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A Texas real estate agent has been arrested for the 2012 murder of a woman who was stabbed roughly 100 times in her apartment.
Mayra Velasquez, 42, faces charges of capital murder in connection with the killing of Irasema Chavez and was booked into Tarrant County Corrections Center on July 17, according to county jail records viewed by The Post.
Velasquez was busted more than a decade after Chavez, 32, was found dead inside her second-floor Arlington apartment with around 100 stab wounds on Jan. 20, 2012, CBS News reported.
During the initial murder investigation, Arlington police found no obvious signs of forced entry — suggesting Chavez may have known her killer, or willingly let them enter.
At the time, the only key piece of evidence pointing toward a suspect was surveillance footage from the night before the killing of an unknown individual seen entering the apartment.
Footage obtained by KDFW-TV appeared to show a person in baggy clothing and a hoodie climbing the stairs to Chavez’s unit, knocking on the door and exchanging words with someone before being allowed inside.
Despite multiple leads — including the surveillance footage and blood found at the scene that didn’t belong to Chavez — DNA evidence failed to match anyone in the databases at the time, witnesses provided only limited information, and the case eventually went cold.
Investigators sent a blood sample to Parabon NanoLabs in 2016, where scientists used DNA markers linked to ancestry, eye color, hair color and skin tone to generate a predicted composite of what the suspect might look like, CBS News reported.
Still, the killer remained unidentified.
In 2024, the Arlington Police Department partnered with the FBI Dallas Field Office, using the agency’s Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) — an advanced investigative program that combines crime-scene DNA analysis with public genealogy databases and family tree research — to reexamine the murder, according to the outlet.
After two years, the IGG program produced a significant lead that detectives used to develop additional evidence.
Investigators didn’t reveal what the new evidence was, or whether it was a direct DNA match with Velasquez, but said it was enough to secure an arrest warrant, the outlet reported.
It’s also unclear if Velasquez and Chavez knew each other.
Velasquez’s social media accounts showed the real estate agent traveling with family and friends in the years following the alleged murder, with photos depicting her on trips to Peru, Mexico, Paris, London, Disney World and New York City.
It was revealed that she has an active real estate license and had worked for Pure Realtors, LLC, according to her Facebook.
Velasquez’s LinkedIn profile shows that she’s currently working as an affiliate manager for JC Limo.
She is currently being held on no bond, and her next court date has not been announced, jail records show.
With Post wires
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