

Bars for a sick love

On Friday, June 7, 2019, in the city of Dallas, after a five-day trial and in just twenty minutes of deliberation, the jury for Brenda's trial returned with the verdict in their hands: GUILTY.

Brenda Delgado, 36, had been the evil mastermind who orchestrated the murder of Kendra Hatcher out of jealousy and envy.

Not once, during the days that the trial lasted, did Brenda look at the family of her victim, nor at the witnesses. She only stared at Ricky as he took the stand. He refused to look in her direction, but was compelled by the prosecutor when he asked him to identify the defendant. Their eyes met for only two seconds.

The sentence was life, with no possibility of parole.

Bonnie Jameson, Kendra's mother, said upon hearing the sentence: "Justice was served with this verdict." To the defendant, whom he referred to as “the root of evil,” he said to her face: “You can never be the kind of woman my daughter Kendra Hatcher was.”

Ricky Paniagua lives today in Sacramento, California, and works at Roseville Medical Center. Not much else is known about his life.

Brenda is 38 years old today and will be behind bars forever. Her dreams were trapped in the madness of blood she concocted, like the butterfly she's tattooed since she was a teenager-on her lower back-hers. In the cell there is no space for it to flap its wings.

CONTINUE READING: