Solved cold cases in New Mexico
1 documented case.
Katie Sepich
Katie Sepich, a 22-year-old New Mexico State University graduate student, was raped, strangled, set on fire and abandoned near the old city dump east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, in late August 2003; her body was found by target shooters on the morning of August 31. The killer left his DNA beneath her fingernails, but it matched no one in any database, and the case went cold. Gabriel Adrian Avila committed an aggravated burglary about three months later and was sent to prison, where his DNA was collected; in December 2006 that profile matched the crime-scene evidence. Avila confessed, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, rape and tampering with evidence, and was sentenced on May 3, 2007 to 69 years in prison. Because Avila's DNA had been taken only on conviction rather than at arrest, costing years of delay, Katie's parents championed Katie's Law, which spread to dozens of states and became the federal Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010.