SAN ANTONIO (AP) _ In the final hours of his life, condemned murderer Luis Salazar talked not of the stabbing that led him to death row but of another murder, one he had gotten away with.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said Monday that Salazar told investigators that he stabbed a San Antonio convenience store clerk, leaving her to die in a beer refrigerator case on Easter in 1992 — a confession that solved an old case in which he had never been a suspect.
McManus says Salazar was encouraged to confess by his spiritual adviser.
Salazar was executed March 11 for the 1997 attempted rape and stabbing death of a San Antonio mother. His confession in the stabbing death of 19-year-old Melissa Morales came just a little more than an hour before his execution.
McManus says Salazar also confessed to a third murder in the San Antonio area, but investigators believe the victim in that case survived.
Police notified Morales’ family late last week that her long-dormant case had been solved.
Alma DeLeon, Morales’ mother, says, “At least now we can have some peace.”