A Texas realtor faces a capital murder charge after forensic genealogy evidence linked her to the brutal stabbing of a woman more than fourteen years ago, the City of Arlington confirmed this week. Mayra Velasquez, 42, was arrested and charged with capital murder in connection with the January 2012 killing of Irasema Chavez in Arlington, Texas.
The Arlington Police Department (APD) arrested Velasquez without incident. She has been denied bond and is being held at the Tarrant County Jail.
The Capital Murder Charge and a Cold Case Revived
On 20 January 2012, at approximately 8:51 a.m., officers responded to the Aspenwood Apartments on the 2700 block of South Collins Street after a family member reported finding Chavez unresponsive and covered in blood. She was pronounced deceased at the scene. Chavez was 32 years old.
Chavez had been stabbed approximately 100 times. Her teenage niece, Linda Yesenia Valdez, described discovering the body to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in May 2018. ‘Everything was stained, soaked with blood,’ Valdez said. ‘I wanted to see what had happened because I saw a lot of blood, even the white walls were covered. And then I saw her, face down.’
Surveillance footage released in August 2012 showed a person in a baseball cap and hoodie approaching Chavez’s front door, but the images captured the figure only from behind and to the side. Detectives pursued numerous leads over the following years without definitively identifying a suspect.
A single drop of blood recovered from inside the apartment belonged to a female suspect with no known relation to Chavez, police said. The precise location of the blood drop is described differently across sources: the APD press release refers to a nightstand, while NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth cites a bedroom television stand. Both accounts agree the sample was the critical forensic link.
How the FBI’s Genetic Genealogy Programme Cracked the Case
In November 2024, the APD Homicide Unit approached the FBI Dallas Field Office about enrolling the case in the FBI Investigative Genetic Genealogy programme. The FBI agreed to assist.
In April 2026, the FBI’s genealogy team notified Arlington detectives that their analysis had identified Velasquez as a potential suspect, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reports. That finding carried particular weight given that NBC 5 also reports Velasquez had at one time been a close friend of Chavez and lived just a few miles from the crime scene, a connection the police had not previously disclosed publicly.
In May 2026, detectives collected a DNA sample from discarded items retrieved from Velasquez’s rubbish. CBS News Texas, citing court documents and police, reports that undercover officers used discarded forks to obtain the sample. A crime laboratory determined that Velasquez’s DNA matched the blood droplet recovered from inside Chavez’s apartment. The APD subsequently obtained an arrest warrant charging Velasquez with one count of capital murder.
Velasquez was 27 years old at the time of the killing. She is now a licensed real estate agent affiliated with Pure Realtors, LLC, operating out of the Dallas area. Her licence remained active as of this week, according to the local Fox affiliate KDFW.
A Life Lived Publicly in the Years After the Killing
In the years following Chavez’s death, Velasquez travelled extensively, posting photographs to social media from Cozumel, Dubai, Disney World, Bolivia, Colombia, Jamaica, Paris, London, Spain, and New York City. She also started a family, becoming pregnant a little over a year after the alleged killing, and later won real estate awards.
Lupe Jimenez, a fellow real estate agent who worked alongside Velasquez between 2022 and 2023, described her in terms far removed from a suspect in a violent crime. ‘For me she was a sweet lady, very outgoing, helpful, family oriented,’ Jimenez told local NPR and PBS affiliate KERA. ‘I’m in shock because she’s not somebody I thought would ever do anything like that.’
Jimenez also recalled asking Velasquez how she funded her travels while they were both selling houses. ‘I talked to her about seeing her travel the world and I told her, “Hey, what are you doing? How are you travelling the world if we got to sell houses?”‘ Jimenez said. ‘She said, “No girl, I got family and so I go visit them and that’s what we do so I don’t really have to spend a lot of money.”‘ Velasquez reportedly told the colleague she and her husband flipped homes and ran side businesses.
The APD and the FBI Dallas Field Office have scheduled a joint news conference at which investigators are expected to set out the full chronology of the collaborative investigation that led to Velasquez, who currently lives in Dallas. Subject to any onward proceedings, the capital murder charge carries the potential for the death penalty or life imprisonment under Texas law.
