Suspect charged in two-year-old slaying

PHARR - For more than two years, Blanca Casas assumed the man accused of killing her daughter was locked up in a Reynosa prison.

 

 

• It was only Wednesday, though - when Mexican authorities recaptured Jose Luis Cantu and extradited him back to the United States - that she learned he had been living free for most of that time.

 

 

• "We didn't know he had been released," she said in Spanish, moments after Cantu was arraigned on murder charges Thursday. "But now we have a little bit of peace."

 

 

• Thursday's court hearing was the first time Cantu, 21, of Pharr, had appeared before a U.S. judge since he was named the lead suspect in the 2006 slaying of his then-girlfriend, Nelly Casas.

 

 

• Investigators believe he strangled the girl with an electrical cord and left her body in a shed behind her parents' Pharr home.

 

 

• But before he could be arrested, Cantu escaped across the border to Mexico, where he was later sent to a Reynosa prison on unrelated weapons charges.

 

 

• It was there that he first confessed to killing his girlfriend because he believed she was cheating on him.

 

 

• "I just went mad," he said in an April 2006 jailhouse interview with The Monitor. "I went crazy and lost control."

 

 

• Prison officials mistakenly released Cantu weeks later despite an Interpol detainer seeking his extradition back to the United States. Mexican authorities finally located him Tuesday living in the small city of Mante, about 250 miles south of Reynosa.

 

 

• Cantu spoke little Thursday as a judge questioned him about his name and citizenship. His family, which also attended the arraignment hearing, declined to comment.

 

 

• But as Pharr police ushered him back behind bars, Nelly Casas' grandmother, Isabel Muñoz, fought back tears. The sight of Cantu in handcuffs hadn't provided the closure she expected.

 

 

• "We miss our granddaughter too much," she said in Spanish. "It's been very difficult without her."

 

 

• As of late Thursday night, Cantu remained in the Hidalgo County Jail on a $2 million bond.

 

 

• If convicted, he could face up to life in prison and $10,000 in fines.