Investigators now allege that a 2023 vehicle death was staged after an attack inside the victim’s Northeast El Paso home.
EL PASO, Texas — When officers entered a garage on Sky Hawk in June 2023, they encountered a scene that appeared to point to an accidental death: Maria Praytor was beneath a vehicle, and her son told police he had found her there. More than three years later, El Paso police say the scene did not tell the true story.
The department announced Sept. 29 that Richard Praytor had been charged with murder after investigators concluded he intentionally killed his mother. Police said the original call came at 4:26 a.m. on June 20, 2023, in the 4500 block of Sky Hawk. Special Traffic Investigations personnel responded, and Maria Praytor’s death was initially determined to be an accidental run-over. The police release identified her as 79 and Richard Praytor as 49.
What investigators now describe is not simply a different explanation for the same vehicle movement. According to an arrest affidavit reported by KTSM and Law&Crime, Praytor allegedly admitted that he attacked his mother inside the home the evening before officers were called and later moved her to the garage. He then allegedly changed clothing, discarded clothing and arranged the scene around the sedan so that the death would appear accidental. Police further allege that he manipulated blood evidence on his hands. Those alleged staging steps are central to why the case looks different now. A staged scene can give first responders a set of physical facts that fit a plausible but false narrative, and police say Praytor’s original account did exactly that. He presented himself as the person who discovered his mother under the car, according to the department’s release. The affidavit goes further, alleging that he later described his behavior in front of officers as deliberate acting intended to support the appearance of surprise.
The first medical conclusion also fit the accident theory. Law&Crime, citing the affidavit, reported that Maria Praytor’s cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries and that the manner of death was initially ruled accidental. Years later, investigators say Praytor described conduct that would make the vehicle injuries part of a cover story rather than the origin of an unintended death. The public police release does not provide a detailed forensic reconstruction, and the sources reviewed do not show that the competing theories have yet been tested before a jury. That distinction is important because the later homicide theory depends on more than the presence of the vehicle. Investigators now allege that the vehicle’s position and the surrounding circumstances were created after an earlier assault, turning what looked like evidence of an accident into alleged evidence of concealment.
The case did not change because of the garage scene alone. The affidavit says a woman on Long Island, New York, approached police on Aug. 27, 2026, and reported that Praytor had told her he killed his mother. She said she met him through Facebook and knew details that had not been publicly released. That information gave investigators a way to reopen the significance of evidence they had already seen in 2023 and to ask whether the apparent accident had been intentionally manufactured. Investigators then obtained a recording of a phone conversation involving Praytor, according to the affidavit. In that conversation, he allegedly talked about performing for police after his mother was found and said only one other person knew what had happened. He also allegedly referred to having tried to tell a priest. The reported statements did not by themselves establish guilt, but they added a second source of information for detectives to compare with the Long Island woman’s account and the records from the original death investigation.
The inquiry moved next to Colorado, where El Paso police worked with the Colorado Springs Police Department. The affidavit says Praytor was located at a hotel on Sept. 14 and agreed to be interviewed. Police allege that he then admitted killing his mother and described the sequence that ended with her body in the garage. The department’s formal release confirms the interstate cooperation, saying the two agencies located and interviewed him before he was extradited to El Paso.
Praytor also allegedly told investigators that his personal computer contained a file titled “June 19th” with details about the death, KTSM reported from the affidavit. The Long Island woman had separately told police that he wrote about the killing in a novel, according to the same document. Authorities have not made that writing publicly available in the sources reviewed, so its exact contents, authorship evidence and potential use in court cannot be independently assessed from the public record. The affidavit also attributes a claimed reason to Praytor. Police say he stated that his mother was sick and that he wanted to return to his children in Colorado Springs. That claim is not an independently established motive, and it should not be treated as one unless prosecutors prove it with admissible evidence. The public police release does not discuss motive at all. It confines itself to the original discovery, the later homicide determination, the cooperation with Colorado Springs police and the murder charge.
After his return to Texas, Praytor was booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility. KVIA and Law&Crime reported that his bond was set at $1 million. The available reports do not show a final disposition of the Texas murder charge, and no later verified report reviewed for this article establishes that he has entered a plea or that a trial has occurred. The charge therefore remains an accusation, and Praytor is entitled to contest the state’s evidence. Secondary reports contain inconsistent ages for both Richard and Maria Praytor. The formal El Paso police release lists Richard Praytor as 49 and Maria Praytor as 79, and those are the figures used here. The discrepancy is another reason to distinguish the police release from later summaries of the affidavit.
The shift from accident to homicide raises questions that only a fuller court record may answer. It is not yet publicly clear which forensic findings investigators believe independently support the alleged confession, when the manner-of-death determination was formally reconsidered or how police authenticated the reported computer writing. Nor have authorities released a complete account of the Long Island tipster’s interactions with Praytor. Those missing details matter because the prosecution will need to show more than a changed theory; it will need evidence that meets the criminal standard of proof. The publicly released police statement is only one page and does not identify every forensic step that connected the 2023 scene to the 2026 murder charge. It confirms the initial accident determination, the later homicide conclusion and the interstate arrest, while the more detailed allegations come from news organizations that reviewed the arrest affidavit.
For now, the public record presents two sharply different readings of the same garage. The first was the one officers encountered in 2023: a woman under a vehicle and a report of an accidental run-over. The second is the one police announced in 2026: a deliberately arranged scene following an intentional killing. The legal case will determine whether prosecutors can prove the second account and explain how the first one took hold. The latest verified status in the sources reviewed is that Praytor had been extradited to El Paso, charged with murder and held on a $1 million bond. No conviction has been reported, and the evidence described in the affidavit remains subject to courtroom challenge.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 10, 2026.