A 42-year-old female real estate agent has been arrested in connection with the 2012 murder of a 32-year-old woman who was found stabbed about 100 times inside her apartment in Arlington, Texas.
Mayra Velasquez was arrested and booked into the Tarrant County Corrections Center on July 17, according to jail records. She is facing a capital murder charge over the death of Irasema Chavez.
Chavez was found dead inside her second-floor apartment on January 20, 2012, after suffering approximately 100 stab wounds, according to reports.
During the initial investigation, Arlington police found no obvious signs of forced entry, raising the possibility that Chavez knew her killer or had willingly allowed the person into her home.
Surveillance footage recorded the night before the murder showed an unidentified person wearing baggy clothing and a hoodie climbing the stairs to Chavez's apartment. The individual was seen knocking on the door, speaking briefly with someone inside and then being allowed to enter.
Investigators also discovered blood at the crime scene that did not belong to Chavez. However, DNA testing at the time failed to identify a suspect because the profile did not match anyone in existing databases.
In 2016, detectives sent a blood sample to Parabon NanoLabs, where scientists used DNA markers associated with ancestry, eye colour, hair colour and skin tone to develop a predicted composite image of the potential suspect.
The case was revisited in 2024 when the Arlington Police Department partnered with the FBI's Dallas Field Office to use Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG), a technique that combines crime-scene DNA analysis with genealogy databases and family-tree research.
After two years of further investigation, the IGG process reportedly generated a significant lead that allowed detectives to gather additional evidence and obtain an arrest warrant for Velasquez.
Authorities have not disclosed the nature of the new evidence or confirmed whether it directly linked Velasquez to the DNA recovered from the crime scene.
It also remains unclear whether Velasquez and Chavez knew each other.
Velasquez is currently being held without bond, while the date of her next court appearance has yet to be announced.
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