AUSTIN, Texas — Central Texans are surroundings the desk, getting ready to have fun Thanksgiving with friends and family. But this can be a vacation one East Austin circle of relatives would fairly put out of your mind. Unfortunately, they are now not ready to.
For this phase of our KVUE Crime Files series, we are having a look on the unsolved murder of Stephen Arevalo.
His sister remembers the instant she discovered he have been murdered.
“I was actually driving in from Dallas to have Thanksgiving at my mom’s house and when I got there, I saw the yellow tape. He said, ‘Your mom is fine, she’s at the police station. But your brother, Stephen, has been killed,'” Sara Lee mentioned. “I haven’t thought about that particular instance for 28 years, but yeah, that’s how I was told.”
The news stunned Lee and her complete circle of relatives.
It used to be 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving in 1995 when their uncle made the grotesque discovery.
“He got up to make his coffee, and he noticed that the screen door was open. He found Stephen on the steps, unresponsive. So it appeared that Stephen was trying to get inside the house,” mentioned Det. Zachary Baldridge with the Austin Police Department (APD).
PHOTOS: Stephen Arevalo, 1995 Austin murder sufferer
Someone stabbed 30-year-old Arevalo, the daddy of two younger women, again and again. Investigators consider it took place in a shed the place he ceaselessly frolicked, situated in the back of his mom’s area on East Sixth Street.
Just hours sooner than his dying, Arevalo went out for a pair of beverages.
“They dropped him off at my mom’s house. My brother and my cousin said goodbye,” Lee mentioned.
After that, no person is aware of what took place. Police say at 2 a.m., caller ID confirmed that Arevalo had attempted to touch his estranged spouse. She did not pick out up. Two hours later, at 4 a.m., a relative inside of the home noticed a mild on within the shed and a black truck within the alley.
Shortly later on, police consider Arevalo used to be killed, someday between the hours of 4 a.m. and six a.m. But the tale has gaps.
“After he was dropped off, there’s a couple of hours that we don’t know really what happened or who was in that black truck or even if this black truck was related to this story. It’s in an alley that people go up and down all the time,” Det. Baldridge mentioned.
Police wouldn’t have a purpose, and detectives and circle of relatives disagree on what it may well be.
“We believe it may be a robbery. His personal items that he normally kept in his pocket, like his ID and stuff, were on the shed floor,” Baldridge mentioned.
“No, it wasn’t a robbery. Nothing was missing. The stereo that they took was an old, beat-up stereo with no monetary value,” Lee mentioned.
Nearly 3 many years later, with out a actual leads, Arevalo’s circle of relatives has no closure, no peace. The circle of relatives not will get in combination to have fun Thanksgiving. But yearly, a cousin brings Arevalo’s mother a plate for dinner.
“She very rarely eats it. But yeah, it’s a tough holiday,” Lee mentioned. “We know someone knows something. We just need that person to get a conscience and say something, you know, put yourself in our shoes. How would you how would you feel all these years?”
Just 5 months in the past, Arevalo’s father died. Shortly sooner than he handed, when he used to be in hospice, he had a relative touch investigators one closing time to look if there have been any leads within the case. He used to be advised no. Not lengthy after, he died, by no means understanding who used to be chargeable for the dying of his son.
If you or someone you already know has information on what took place to Arevalo, name Crime Stoppers at 512-472-8477. You can stay nameless. A praise of as much as $1,000 could also be to be had for information resulting in an arrest.
KVUE Daybreak’s Yvonne Nava is shining a focus on a number of Central Texas cold instances as section of a per thirty days collection referred to as KVUE Crime Files.
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