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Hello and welcome to the excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday August 15th, 2024 and this is a special episode of the

excerpt. In 2018 four female sex workers were brutally murdered in the span of 12 days in

Laredo, Texas, shocking their small border community.

A few hours after the last victim was murdered, an unlikely suspect was arrested, a 10-year

veteran of the U.S. customs and border protection.

During his trial, the prosecution argued that Juan David Ortiz used his role as a Border Patrol agent to methodically stay one step ahead of the investigation all along an argument that eventually led to

a successful conviction. What made this Border Guard decide to target four

innocent women and carry out this heinous serial killing.

USA Today National Correspondent, Rick Jervis, spent nearly five years getting the full story,

the result of which he shared in his new book,

The Devil Behind the Badge, out on bookshelves now.

Thanks for joining us, Rick.

Thank you, Dana.

First, Rick, tell us what compelled you to write this book.

What drew you into this story?

So this is a story that I initially covered for USA Today.

It was an assignment for me. I'm based in Austin, Texas,

and so I actually went I went down to Laredo, Texas to cover

Juan David Ortiz's initial arrest. I went to the press conference there and covered it as a story for like you said today, but what really drove me to expand this into a book was when I started meeting some of the victims families, there was a sense early on in the initial press conference. Yes,

this was a tragic situation that these four women were killed, but they also

...