When investigators were searching for evidence in Irasema Chavez's apartment, they collected a drop of blood off a TV stand in the bedroom.
Chavez was found dead in the kitchen of her Arlington apartment on January 20, 2012, stabbed more than 100 times. Her body was found just before 9 a.m., according to police, by a niece who had been dropped off to spend the day there.
They had few leads to work with. Among them: a missing TV, surveillance video of a woman walking to the apartment, and that drop of blood.
The blood was tested, but investigators found no match to the DNA. For 14 years, all the test could tell them was that it came from a Hispanic woman.
It wasn’t until this year, with the help of the Investigative Genetic Genealogy program run by the FBI in Dallas, that investigators were able to determine the blood came from 42-year-old Mayra Velasquez.
Velasquez, a real estate agent living in Dallas with her husband and children, was arrested without incident in Hurst on July 17 — 14 years, five months and 27 days after investigators say she killed Chavez.
Dustin Hoffman, an attorney with Sellers Law Firm representing Velasquez, said the firm will be releasing a statement soon.
"What I can tell you right now is that Ms. Velasquez, Mayra, is completely innocent of this," Hoffman said.
A work acquaintance told KERA Velasquez seemed like a kind, family-oriented person who had recorded millions in real estate sales and regularly traveled abroad to visit family. The acquaintance said she was shocked by news of the arrest, as she thought anyone who knew Velasquez would be.
Velasquez now sits in the Tarrant County Jail without bond, according to Tarrant County court records.
The FBI’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy program compares DNA samples collected from crimes to those submitted to databases to find relatives and research ancestry.
Joe Rothrock, special agent in charge of FBI Dallas, described the forensic genetic genealogy process as “resource-intensive.”
By comparing the DNA, investigators hope to find relatives and begin building a family tree.
With that information, they can narrow down possible suspects based on a variety of factors such as witness accounts, location and the time of the crime.
“Only then do we seek a comparison of DNA between the potential suspect and the unknown DNA from the crime scene,” Rothrock said.
In this case, the evidence pointed to Velasquez, according to police.
"When we received that news, we were elated,” Arlington homicide Detective Tracey Dixon said at a news conference Wednesday. “There was still a lot of work to be done at that time to actually further confirm that it was her, of course, and there's still more work that we're doing right now.”
An arrest warrant affidavit obtained by WFAA says undercover officers followed Velasquez to a local restaurant where they watched her eat lunch with friends before collecting two plastic forks, the plate and the cup she’d used during the meal.
Using that DNA, WFAA reported investigators were able to compare the profile from the blood found on the TV stand inside Chavez’s apartment with the forks and found a match.
KERA has requested a copy of the arrest warrant affidavit.
Dixon said that although the DNA was what they used to identify and arrest Velasquez, it won’t be the only evidence they’ll bring to trial.
Chavez's cell phone will play a role in the prosecution’s case, though Dixon said the department will “save that for court” and wouldn’t discuss what was found.
She also told reporters Wednesday that investigators were able to interview Velasquez, though again Dixon declined to share specifics.
Arlington Police Chief Al Jones said Chavez and Velasquez were "close friends" who lived near each other and that Velasquez had been to the apartment before. Dixon said she is confident they have the right person in custody.
When she recounted how Chavez's family reacted to the news, Dixon became choked up.
“Being able to share that with the family is why we do this,” she said, her voice soft and breaking. “It was emotion, but everybody who’s involved in this — whether you’re the detective, whether you are on the FBI’s IGG team, whether you’re crime scene working behind the scenes — everybody who touches a case like this feels that elation when it’s solved. Feels that pain from the family. And the reason why we all give so much of ourselves is for that.”
She said the family was grateful that a suspect had been arrested.
This isn’t the first cold case Arlington police have declared solved through the use of forensic genealogy. In August 2024, police identified Bernard Sharp as the man who on Valentine’s Day 1985 killed 22-year-old UT Arlington student Terri McAdams.
Unlike in this case, police weren’t able to make an arrest. On Nov. 3, 1985, Sharp shot and killed his wife and her friend, critically wounded his wife’s cousin, then killed himself.
While the department does not have detectives dedicated to investigating cold case homicides, it has said in the past that investigators don’t stop working those cases just because they’re older. Homicide detectives will use time spent not working on more recent killings to investigate cold cases.
More recently, police worked with criminology students at UT Arlington to investigate cold cases and arrested a woman accused in the 1991 killing of Cynthia Gonzalez, but a grand jury declined to indict her.
Police expressed confidence that the evidence against Velasquez will lead to a different outcome, especially with the DNA evidence, Chavez’s phone and the interview with Velasquez.
“I am extremely proud of the work that our officers and our crime scene investigators did on this case,” Jones said at the news conference. “They showed tenacity, dedication and they never gave up.”
James Hartley reports on Arlington for KERA News. Got a tip? Email James Hartley at jhartley@kera.org.
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