DALLAS — A man has been arrested in connection to the deaths of three women who were all found with stab wounds in empty fields in recent months, Dallas police said.
Oscar Sanchez Garcia, 25, was arrested on Wednesday, July 19, and he faces three counts of murder, according to a police news release. His bond was set at $4 million, according to online records.
Police linked Sanchez Garcia to the cases through phone records, video and data from a license plate reader that allegedly put his vehicle and phone locations in the areas where the victims were last known to be alive, and where their bodies were found, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by WFAA.
The first woman's body, later identified as 60-year-old Kimberly Robinson, was found April 22, 2023, in the 200 block of Santa Fe Avenue near the intersection of North Corinth Street Road and East Clarendon Drive in southern Dallas. A person passing by the area near the Trinity River notified police of the body found nude from the waist down and stabbed.
Two months later, a man going down the gravel road at Santa Fe Ave. to fish thought he’d driven over a chain when he got out of his truck and found 25-year-old Cherish Gibson's body in the same area Robinson was found. She was also partially nude and stabbed. Gibson was last seen near an adult bookstore on Harry Hines Boulevard. The owner told WFAA that Dallas police pulled surveillance video from his store because Gibson's phone pinged outside the store.
According to the affidavit, investigators also obtained video from near where Gibson was found dead on Santa Fe Ave. The video showed a blue Ford pickup truck "with distinct stickers on the rear windshield," the affidavit said.
The same pickup truck was captured on a license-plate reader on June 24 on Harry Hines Blvd., around the same time and place Gibson was last seen alive.
Investigators learned that the truck was registered to Sanchez Garcia, who also lived near where Gibson and Robinson were found dead, the affidavit said.
And on July 15, the body of an unidentified woman - who was later identified as 31-year-old Debrenese Janey Henry - was found in a field less than five miles away from the other two victims. A man walking his dog discovered Henry's body. He told police his dog had run into it a week earlier but he had believed it was a person sleeping. The body was also not clothed from the waist down and also stabbed.
The case meets the definition of a serial killer, but the Dallas Police Department said it doesn't use that term in investigations.
Police credit a social media post about a serial killer targeting prostitutes with helping them connect the three cases.
“We had heard about the video," Kristin Lowman, a DPD spokesperson said. "Questions were asked, ‘Were these crimes connected?’.”
As police investigated Henry's death, they learned that she had been on a "date" with someone in a truck near a 7-Eleven on Harry Hines Blvd. early on the morning of July 9. Police learned this from a witness who was talking on the phone with the victim at the time, the affidavit said. The witness said they were talking with the victim when the same person in the truck pulled back into the 7-Eleven and asked for another "date," the affidavit said.
That was the last known communication with Henry, according to the affidavit.
Police later obtained Sanchez Garcia's phone records, which showed that on the night of April 21 to the morning of April 22 -- when Robinson was killed -- his phone was in the area of Santa Fe Ave., the affidavit said. On June 23, his phone appeared to be "moving along the same path" as Gibson's phone to where it was abandoned, the affidavit said.
Then, on July 9, Sanchez Garcia's phone was pinging in the same area as where his truck was captured on the license plate reader, near where the third victim, Henry, was last known to be alive, the affidavit said. His phone also pinged again near where she was found dead.
Christina Martinez has known Sanchez Garcia and his family for two years and lives at the same triplex.
“He’s a calm guy, chilling guy," she said. "He likes to play with the kids. That’s why we were like in shock."
Wednesday's arrest was not the first time police had been to the home, though.
In March, about one month before the first victim was found, police arrested Sanchez Garcia after he allegedly punched his wife twice in the face because she had used his bank card to buy diapers without asking.
“She’s in shock," Martinez said of Sanchez Garcia's partner. "And the son is just asking for his daddy. She doesn’t know what to tell him. He does not look like that person that would do something like that.”
Robinson's daughter, Janetria Oliver, said Wednesday she is grateful police have arrested the person responsible.
"My mother did not deserve that, and I’m so glad that he’s off the streets where he won’t be able to hurt anyone else," Oliver said. "I’ve also been praying for the other families involved. No one deserves for their life to be cut short like that, and we pray that full justice is served.”
Police had been investigating if their deaths were connected and on Tuesday, July 18, said that two of the women were involved in prostitution.
"This is what we've been praying for," Gibson's grandmother told WFAA.
Bekah Charleston, a sex trafficking victim, spoke with WFAA about the dangers of working in prostitution.
"When you dehumanize a person to the point that they become a commodity that means now you're just a product to someone that is to be paid for, used and discarded," Charleston said.
"You don't know how many women I know what have been either murdered by their sex traffickers or by their buyers that purchase them," she added.