Defense submits plea offer for accused ‘serial killer’ Raul Meza
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Raul Meza, a convicted 1980s murderer currently facing two additional murder charges in the 2019 death of Gloria Lofton and the 2023 death of Jesse Fraga, was in court Thursday.
Prosecutors told the judge Meza’s attorneys presented them with a plea deal. Russ Hunt, Jr., who’s representing Meza, said the offer is 50 years for each case, to be served concurrently.
The District Attorney’s Office said it is in the early stages of reviewing the offer.
TIMELINE: What we know of Raul Meza’s criminal history
Meza killed 8-year-old Kendra Page in south Austin in 1982. In May of last year, police arrested him in the death of 80-year-old Fraga. When Meza called the police to turn himself in, the department said he implicated himself in Lofton’s murder as well, and so came the subsequent murder charges.
“It made me sick to my stomach,” said Tracy Page, Kendra’s sister, regarding the plea.
Christina Fultz, one of Lofton’s daughters, called the notion of a plea “crap.”
Meza’s attorney Russ Hunt, Jr., addressed reporters after the hearing.
“Mr. Meza, as I said, his motivation is to work the case out,” Hunt said. “He would like to avoid a trial, all of the trouble and emotional turmoil it brings to everyone involved in the case including the families of the victims, so he would like to avoid that, and we are trying very hard to avoid that.”
APD ‘deeply sorry’ about DNA ‘oversight’ in Lofton’s murder case
Last week, the Austin Police Department (APD) addressed an internal investigation into the handling of a DNA hit as investigators looked into Lofton’s 2019 death on Sara Drive in east Austin.
Meza’s arrest affidavit stated that in 2020, a DNA profile obtained from a sexual assault kit for Lofton’s matched Meza’s DNA, but police did not arrest Meza at that time, which was roughly four years before Fraga was killed.
Former Police Chief Joseph Chacon, who held the role at the time of Meza’s arrest, launched the internal investigation last year to address what he called “potential investigative lapses,” an APD spokesperson previously told KXAN.
Raul Meza Case: Detailing Meza’s early criminal history
After that internal investigation concluded, APD said a detective working Lofton’s case received information about a DNA hit on Raul Meza but did not follow up. He will not face any discipline, the department said, because state law prohibits the formal discipline of officers more than 180 days after an incident.
Interim Chief Robin Henderson issued the following statement on this matter:
“The Austin Police Department is deeply sorry about the oversight related to the DNA Lab Report in the Raul Meza case. We realize the impacts this has on the case itself, community and most importantly the victims and their families. As soon as the error was brought to our attention, we addressed it as quickly as we could to identify how it happened and implemented policies to avoid incidents like this from reoccurring. Since this occurrence, the Austin Police Department has added redundancies into the notification process to ensure this does not happen again.”
Interim APD Chief Robin Henderson
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