On October 24, 1988, at about 7:40 a.m., 20-year-old Nancy DePriest came to work at a Pizza Hut restaurant in Austin, Texas, where she was the assistant manager. At 9:30 a.m., another employee arriving for work found her lying in a hallway of the restaurant. Her hands were tied behind her back, she had been sexually assaulted, and she had been shot in the back of the head. An undetermined amount of money was taken. DePriest died later that day.
Days later, an employee at the restaurant saw two men, 22-year-old Christopher Ochoa and 18-year-old Richard Danziger, in the restaurant eating pizza, drinking beer and seemingly raising toasts in DePriest's honor.
Because police believed that a master key had been used to gain entrance to the restaurant and because their behavior seemed suspicious, the two men, roommates who worked at another Austin-area Pizza Hut, became the lead suspects.
In November, Austin police questioned both men. Danziger denied having anything to do with the crime, although, according to police, he seemed to know details about the crime that were not public knowledge.
Ochoa was interrogated at length. After two 12-hour sessions with Senior Sergeant Hector Polanco, and detectives Bruce Boardman and Ed Balagia, Ochoa signed a confession that included important details about the murder. He implicated Danziger as well, saying that Danziger shot DePriest and that both men had raped her.
Also in November, blood, hair, semen, and saliva samples were collected from Ochoa and Danziger and analyzed by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Serologist Sarah Becker reported that Ochoa was not eliminated as the source of a semen sample. The defense would later assert that because the tests failed to reveal a blood type dissimilar to a victim, no potential source of the semen could be excluded because the victim’s blood group markers could have "masked" the perpetrator.
The biological samples were then sent to Forensic Science Associates (FSA), an independent laboratory in California. Based on a DNA test called "DQ Alpha," DNA analyst Edward Blake reported that Ochoa was among 16% of the Mexican-American population who could not be eliminated as a potential source of the semen sample from the rape. Danziger and DePriest’s husband were eliminated as potential sources.
On November 15, 1988, both men were arrested. Danziger was charged with aggravated sexual assault. Ochoa was charged with capital murder and aggravated sexual assault.
Ochoa, who was facing the death penalty, accepted an offer from the prosecution and pled guilty to murder on May 5, 1989. He agreed to testify against Danziger at trial.
In January 1990, Danziger went to trial in Travis County Criminal District Court. Called to the witness stand, Ochoa contradicted his confession, saying that he, not Danziger, had shot DePriest.
Ochoa testified that the two had planned to rob the Pizza Hut and tied up and raped DePriest. He said he shot her because she recognized him. Ochoa testified that he and Danziger sexually assaulted the victim eight times.
A police officer testified that details of the crime were not released publicly and denied that Ochoa had been fed any details during his interrogation.
The only forensic evidence that linked Danziger to the crime was a pubic hair found near the blood in the restaurant. Juan Rojas, a forensic analyst for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the hair was microscopically consistent with Danziger’s pubic hair. Asked whether he was "confident about each characteristic” that he observed, Rojas replied, “Yes, I’m absolutely correct.”
A lab analyst from the Texas Department of Public Safety testified that semen was detected on the vaginal swab from the rape kit. The blood type detected from this sample was similar to the blood types of Danziger and DePriest.
Danziger presented an alibi defense, claiming to have been with his girlfriend that night.
On February 1, 1990, Danziger was convicted of aggravated sexual assault. The following day, the jury voted to impose a sentence of life in prison.
On February 7, 1990, Ochoa was sentenced to life in prison.
In September 1991, the Third Court of Appeals of Texas upheld Danziger’s conviction and sentence.
In February 1997, Danziger was attacked by a fellow inmate, Armando Gutierrez, at a prison near Amarillo, Texas. Gutierrez repeatedly kicked Danziger in the head. Danziger required emergency surgery and part of his brain was removed. Gutierrez, who was serving an 18-year sentence for assaulting a police officer, had another 25 years added for the assault, which turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Gutierrez wanted to attack someone else. Danziger was transferred to a special institution for the incarcerated mentally ill.
In February 1998, Achim Josef Marino, a convict who was serving three life sentences in a Texas prison for aggravated robbery and had become a born-again Christian, wrote a letter to Governor George W. Bush. It began: “Re: Murder Confession.”
In the letter, Marino said that his conscience “sickens me” because he alone raped and murdered DePriest. He said that Danziger and Ochoa were not involved.
"I tell you this, sir," wrote Marino. "I did this awful crime and I was alone."
Marino said evidence tying him to the crime, including DePriest's keys, could be found at his parents’ home. Marino said he had first sent a letter of confession to the police in 1996, but got no response, so he was appealing to the Governor to take action.
After the police received another letter from Marino that contained a detailed description of the scene, they began re-investigating. Officers went to his parents’ home and found the keys and other evidence, including bank pouches and a pistol.
Investigators approached both Danziger and Ochoa again. Because of his brain damage, Danziger was unable to be interviewed. Ochoa, who later said he was still intimidated by the police who interrogated him right after the crime, told the same story he had told at trial.
In June 1999, Ochoa reached out to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, headed by attorneys Keith Findley and John Pray. Ochoa recanted his confession. He said the officers, including Polanco, had threatened him with the death penalty, showing him the vein in his arm where the lethal injection would be placed. At one point, a chair was thrown against the wall over his head, Ochoa said. He said the police fed him the details for his confession.
Meanwhile, as the prosecution re-investigated the case, it sought DNA testing on the evidence. In September 2000, FSA’s Dr. Blake reported the results of testing of the semen samples using more discriminating DNA tests. These tests eliminated Ochoa as the source of the semen sample for which he had not been eliminated back in 1989.
In November 2000, Dr. Blake reported that further DNA tests on the semen recovered from the victim excluded Ochoa and Danziger. However, Marino could not be eliminated as the source of the semen. Ochoa was released on bond January 16, 2001. Danziger was released on March 22, 2001. Both were exonerated on February 6, 2002.
By then, Polanco had come under scrutiny for obtaining false confessions in other cases. He had been fired in 1993. He played a central role in obtaining a false confession from Allen Causey, who was convicted of a murder in 1992 in Austin. Causey was exonerated in 2025.
Danziger and Ochoa later filed wrongful conviction lawsuits against Travis County and the city of Austin.
Danziger, who required lifelong care due to his brain damage, received $9 million from Austin, $1 million from Travis County and $500,000 from Ochoa for wrongfully implicating him in the crime. Danziger also received $250,000 in state compensation. Ochoa received $5.3 million from the city of Austin.
Marino was convicted of the murder of DePriest and sentenced to life in prison.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 05-26-2020
