AUSTIN, Texas — The fate of accused serial killer Raul Meza Jr. is still up in the air after his attorneys presented a plea deal Tuesday morning that was denied by a Travis County judge.
Raul Meza Jr. is accused of killing Gloria Lofton in 2019 and Jesse Fraga in 2023. He was previously convicted of killing 8-year-old Kendra Page in the 1980s. He served 11 years of his sentence for that crime before he was released.
Police say he could be linked to up to 10 cold cases, going back 25 years.
The rejected plea deal
At a hearing on Tuesday, Meza's attorneys presented a plea deal, asking for life in prison for one murder, plus 20 years for the other. But Judge Julie Kocurek said she won't accept anything less than life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Under the defense's proposed plea deal, Meza would have been eligible for parole after 40 years, once he had served 30 years for the first murder charge and another 10 for the other. His lawyers said that would have made him more than 100 years old before he could even have a shot at being released from prison.
Meza's attorneys say he wants a deal because he doesn't want to have to go to trial.
"Mr. Meza is ready for this ordeal to be over – not just for himself, but for the whole community. He's not terribly interested in having a trial where a bunch of stuff comes out that nobody really wants to hear," Russ Hunt Jr., one of Meza's lawyers, said Tuesday. "And so, Mr. Meza is ready to get it over with."
Meza's attorneys said the rejection of the plea deal seemed to come as a surprise to Meza.
"It appeared to me that his natural reaction was to stare at the prosecutors. Like, 'We thought this was a done deal. Why have you screwed the deal?'" Hunt said.
Reaction from the families' of Meza's alleged victims
Many family members of Meza's alleged victims were also in court on Tuesday. For them, the judge's denial of the plea deal was a partial win.
"Since he’s been in jail, every day, I keep thinking, 'He’s going to get a plea bargain, he’s going to get a plea bargain,'" said Tracy Page, Kendra Page's sister. "I haven’t slept. And then when I heard that today, it was just like a big relief off my shoulders and everything.”
The family members say they want to see Meza get the maximum punishment.
"We're open for [a] trial, for sure. And we want everybody to – everything come to light. There's a lot of things that go into specifically our case. So we just wanna make sure that everything is said out in the open and get down to the truth," said Christina Fultz, Lofton's daughter. "As long as he remains behind bars and, you know, hopefully dies in there, we'll be happy."
They say the judge's decision to not allow anything less than life without parole is something that should have happened back in 1982, when Meza was convicted of killing Page.
"I wish this would have been done when he did this to my sister. Then all these families wouldn't be here today," Tracy Page said.
The family members also say they will continue attending other legal proceedings for other cold cases that Meza is possibly connected to.
"There's a lot of cold cases out there that have been botched, messed up, and I'm hoping that they can connect them to him so these families can have closure," Tracy Page said.
Meza's attorneys remain confident his case will not go to trial. Judge Kocurek set a date for Sept. 30 to discuss a new deal, but the defense thinks it will likely be sorted out before then.