2002 East End murders

In 2002, a series of murders occurred in the East End area of Houston, Texas, involving three victims: a teenage high-school student and two adult waitresses. The cases involved Edgardo Rafael Cubas Matamoros, a Honduran citizen born February 7, 1979; Walter Alexander Sorto, a Salvadoran citizen born August 10, 1977; and Eduardo Navarro, who was 15 years old at the time of the crimes.

The first victim, Esmeralda Alvarado, was a 15-year-old sophomore at Lamar High School who lived in the East End. She disappeared on January 18, 2002, after leaving her boyfriend's house. She was kidnapped, raped, and shot to death. Her body was left in a field in an industrial zone on the block of 18000 Market Street and was discovered on January 22, 2002.

The other two victims, 24-year-old Roxana Aracelie Capulin and 38-year-old Maria Moreno Rangel, worked as waitresses at the El Mirador restaurant in the East End, a business Capulin's family, who had immigrated from El Salvador, had acquired in 1994. The two women disappeared on May 31, 2002, and their bodies were found on July 1, 2002, inside Capulin's vehicle. Both had been shot to death and had their eyes and mouths covered with tape.

Sorto turned himself in at a police station in an apparent attempt to claim a reward for solving the crimes and confessed after his arrest. Navarro was arrested at his residence the same day, and Cubas was arrested while working at a construction site in Tomball, Texas. One of Cubas's attorneys, Gilberto Villarreal, said Cubas also confessed to killing Capulin in addition to Alvarado.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty against Sorto and Cubas. Navarro, who served as the getaway driver in the deaths of Capulin and Rangel, was ineligible for the death penalty because he was a minor at the time of the crimes; in 2004 he pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery under a plea agreement and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

In November 2003, Sorto was sentenced to death for the murders of Capulin and Rangel. Cubas was convicted of the capital murder of Alvarado on May 10, 2004, and sentenced to death on May 22, 2004, following jury deliberations of about two and a half hours. Cubas's defense team included attorneys Frances "Poppy" Northcutt and Gilberto Villarreal; several of his relatives traveled from Honduras to testify at his trial. Both Sorto and Cubas have been held on death row at the Polunsky Unit in West Livingston, Texas. Cubas's execution, originally scheduled for January 16, 2014, was later rescinded.