A preserved blood sample and newer forensic tools revived a case that had frustrated Arlington investigators and Chavez’s family since 2012.
ARLINGTON, Texas — When a family member entered Irasema Chavez’s apartment on the morning of Jan. 20, 2012, the 32-year-old woman was unresponsive and covered in blood. Police would spend the next 14 years trying to identify who killed her before a new use of old DNA evidence led them to a former friend, Mayra Velasquez.
Velasquez, 42, now faces one count of capital murder in Chavez’s death. She was arrested in July after Arlington police said investigative genetic genealogy identified her as a potential suspect and a later DNA test matched her to blood recovered from the apartment. Velasquez has denied the allegation, and her lawyers are challenging the prosecution’s interpretation of both the DNA and surveillance footage. The arrest ended one phase of a long-running investigation, but the contested criminal case means Chavez’s family still does not have a final legal answer.
The original crime scene gave detectives important evidence but no immediate identity. Chavez had suffered more than 100 stab wounds, according to the medical examiner. A television was missing from the apartment. Surveillance footage showed a person in loose clothing approaching or entering the residence the night before Chavez was found. Police also recovered a small blood droplet on a television stand. Testing showed the blood came from a woman and was not Chavez’s, but comparison with criminal DNA databases did not produce a match.
The person in the video became one of the investigation’s most visible clues. Arlington police released images in 2012 and asked the public for help. The recording showed only limited detail, however, and detectives could not identify the figure. Numerous leads followed without producing enough evidence for an arrest. The blood sample offered a clearer scientific clue but had the same practical limitation: investigators had a genetic profile without a known person against whom to compare it. The case remained open as years passed and forensic methods developed beyond the tools available when Chavez was killed.
For Chavez’s relatives, the lack of an arrest meant living with a homicide that had a victim, evidence and a known location but no defendant. Her niece, who was a teenager when Chavez was found, later described discovering the scene to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The details were disturbing, but the larger point for investigators was the intensity of the attack and the unanswered question of who had been allowed into the home. Police said early in the investigation that the killing did not appear random. Later accounts established that Velasquez had been a friend of Chavez and had regularly visited the apartment.
The investigation’s direction changed in November 2024. Arlington homicide detectives met with the FBI’s Dallas Field Office to ask whether the unidentified DNA could be examined through the bureau’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy program. The process uses a crime-scene profile to look for possible biological relatives in genealogy resources available for law-enforcement comparison. Specialists then build family trees and narrow candidates through age, location, family connections and other established facts. Unlike a traditional database search, the method can produce a lead even when the possible suspect has never had DNA entered into a criminal database.
In April 2026, the FBI team told Arlington investigators that its work had produced a potential suspect: Velasquez. Police knew she had been close to Chavez and had lived only a few miles from the apartment. Investigators then sought DNA that could be compared directly with the 2012 blood. The following month, officers collected items discarded after Velasquez ate lunch with friends, according to police and reporting on the arrest affidavit. Those items included plastic utensils. Laboratory testing produced what police said was a direct match between Velasquez’s DNA and the blood sample preserved from Chavez’s home.
That result led authorities to interpret the old evidence differently. Investigators believe the killer could have suffered an accidental cut during the attack, leaving the blood near the television stand. They also point to the missing television and say they possess additional information from Chavez’s cellphone and from an interview with Velasquez. Police have not released all of that evidence publicly. They also have not established a public motive. An affidavit referenced a tip about jealousy involving Velasquez’s husband and the friendship between the two women, but authorities continue to say the motive itself remains unclear.
Police arrested Velasquez in Hurst on July 16 without incident. At the time, the department framed the arrest as the product of persistence by homicide detectives, crime-scene personnel and the FBI. Detective Tracey Dixon later became emotional while talking about notifying Chavez’s family. She said being able to give a family an investigative answer after years of uncertainty was a reason detectives do the work. Police Chief Al Jones similarly praised investigators for keeping the case alive and preserving evidence capable of being reexamined as technology improved.
The arrest did not go uncontested for long. Velasquez’s attorneys said she is innocent and argued that the DNA match proves only that her blood was inside the apartment, not that she killed Chavez. Because the women were friends and Velasquez had visited the residence, the defense says her biological material there is not inherently suspicious. Lawyers have also questioned investigative descriptions of the blood as appearing fresh or glistening when Chavez’s body was discovered, given the number of hours police believe had passed since the attack. Arlington police have stood by the crime-scene description.
The defense is also attacking the interpretation of the 2012 surveillance footage. Attorneys say witnesses have told them detectives initially thought the person shown was male, and they argue the figure does not match Velasquez’s appearance. Police deny having publicly or officially identified the figure as a man. The department’s original news release used neutral language, referring to a person. Dixon has since said she is confident the footage shows Velasquez. The competing interpretations are significant because the video was a central public clue for years before the DNA work generated a named suspect.
Velasquez was first held without bond, but that decision produced a separate legal challenge. Her lawyers filed a writ of habeas corpus and argued that the court had not sufficiently justified denying bail. They pointed to her lack of a criminal record, years of residence in the community and the fact that she had lived openly rather than hiding after Chavez’s death. Although prosecutors had noted her history of international travel, the defense said travel did not make her a flight risk. Velasquez was subsequently released on a $450,000 bond, surrendered her passport and was placed under GPS monitoring and other restrictions.
After her release, Velasquez spoke publicly for the first time and directly denied the charge. She said Chavez had been her friend and that she hoped authorities would identify the person who killed her. Her lawyers have called for investigators to examine another woman who knew Chavez and have raised a possible relationship dispute as an alternate direction for the case. Police say they are not looking for another suspect and maintain that their evidence points to Velasquez. Neither side’s account has yet been tested before a jury.
The case that began with an unidentified person on grainy surveillance footage and an unmatched drop of blood has become a prosecution centered on what those same pieces of evidence mean after 14 years. Velasquez remains free on bond and is presumed innocent unless proved guilty. Authorities have not publicly established a motive or announced a final trial schedule. For Chavez’s family, the genetic-genealogy breakthrough delivered the arrest that had been missing for more than a decade, but the courts must now decide whether the evidence can support a conviction.
Author note: Last updated August 24, 2026.