The Devil Behind the Badge

The Horrifying Twelve Days of the Border Patrol Serial Killer

De: Rick Jervis

Narrado por: Timothy Andrés Pabon

The shocking true-crime story of a U.S. Border Patrol agent turned serial killer, the four sex workers whom he mercilessly killed, and the upended border town of Laredo where his heinous crimes occurred.

Twelve days is all it took.

Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect—Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where he carried a badge, a service revolver, and was entrusted to protect the community in which he eventually killed. From September 3 through September 15, 2018, Ortiz, a husband and doting father to three children, lured his victims into his white Dodge truck and drove them to the outskirts of town where he violently executed them, leaving them dead or dying on the sides of dark, rural roads.

In this fast-paced, electrifying tick-tock, Pulitzer Prize–winning USA TODAY journalist Rick Jervis tells the gripping story of the four murders that shook the small border town of Laredo, and the quest to unmask a cold, calculated killer who was hiding in plain sight. The Devil Behind the Badge is also a deeply human portrait of the four lives lost and an attempt to uncover what motivated Ortiz’s descent into darkness. Along the way, it raises serious questions about the border crisis, the abuse of law enforcement, and the challenges of a federal agency to police its own ranks.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

well done

my only criticism is that I didn't know what most of the Spanish meant. translations would have been helpful but I didn't lose any context. this was well researched and told.

So good, learned so much!

I absolutely loved it! So informative while being a nail bitter. Laredo, TX life, sex workers, & drug abuse.

Fantastically written and researched

Great book! The narrator’s pronunciation of “San Bernardo” slowly killed me over time. He was great otherwise.

Pretty good

A sad and fascinating story that was written fairly well. My pet peeves were:
The author goes into crazily detailed info/history on anything he could get his hands on; it seems geared to increase the length of the book and added very, very little to the story. I skipped an entire chapter just because he went off on a random history of something vaguely related to the rest of the book.
The author virtue signals constantly throughout the book, insisting on calling illegal immigrants "asylum seekers" or "migrants" and painting them as helpless victims. Also calls the prostitutes "sex workers" which isn't a big deal except that it's a virtue-signaling, politically correct term.
I know have criticized the narrator's over-the-top pronunciation of Spanish words, and I agree although since I know some Spanish it wasn't too bad. It was obvious he wants us to know he can speak Spanish :-)

Too Much Background/Detail on Characters

The story goes far too much into the main character's backgrounds and work life. I understand setting the stage and character development but I just couldn't continue to listen after six chapters.