A Bexar County Jury sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison for paying an undercover officer to kill a woman.
Angelica Navarro-DePaz, 44, was found guilty this week of solicitation of capital murder for remuneration. Evidence included an August 2017 video of DePaz meeting with an undercover officer and paying him $850 as a down payment to kill a woman. The intended victim was a woman DePaz had helped cross the border from Mexico to the United States illegally for a fee of $40,000. When the woman did not pay, DePaz told the undercover officer that she did not care how the woman was killed.
Although DePaz was eligible for probation, after deliberating nearly four hours, she was sentenced to 20 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice – Institutional Division.
“This defendant denied this crime despite the video and audio that depicted her orchestrating this murderous scheme. If she had not been making this arrangement with an undercover officer, this murder would have very likely occurred. The jury saw through the defendant’s lies and is holding her accountable with this sentence,” said District Attorney Joe Gonzales.
Assistant District Attorneys Nicole Phillips and Neal Cordero of the Criminal Trial Division prosecuted this case in the 437th District Court with the assistance of Investigator Bruce Hallonquist. The San Antonio Police Department investigated the crime.