He was convicted in May 2018. In November 2018, Gant-Benalcazar, 34, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole.
Still, investigators met with Gant-Benalcazar in Galveston. Although he claimed to have no knowledge of the murders, he admitted he had been in Austin and stayed with Parlin at the time of both homicides. Red flags rose up. Over the course of a lengthy interview, Gant-Benalcazar kept changing his story.
He and fellow Austin PD detective Kerry Scanlon felt like the murder scene had been staged to look like a robbery, and thought Blair had specifically been targeted.
Investigators arrested Gant-Benalcazar for the murder of Kathy Blair. However, officials lacked physical evidence and a confession to charge Gant-Benalcazar in the Shelton murders. In Texas, if you’re complicit in a crime you can be held equally responsible.
Eventually, Gant-Benalcazar admitted to going into the house and killing Blair. In a taped interview he said: “She woke up, she lunged at me. It was a struggle and I stabbed her in the neck.”. He said nothing about the Sheltons. Investigators arrested Gant-Benalcazar for the murder of Kathy Blair.
Detectives braced for a challenging case. They began with Blair’s intimates, including her son, Joseph Hargis, 27, who discovered his mother’s bloody body on December 6. In a conversation with a 911 dispatcher, Hargis said, “I think my mom is dead. There’s a lot of blood.
Over the course of a lengthy interview, Gant-Benalcazar kept changing his story. He mentioned that Parlin and he had stopped “in a neighborhood” for some unspecified reason. During a break, detectives observed that Gant-Benalcazar’s physique and walk matched the figure in the infrared video.
The cops questioned Gant-Benalcazar and were shocked when during the course of the five-hour interview, he confessed to killing Blair. He admitted to being Parlin’s partner in crime and to stabbing his victim in the neck when she awoke while they were robbing her home.
Follow the links to read about more murders profiled on A Time To Kill.