Man shot 19-year-old woman dead, dumped nude body on Trinity River bank, police allege
Janeecia Mason was walking with another prostitute near an industrial area in Dallas on a Friday night last month when she got into a Chevy Monte Carlo with dark window tint.
Joseph Aparicio was driving the red car and at some point shot her to death, according to the arrest warrant affidavit supporting his booking on suspicion of murder.
Four days after Aparicio picked Mason up, he dragged the 19-year-old’s body from another vehicle and dumped her on March 21 onto the bank of the Trinity River in Fort Worth, according to the affidavit.
A person reported on March 23 finding a woman who was dead at the river bank at 350 Precinct Line Road.
Mason was naked and lying in a bed of rocks. No clothing or personal items were found in the vicinity. The area in which Mason was left is isolated, and it did not appear to detectives that she died there.
Marks and impressions in the dirt between the victim’s body and the gravel strip near the edge of the road suggested someone had dragged her there.
Mason had been reported missing, and Fort Worth homicide unit detectives, including Michael Sones, who wrote the account in the affidavit, talked with her mother. Investigators learned that Mason may have been working as a prostitute and, after Mason’s disappearance, her mother obtained bags from the hotel where Mason had been sleeping.
The detectives learned of Mason’s exact location on March 17 from data that AT&T, her cellphone service provider, submitted in response to a search warrant.
The detectives reviewed surveillance camera video from businesses near that location at Walnut Hill Lane and Shady Drive and found a Monte Carlo and two of the digits on its license plate.
Limiting a records search to all red Monte Carlos with the those consecutive digits that are registered in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, the detectives found a vehicle in Haltom City. The name of its registered owner is redacted in the affidavit, although the address on Kinman Street of the registered owner is connected to where Aparicio, who is 29, lives, according to the affidavit.
“I believe Joseph transported Janeecia in his Jeep Patriot from his home ... to the body dump location in the 350 block of Precinct Line Road, under the bridge over the Trinity River there,” Sones wrote. ”His Jeep can then be seen returning to his residence afterward.”
Detectives appear to have interviewed Aparicio. The contents of his statements are not included in the affidavit. Aparicio ended the discussion, according to the affidavit. Aparicio said he drove the Monte Carlo on March 17 in the Dallas area.
The affidavit does not refer to a gun or to shell casings that would indicate where Mason was shot.
A second search warrant yielded in the front passenger area of the Monte Carlo a swab that tested positive for presumptive blood.
In Aparicio’s bedroom, police said they found clothing similar to the items that Mason was pictured wearing on March 17.
“My sweet daughter’s untimely death has left the family with broken hearts and mere devastation as we continue to search for answers and closure,” Mason’s mother, Barbara Taylor, wrote on a GoFundMe page. “At the tender age of 19 ... God called her home.”
Mason graduated last year from Trinity High School in Euless, where a balloon release was held in her honor Thursday. Her funeral was held Saturday in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she previously lived.
