Suspected serial rapist faces jury as trial begins

ECTOR COUNTY, Texas (KMID/KPEJ)- Opening statements and testimony began Tuesday in the jury trial against Javier Arias, an Odessa man accused of kidnapping, raping, or attempting to rape four women in 2022.

Arias faces a total of eight counts across all four cases, including Aggravated Kidnapping, Aggravated Sexual Assault, Sexual Assault, and Attempt to Commit Aggravated Sexual Assault. Prosecutors Kourtney Williams and Meagan Wyatt said that on April 26, 2022, and again on at least three occasions in July of that same year, Arias picked up four homeless or transient women and offered them help in the form of ride, before allegedly driving the women to a secluded road and sexually assaulting or attempting to sexually assault them.

“The most vulnerable people in our community,” said Wyatt. “He got them alone in his vehicle, drove them to an isolated area, and assaulted them.”

Defense attorney Johanna Curry said Arias, a husband and father, was only guilty of one thing- trying to hire a prostitute.

“(He) went in search of prostitutes…offered them money. He doesn’t speak English and when they (the women) entered his vehicle he believed they accepted his offer of money for sex. When he was paying them, they saw he had a lot more money. When he didn’t give them more, well they withdrew their consent after the fact. We are not here to punish him for prostitution,” Curry said.

In late April of 2022, investigators with the Ector County Sheriff’s Office began looking for an unknown suspect after a woman told deputies she’d been sexually assaulted.

According to court documents released when Arias was arrested, ECSO deputies were called to the area of Pool Road and Grandview about a possible assault. There, deputies met with a woman, identified as AV, who said she had been in the area of 17th Street and FM 1936 standing in front of a red building that used to be a game room, but was now abandoned, when she was approached by a man in a white Chevrolet Tahoe.

The victim told investigators she was standing in front of the building looking at a desk inside the front room and was wondering if it might be for sale. She said the man in the Tahoe told her she should have the desk and then offered to buy her some food. She agreed to get food with the unknown man and got into the backseat of his vehicle.

She said the man began driving toward Interstate 20 and then turned down a lease road, parked, and then jumped into the backseat. She said the man offered to pay her for sex, and when she refused, he climbed on top of her and tried to unbutton her pants. When she tried to resist the man reportedly started punching her in the face.

Eventually, the man gave up and told her to get out of the vehicle and that is when she ran to a nearby business for help.

The case remained open with no real leads and no new reports of similar assaults until July. Then, on July 8, a woman, identified as BM, reported to the Odessa Police Department and said she’d been assaulted the day before by an unknown man; that report shared similarities with the April report, investigators said, because BM reported that a man in a white SUV picked her up, drove her to a secluded area, and raped her.

On July 11, a man called 911 and said he’d found an 18-year-old girl on the side of the road who’d been beaten and raped.

“We’re on south Grandview,” the Good Samaritan told a 911 dispatcher in a recording that was played for jurors on Tuesday. “I have a lady who said a man put her in his car and raped her and he beat her up.’

Blake Terry, a fire fighter and paramedic working with Odessa Fire Rescue, responded to the scene that night and found a woman, identified as BR, with injuries to her face, including a busted nose, broken teeth, and bruising.

“She explained that she had been picked up at a hotel…and the man that picked her up took her to a pumpjack and raped her. She fought him and he left her there and she had to find her way back to the road to get help,” Terry testified. “She was crying…she was upset. Her entire face was bruised up.”

BR took the stand Tuesday and testified about the events of that evening. The transient teen, who said she’d rarely had a stable home in her life and had been bounced around from foster home to foster home before she turned 18, said she came to Odessa believing she had a safe place to live. When that fell through, the teen said a Good Samaritan put her up in a hotel room on Highway 80 for the night and connected her with resources around the area that might be able to help fund a bus ticket back to San Antonio, where she’d been living in a shelter prior to coming to Odessa.

When her stay at the hotel was up, BR said she stood outside the hotel to charge her phone in an outside outlet while she made calls to local shelters and others who might be able to help. During that time, BR said Arias approached her in his white SUV.

“I was trying to get to Midland to catch a Greyhound bus…I saw a white Chevy pull up,” BR testified. “He rolled down the window and was talking to me in Spanish. I went up to the window and he said ‘agua’ and ‘dinero’. I knew agua meant water, but I didn’t know what dinero meant. I used Google Translate and asked him for a ride to Midland.”

BR said that Arias didn’t go to Midland, but instead headed to a secluded area and drove down a lease road.

“There were no cars around. No houses. I kept thinking, ‘what’s gonna happen?’ I was very scared; how do I get out of this? He parked his car and pointed at my pants and said ‘dinero’. He pulled on my pants and got very aggressive and that’s when it clicked. I figured out what he wanted,” BR testified.

When Williams asked BR if she was a prostitute that day, she answered “No” quite emphatically.

“I just wanted to get back to San Antonio. I tried to open the door, but he reached over and closed it. Then, he gets on my lap and I’m crying, and he didn’t understand English, so I hit him. I made him mad, and he hit me back,” she said.

BR said it didn’t end with just one hit and that Arias kept raining blows upon her face.

“I was going in and out of consciousness because of the number of blows. I swallowed pieces of my teeth,” she said.

After several minutes and many punches, BR said Arias pointed to the backseat of his vehicle, indicating that he wanted her to move from the front seat to the back.

“I didn’t want that, I said I didn’t want that, but he raised his hands…I thought I was gonna die. I thought he was going to kill me,” she said.

After moving to the back seat, BR said that Arias raped her, and then told her to clean herself with a baby wipe.

“I just let him do what he needed to do,” she said, .

When the assault was over,  BR said Arias threw her purse and phone into the far back part of his vehicle and told her to get out, he then drove away and left the teen alone in an unfamiliar part of town.

“I had no idea where I was. I just walked back the way we came…to the road and a car drove by with two men. They stopped and they called 911 and they let me call my mom.”

ECSO investigators met BR at the hospital that night and took her statement, but they still didn’t know the name of the man who had, by then, attacked at least three different women.

Investigators caught a break on July 20, when the suspect allegedly struck again in the same area. That afternoon, an Oncor employee called 911 after he saw suspicious activity on a lease road off Pool Road and Industrial Avenue.

“There’s someone on the side of the road asking for help…she said she’s been raped. She’s trying to get away from someone, he only speaks Spanish. The gentleman is telling me he was only trying to help,” the caller told a 911 dispatcher in a call that was also played for jurors.

That bystanders testified that he was working and came upon a white SUV parked along a lease road.

“I saw flailing hands,” the witness testified. “Waving hands coming from the back of the vehicle and that concerned me. A woman approached my door asking for help, trying to open my door. She was crying, she was scared.”

The witness said as he was trying to call 911 and figure out what was going on, the man in the SUV told him he “didn’t want any problems”.

“He kept saying he didn’t want to get into any trouble and was just trying to give her a ride home. He only spoke in Spanish and kept repeating that he didn’t want any problems,” the witness said.

The man in the white SUV left the scene before law enforcement arrived, but the victim, identified as LB said the suspect had offered her a ride and that when she found herself in a secluded area, she was afraid she was going to be raped, so she jumped from the moving vehicle to try and get away and was injured in the process. The victim said the suspect threw her back into the vehicle after she tried to escape and began to assault her further but was stopped when the witness drove onto the lease road.

“She said she left a game room looking for a ride to Midland. Arias said he could give her a ride but once they left the parking lot, he took her to an area she didn’t recognize,” said ECSO Investigator Christopher Bell. “She knew what was going to happen and she told me that she prayed if something was going to happen that it wouldn’t last long, and she prayed or help to come. She jumped from the vehicle and the vehicle stopped and backed up. Then he (the suspect) picked her up and placed her in the back seat and began touching her. She just kept praying for someone to stop and that’s when she saw a vehicle approaching.”

LB, was injured when she jumped from the moving vehicle and she was taken to the hospital where she was treated for a broken hand.

“The bone in her hand was shattered,” said Doctor Brian Taylor, who treated LB at Medical Center Hospital that day. “She was afraid she was going to get raped and when she realized she was in great danger, she jumped from the vehicle. The bone was broken into pieces, it takes a great deal of force to get that type of injury. There were signs of injuries across her body.”

Because this case involved a witness who simply stumbled upon the scene, investigators caught their first break, in the form of a partial plate number written on temporary tags. Multiple investigators that day jumped into action and traced the vehicle to Arias’ home; he was taken into custody for questioning shortly after his vehicle was located and investigators who interviewed Arias said he changed his story multiple times.

“I’m a married man. I have a daughter. I’m a good person,” Arias said upon questioning, according to testimony given by ECSO investigator Aaron Villalobos. “Initially he kept denying any involvement, but he changed his story and said he went to the area for sex for money. This was his go-to place…he said everything was mutual and everyone was happy with the agreement.”

However, each investigator said when they approached the victims to have them try and identify the suspect from a photo lineup, they each became emotional, and identified Arias as their assailant without hesitation. And all four denied that they’d agreed to have sex in exchange for money, investigators said.

Testimony in this trial is expected to resume Wednesday, we will provide updates as more information becomes available.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to Yourbasin.