Kendra Hatcher seemed to have it all. A popular and talented dentist with striking movie-star good looks, she finally seemed to have met the love of her life when she connected with handsome dermatologist Ricardo Paniagua through Tinder.
But Kendra’s perfect life came to a sudden, tragic end when she was gunned down in in the parking garage of her apartment building in Dallas, Texas – the apparent victim of a violent street robbery.
A man named Hashim, another resident in the upmarket apartment block where Kendra lived, heard screams and then a shot. He immediately called police before jumping into his car and attempting to follow the Jeep Cherokee that he saw speeding out of the garage.
“First Responders arrived as soon as they could unfortunately though it was too late,” says . The victim that Hashim had seen lying on the ground was pronounced dead at the scene.
“The entire garage was immediately closed off as a crime scene, and the investigators were now looking at a pretty gruesome homicide. There were bullet shards, a handgun magazine on the ground next to Kendra's body and at first it looked like she had died in a robbery gone wrong.
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"Kendra's purse was nowhere to be found, although her phone was left behind. A potential robber wouldn't even need to know Kendra personally to know that she was well off financially either – anyone living in that apartment building was doing just fine …maybe somebody broke in to rob the first person that they saw going into the building and that person just happened to be Kendra.”
However, there was one chilling detail that cast doubt on the theory that Kendra had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Annie explained: “Kendra had been shot execution style. She was hit in the upper part of the back of her head and the bullet exited through her chin in the front so by looking at the gunshot residue the police could tell that her hands were up and behind her head when she was shot.”
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It was hard to imagine anyone having a motive to murder 35-year-old Kendra. A kind and gentle soul, during her college years she had given up her Christmas breaks so she could travel to Ecuador and do free dental work for underprivileged children. The Texas dental practice where she was working specialised in providing care to children whose families might otherwise not be able to afford it.
Examination of the garage’s CCTV revealed that the Jeep Cherokee that the killer had used to make their escape had been parked there for some time prior to the murder. Whoever had killed Kendra seemed to have been waiting for her specifically. And, tellingly, when the killer returned to the getaway vehicle, they got into the passenger side door, meaning someone else had been driving the car.
At a press conference following the murder, police called for the public’s assistance. And, to their surprise, the owner of the getaway car immediately got in touch. The man, Jose Luis-Ortiz, insisted that he had nothing to do with Kendra’s murder and in fact he had loaned the Jeep to a friend named Brenda Delgado on the day of the crime.
When Jose saw the CCTV footage of his car on the news, he had immediately called Brenda to ask for an explanation. She claimed that she had lent it to another friend, a woman named Crystal Cortez, but hadn’t wanted to mention it to him because it had been used in a drug deal.
Brenda, 31, had even offered to pay for Jose’s car to be resprayed, so that it wouldn’t be connected with the killing, but he refused and called the cops. When questioned by investigators, Brenda said she’d been at a restaurant – with Jose – at the time of the killing, and even produced a receipt.
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When the murder occurred, Jose and Delgado were having dinner together at a Chili’s restaurant. But Brenda’s alibi began to crumble after police showed a cleaned-up still from the garage CCTV – and asked her if she and Crystal were related, because they looked very similar.
To confuse matters, when police then interviewed Crystal, she admitted driving the getaway car but claimed that a “carjacker” had forced her at gun point to drive to the apartment complex, even though she had her young son in the car at the time.
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Investigators weren’t convinced and interviewed her a second time, at which point Crystal changed her story. She eventually admitted that Brenda had paid her $500 to drive this unknown man to the crime scene. She claimed she hadn’t realised anyone was going to be shot, and thought she was just helping the man commit a robbery.
Then came the crucial clue. When asked why Kendra, of all people, had been targeted Crystal said that she believed that Brenda and Kendra had both been dating the same man.
It emerged that Brenda had previously lived with Ricardo Paniagua, and had suffered some sort of breakdown after their relationship soured. Annie explained: “The moment that Ricky and Brenda broke up, he started seeing other people and this drove Brenda crazy. She didn't know who these women were, she didn't know why she was being replaced.
“She got really sneaky and she started stalking him. She had his email and his iCloud password, so she saw every text, every email, anything that was ever sent to these other women. She even downloaded an app to track his cell phone.”
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That information only served to fuel Brenda’s mounting anger. Bizarrely, she went on a few dates with other men, only to ask them to drive her to Kendra’s apartment complex where she would “stare creepily” at the building. She even asked one of them if they knew where to hire a hitman.
Eventually, Brenda found 34-year-old career criminal Kristopher Love, and offered him $3000 worth of cannabis and an unspecified amount of cash if he’d shoot Kendra.
While investigators had no concrete evidence that Brenda was associated with the conspiracy, they managed to find an unpaid parking ticket that enabled them to arrest her.
After being released, Brenda fled to Torreon, Mexico, in April 2016, and was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list before being arrested.
In October 2018, Love was sentenced to death for Kendra’s murder. Crystal was sentenced to a reduced sentence of 35 years in prison in exchange for her cooperation and testimony. In 2021, Brenda was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
