Hector De Peña was the first lawyer assigned to defend Carlos ...

2012] Los Tocayos Carlos, Part III, Chapter 11 953
to defense lawyers and the TV stations—Wanda called 911 not once,
but twice.
Although police never made the first call public, its existence
was well known inside the police department. Olivia Escobedo, who
had left Corpus Christi before the trial in the Diamond-Shamrock
case, readily remembered the two calls when she recounted the
events of Wanda’s death to an investigator years later.
“I remember listening to Ms. Lopez screaming on the tape,”
Escobedo said. “She had called once to say that there was a man
outside with a knife, then I remember when she called back, trying to
talk in a low voice” so the man wouldn’t know she was calling the
police. On the second call “you could hear her all of a sudden saying
she would give him what he wanted” and “screaming as he attacked
her.”
There were other clues, too. When the out-of-town
investigators looked at the D.A.’s file on the DeLuna case in 2004,
they found the Corpus Christi Police Department “call card” reporting
Wanda’s 911 call to Escochea at 8:09 p.m., when she is heard
screaming and struggling with someone. The record is on a
“Supplementary” form, one used for follow-up situations after some
earlier action initiated police contact.
And there was George Aguirre’s statement to police and
testimony at the DeLuna trial. He said he warned Wanda about a
scary-looking Mexican guy outside with an open buck knife in his
pocket and left only after hearing Wanda on the phone with the 911
operator, while the man with the knife was still outside. Aguirre saw
Wanda making a different call from the one given to the defense
lawyers on a tape cassette and played for the jury. The call heard by
the jury began with Wanda telling Escochea that she was calling
because the man she believed had a knife was already inside the
store.
Although no recording of the first conversation survived, both
Rodriguez and TV reporter Karen Boudrie, who covered both the
DeLuna and Vargas trials, helped the out-of-town investigators
reconstruct it later on:
“Is he in the store?,” the female 911 operator asked Wanda.
“No, he’s outside.”
“He’s not doing anything to hurt you?”
“No.”
“Call back if he does anything, if he comes inside.”