Raul Meza, alleged serial killer, possibly linked to 2018 cold-case homicide, police say

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Austin Police have found an APD cold-case homicide from 2018 that may be linked to Raul Meza Jr., 63, according to a new search warrant affidavit. 

Austin Police detectives filed Tuesday a search warrant to gain access to Meza’s Google account, which police believe will help them uncover more details in the murders Meza is already linked to, as well as any additional cold case homicides. In the affidavit, Patrick Reed with the Austin Police Department wrote a detective “identified an APD Cold Case Homicide from 2018 that matches the Modus Operandi of Meza.”

In May, Meza was arrested and charged after confessing to the murder of Jesse Fraga, 80. Meza also implicated himself in the murder of his former neighbor, Gloria Lofton, 65, in 2019, according to police. 

Additionally, police said after Meza’s arrest that he may be connected to as many as ten cold cases. When Meza confessed to killing Fraga in May, he told an officer that he had committed a double homicide in San Antonio, Texas, years prior. According to the new search warrant, Meza told police he shot two people in San Antonio sometime between the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019. 

In July, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Austin Police and Pflugerville Police searched a Pflugerville field following leads. That field search uncovered “several locations that displayed the properties of a possible burial site,” per police documents.

Further, search crews said they found clothes, rope, a tarp and an area that had characteristics of a grave site. 

Meza’s criminal history dates back almost 50 years and includes convictions of aggravated robbery and murder.

In 1975, 15-year-old Raul Meza Jr., along with three others, robbed an Austin convenience store. During the robbery, the manager was led to a walk-in refrigerator, where he was shot in the back and left, according to court documents. The manager survived his gunshot wound and testified at Meza’s trial. 

Meza was sentenced to 20 years for his role in the robbery but served only five years.

Less than ten years later, Meza was accused of raping and murdering 8-year-old Kendra Page while still on parole for the aggravated robbery. Her body was found in a southeast Austin elementary school dumpster on Jan. 3, 1982. 

Meza was convicted of murdering Page and was sentenced to 30 years in prison but served just over 11.