Braces, forensics and 2 officers solve teen’s death

The girl was 5-foot-3 and 100 pounds. Her hair was long and lustrous. Her eyes were dark and almond-shaped.

She wore blue shorts, a pink-hooded T-shirt adorned with pictures of monkeys, and clear plastic sandals. Black-and-green plastic bracelets were coiled around her thin wrists.

But aside from these things, there was little to identify the girl on the steel examining table of the Harris County morgue.

She had been found in the courtyard of an apartment complex, bullets in her head, torso and leg. No identification was found on her body. Her sparse belongings revealed that she had probably been living on the streets: a blue gym bag containing toiletries, clothes and a black-and-silver Samsung cellphone, which detectives would later search for clues.

Yet there was one clue, described by the medical examiner’s office in cool, clinical language that could not strip the phrase of its underlying pathos: “The decedent has braces.”

She still wore the badges of adolescence, and in the days after the slaying, people she had never met in life would work to discover her identity, unlock the riddle of her death and remind the world that she had been here.

The girl with no name mattered to someone. Of that much, they were sure.

Investigation

Sgt. C.E. Elliott was running late for work that Saturday morning, July 14, when his cellphone rang. A shooting at the Court Glen Place Apartments.

There, amid a gated sprawl in a southwest Houston neighborhood where apartment buildings veer from well-kept to well-worn, Elliott found the victim’s body crumpled on the sidewalk.

A dapper, silver-haired homicide investigator with 30 years on the Houston police force and a third-generation officer, Elliott tries not to get personally involved in cases.

But sometimes, Elliott feels a special duty. This victim might not have been his daughter, but, she was someone’s daughter. “I try to put myself in the family’s shoes. These are the most important people in their lives. She was a human being, and I want to do this for her.”

But the answers wouldn’t come easily.

No one recognized the dead girl, who appeared to be a Latina.

In homicide investigations, detectives go by the 24-24 rule. The key to solving a murder often lies in what the victim was doing 24 hours before the slaying, and what investigators uncover in the 24 hours after.

Without a name, Elliott had no way of reconstructing the 24 hours leading up to the shooting.

One resident told Elliott she had talked with the girl just before 6:30 a.m. The teenager had borrowed the woman’s cellphone and made a few hurried calls. Within moments, a car pulled up, two men jumped out and the girl was led away. Seconds later, just as the sun was rising, there were gunshots.

The men vanished, leaving their victim behind.

Taking care of her

At the Joseph A. Jachimczyk Forensic Center Laboratory, Dr. Jennifer Love studied the girl’s body with the trained eye of a forensic anthropologist.

The victim was likely between 14 and 20. Her clothes were clean and stylish. Her teeth -- behind the braces -- were healthy. There were no signs of malnutrition. No scars or tattoos. If she had been living on the streets, Love surmised, she had not been out there long. Someone had been taking care of this girl.

Why had no one claimed her?

Love and the medical examiner’s ID unit sent fingerprint records to the National Crime Information Center and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Nothing.

Flyers sent to the media also drew no response.

The medical examiner’s odontologist stepped in next. He created a dental chart that investigators could compare to the records of missing girls who matched their victim’s description. Aside from fingerprints, the dental post-mortem exam often helps identify the dead.

But that would require waiting -- for police departments to recognize the description of the body as one of their cases; for someone to call in with a possible name; for reports of missing girls that might turn up a lead.

On July 23, a runaway report from neighboring Fort Bend County ended the wait.

The dental records matched. The victim had a name.

She was Melissa Flores, a high school student who had just turned 17.

It had been nine days since Melissa was slain.

‘I just want to be loved’

She was, those who knew her recalled, a girl with pretty eyes and a coquettish smile. She delighted in hitting the local mall and shopping for fashionable gear. She relished any chance to eat Mexican food.

And she longed to be loved. Her family splintered before she reached first grade.

Melissa had a brother and two sisters, one of them severely disabled. Their mother, a drug addict living on the streets, abused and neglected Melissa and her siblings, Child Protective Services said. Their father is in prison.

For a few years, the four children were placed with their maternal grandmother. But she became ill and they were scattered among several foster homes. That grandmother has since died. Their paternal grandparents wouldn’t take them.

“Their lives are so tragic,” said Estella Olguin, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services. “She was so young, so naive and vulnerable.”

For years, the siblings stayed in contact, visiting each other in foster homes or at school. Then Melissa’s brother disappeared into the street life. Her older sister was placed in an adult facility for the disabled.

As a teen, Melissa grew troubled, her need for some connection mutating into rebellion and outbursts. Weekend visits to her younger sister’s foster home -- once a refuge for Melissa -- often ended with fights. One foster family, then another, asked Child Protective Services to remove her.

A break-up with her boyfriend left her sobbing. “I just want to be loved,” she told a friend.

Last year, Melissa began asking about her biological family. She wanted to find her mother, to contact her living grandparents, to visit her sister more often.

But her mother was on the streets and her grandparents never called, a family friend said. Despite their closeness, her sister was reluctant to plan visits that would only end in squabbles.

On June 12, two weeks before her 17th birthday, Melissa ran away from her group home.

Even on the streets, Melissa clung to a connection with the only family she knew. She called her caseworker periodically, once from a Houston mall.

I’m not coming back, Melissa told her, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m OK.

Lack of interest

Melissa’s slaying drew little attention in the media -- a brief story deep inside the newspaper, a quick mention of an unidentified body on the local TV news.

Elliott was angered by the lack of interest: “She was just a little Hispanic child from the ghetto. If it’s in the wrong area of town, no one cares.”

Elliott and his partner, Officer J.C. Bonaby, logged 16- and 17-hour days. following up leads in the middle of the night, sacrificing days off to interview witnesses.

Their determination paid off.

The same day Melissa was identified, Elliott made an arrest. On July 24, Justin McTier, a 45-year-old man with a string of drug arrests, was charged with Melissa’s murder.

Three days later, a second man -- Brandon Butler, 25 -- was picked up on a weapons charge. Police say he admitted being at the scene when Melissa was killed. He was also charged with murder.

Elliott pieced together a reconstruction of Melissa’s last days and hours:

After she ran away, she floated from friend to friend, from place to place. The night before she was killed, she had been with McTier and Butler. At one point, the men accused Melissa of stealing their drugs. They beat her, but she managed to get away.

Just after dawn the next morning, Melissa turned up at the Houston apartment complex where -- for some reason -- she made the phone call that led her killers to her. Police would not go into detail about this because the investigation remains open.

For Elliott, the arrests felt like a promise fulfilled. “We didn’t throw her away at the Police Department,” he said. “Her death didn’t go unnoticed. At least by us.”

An unmarked grave

Melissa Flores was buried July 31.

A few people attended the simple graveside service at Paradise South Cemetery: Her younger sister, who cherishes a photo album with images of the two young girls together at birthday parties, Halloween outings and weekend visits. Her caseworker and other staff members from Child Protective Services. Her last foster parents and even the paternal grandparents Melissa never met.

The state of Texas -- Melissa’s legal guardian -- paid for the funeral, but had no money for a marker.

Melissa now lies under a mound of dirt, a few yards from a row of Royal Palm trees and close to Babyland, the cemetery’s section for infant graves.

No headstone bears her name.