Melchor Magdaleno Garcia moved his three step daughters around the country for nearly ten years. He would be brought to justice in the Panhandle.
The abuse began in 2012 when the girls were seven, ten and 12. They moved from California in 2018 and then bounced around, living in Nebraska, South Carolina, Oklahoma and in April of 2019 they moved to Randall County where they lived for nearly two years.
He forced them to live in dog kennels while clothed or nude. He repeatedly sexually assaulted them, beat them, deprived them of food and water, did not allow them to have friends or money. He cut off all their contact with the outside world, which meant no school In April of 2021, the youngest girl then 17, sneaked a social media account and got in touch with her maternal family in California. Garcia found out but not before a missed call was made to the Randall County sheriff's office. That led to a welfare check. Being afraid, the young women denied anything was wrong.
That changed the next morning. The youngest, then 17, said she was leaving and taking two three-year-olds in the home with her. She told the others they could either join her or not. One of the toddlers was Magdaleno Garcia's with the oldest stepdaughter, the other was the child of their biological mother. All the victims and the two small children left for California to reunite with their maternal family. Randall County Assistant District Attorney Tracie Reilly says "They packed up whatever could fit into a car, they drove off. They bought a phone at Wal-Mart and called their uncle. He drove to Arizona and met them halfway and took them home."
Magdaleno Garcia stayed in Texas after the family escaped and was arrested in Randall County. Reilly says the worst of the abuse happened before Texas. "Being placed in dog kennels for days at a time happened in California. It did not happen in Texas. In exerting so much control over them when they were so much younger, by the time they were older he didn't need to do that much to them to get them to comply. They were so young when it started that they accepted this would be their lives for forever and the only way to survive was to do whatever he wants you to, or there would be consequences."
Randall County District Attorney Robert Love called it a programming situation. "Because of what they had been through they had become so compliant, they didn't know another life."
Magdaleno Garcia also told them he was a sniper and had law enforcement connections. He said he could shoot their family from 100 yards and had 400 confirmed kills. Reilly says "it wasn't until trial when one of them mentioned to me he was an Army Ranger. I said no, he was not. And they were like, you're kidding."
He was prosecuted on 25 counts. He got the maximum on each one, 20 life sentences and 20 years on each of the other five counts. Seven of the life sentences will run consecutively and two of the 20 years will be stacked as well.
Reilly calls the victims "Remarkable and exceptional young women. It takes a lot of courage to leave your home in California, fly here, go into a courtroom, face down the man who controlled your life for ten years and testify against him. And they all did."
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She says they strive for the best sentence possible in every child abuse case they get. "They may not be this dramatic, but they're all important. Randall County fights for every victim that we can. These were three victims that didn't even live in Texas. Our district attorney could have said, they don't live here, let's let California deal with it. But he said this happened in my county and I'm not going to let it go unpunished."
Love notes prosecutors went to California and prepared the witnesses for trial. "That is the dedication they had for this case. It's the result I anticipated because of how well they had done."
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