The Dentist, The Spurned Lover and The Hitman

experience as a crime and court reporter. She is currently a host and correspondent for the Law and Crime Network. You can find her on Twitter at a Geanette five and Instagram at Anjeanette. Episode eighteen The Case of the Dentist, the spurn Lover, and the Hipman. Kendra Hatcher was born on February third in Springfield, Illinois. She grew up in the tiny Maybury esque town of Pleasant Plains, Illinois, where her mother ran a quiltch up. Kendrew was beautiful inside

and out. She loved life, had an infectious laugh, and was popular. She was a straight A student in the classroom, and Kendra also excelled at sports, where she was the captain of a cheerleading squad and her volleyball team. Being kind and generous was at the core of who Kendrew was. While still in high school, she taught Bible studies to underprivileged sheath as well as went on mission trips abroad to build churches. But her biggest dream was to become

a pediatric dentist. Here's Chris. Kendra was this lovely young woman. She's a volunteer and just ef revested personality. I mean, she grows up in this tiny little town. From your research, what kind of place was pleasant Plans to grow up in Pleasant Plane sounds like just this idyllic place to grow up in. Kendra Hatcher. You know, she came from a nice family. She was just a nice woman. When I was reading up about her, I was really surprised to find out that there was less than a thousand

people in that town. I mean, that's really small, eight d two as of the census, you know, incredibly small. So you have to imagine it's a community where everyone knows everyone. Despite how beautiful Pleasant Plane sounds, Kendra also had a need for adventure and travel. I mean she was going to Central America to build churches with people. That speaks to me, to someone who wants to see the world. On top of that, that's outside of that

tiny town. I think so. And you can only imagine that growing up in a small town and you're in high school and you see there's more to the world out there, and you want to explore. For college, she decides to move away to Indiana. She goes to the DePaul University. She majored in Spanish, minored in biochemistry, and then after she graduated, she enrolled at the University of

Kentucky College of Dentistry. Continuing her love of helping those less fortunate, Kensdra would spend spring breaks volunteering with Habitat for Humanity. She also gave free dental work to children a need, though not everything was perfect. Kendra married her college sweetheart in two thousand and four, but it hadn't worked out. By the time she graduated with her degree in pediatric dentistry. In two thousand and ten, Kendra was

thirty years old and single. She was ready for a fresh start and moved to Dallas, Texas, excited to give big city living a go. By Kendra was thirty five and thriving in Dallas. She loved the youthful energy of the city, and she lived in a trendy part of town and in joyd working at Smile Zone. The only thing missing was someone to share it with. Kendra found herself checking out profiles on Tinder one night in May. Someone caught her eye and so she swiped right on.

Kendra went on our first date with thirty eight year old Ricky Pantiagua Here's Chris. Ricky had some similarities with Kendra as well. He grew up in rural northern California, so it was probably not the biggest town he grew up in. But he also grew up in a in a single wide trailer, so he probably didn't come from too much wealth. Despite those humble beginnings, he went to Stanford and then did his internship at the University of Massachusetts and then inven moved to Dallas, and he too,

was getting over a divorce when he met Kendra. You know, so you've got these two people who meet and have so much in common. When Ricky moved to Dallas, it was to complete the last step of is medical training, which was to do a dermatology residency. So it was a very specialized residency at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and all of the patients and when people talk about him, they described him as having a bedside manner second to none, so he was really good at it.

So Kendra works at the Smile Zone. She's working as a pediatric dentist, living her dream. And she had actually moved into this apartment complex. It was called Gables Park seventeen and it's a really awesome place. I mean, it has a saltwater pool, it has a gourmet coffee bar, a cyber lounge, twenty four hour concierge, so um in a fitness studio. So this is a really swanky place and she's basically living her best life. Kendra and Ricky really hit it off, and even after their first date,

things seemed to move really quickly. They both loved to travel. They went to Denver, and they went to San Francisco, and they were really inseparable. And one of Kendra's nieces actually came to visit her that summer and she described Kendra and Ricky as always cuddling and it really seemed like they had found each other's missing piece, kind of like they were soul mates. And one of the trips

that they took was actually to northern California. Kendra met Ricky's parents there, and that's always a clue of just how serious things are getting. Not only that, Kendra and Ricky were planning to travel the Pleasant Plains in October for the town Fall Festival for Ricky to meet Kendra's parents. It's getting really serious when you introduced the boyfriend of the parents. And this happened three months after they started dating, and that was right after they had met on tender.

Kendra and Ricky's relationship had moved fast, and by late August, Kendra was telling her friend she thought Ricky was the one. It felt like wedding bells were in her future. Both Kendra and Ricky loved to travel, and they had already taken several trips to California, where Ricky was from. By Labor Day, the pair planned to leave the country and take a romantic trip to Cancun, Mexico. Very sadly, Kendra

would never make that trip. The night before they were slated to leave on September two, Kendra had driven into her buildings gated parking garage and parked. As she got out of her car. A stranger with a gun walked up. Kendra screamed, Her assailant shot her in the head, and Kendra died instantly. A fellow resident of her building had just come down the elevator to the parking garage and heard both kendra screams and the pop of the gunshots. He then saw a black SUV peel out of the

parking garage. He called nine one one. The witness was only sixteen years old. Let's take a listen to the nine one one call Hi, who of the gable park piece in the one parking want I can girl? You t was that? Uh think you the next I'm not serious, but I thought I thought like Kerry key right out. And when I passed them to go, they had like the maths and he took it off because you carry with me. We made in the card. It was it was I think that's a man. I'm like, I'm finished. Man,

It's like you look like me. He was he was white. You were white. He had a he had a diffus with me on this as been off so with like, uh yeah it was black because I don't know all of it was greeting and then a lot of and then I thought of laying on the board and then it was like, let's like food net her name and her phone going the board of the card that was open.

I don't know what happened. You think that uh it was was coming was the card and steers it was a steady I think it was little sewers that she's there, like it was a card parts the doors the door open, and he was laying on about the doors like I remember, imagine that sixteen and he sees that in this building that's supposed to be one of the securest buildings for young people to live in. Yeah. I've probably listened to

hundreds of nine one one calls over the years. And to listen to a young person, a teenager call nine one one and to have to hear something like that and then walk up and see a woman shot in the head, especially in a place that it is supposed to be so safe and an exclusive community, it's um, I mean, it's just really horrifying. I'm startled by how composed he actually remained. I think that he had to

be in shock. I mean, something kicks in and adrenaline or something kicks in and you're just relaying what you know what you have just seen and you just need to get out, And there's probably something that comes from within him to where he wants to He knows, you know, he's a good person. He knows what he has seen and witnessed. He understands the gravity of it. Sometimes there's a lot of really good information in these nine one

one calls. This one was pretty detailed, so any information they might go through, and the detective may listen to this several times. It's a priceless clue. There may be something that's corroborated by a piece of video, something that he says, or you know, they see a particular car pull out, or he sees the car pull out and then they find it on the video. You know, it's one thing can often lead to another in these cases, and then he becomes a key witness at that point.

Most definitely, when Dallas Police Department's homicide detective Eric Barnes arrived on the scene of Kendra's murder, he had a mystery on his hands. At first glance, it had looked like a robbery gone wrong. Kendra had been shot twice in the back of her head at close range, and her paris was missing. Could the answer be as simple as a robbery or had someone wanted her dad? Here's a Jeanette. We have a woman who's dead and been shot in the head, and her purse is missing, her

camera is missing. And they talked to a teenage boy who called nine one one, and he tells the police that he thought the person was driving a black Jeep Cherokee and that it was maybe a white man, but he couldn't tell because the windows were tinted. And so Detective Barnes goes in search of surveillance footage. This is a really nice apartment complex, so you've got to believe they have surveillance cameras, and so he goes and finds this from the parking garage. UM and to him, the

driver looked like she could be a Hispanic woman. And Detective Barnes goes and talks to Ricky panton Niagua, who is Kendra's boyfriend. Ricky was brought to Detective Barnes told the detective that he'd been waiting at Kendra's apartment earlier

that evening while she was coming home. UM. I believe they had been texting while she was at work and then on her like she must have texted, Hey, I'm on my way home, and while he was waiting, he'd gotten hungry, so he left the building to go get some tacos, and all of this happened while he was out having his tacos. And he comes back to basically the Gables Park seventeen being a crime scene. Right, so

he encounters officers. He asked what happened. He tells them that he knows Kendra because he's her boyfriend, so they bring them to Detective Barnes for questioning. They were leaving on a trip from Mexico the next morning, so he's there at the building waiting for it because they're probably gonna sleep at her place to go to the airport. Detective Barnes then when he meets him meets Ricky. He notes just how distraught Ricky is um and that he's

being very cooperative with the police, telling him everything he knows. Yeah, and right now, at this point in the investigation, Detective Barnes is really at square one. He doesn't really have any idea of why Kendra Hatcher is dead, why anybody would kill her, and so he didn't really have much to go on, so he does what a lot of

cops do. Uh. Sometimes cops will hold evidence close to the best, but this time he decides, you know what, I've got nothing here, So he releases the surveillance footage to the public. He puts it out in the news. He's hoping somebody recognizes the suv and bingo, somebody sees it. It's a local mechanic. He owns the jeep, Cherokee, and

he's shocked. He can't believe he's seeing his suv on the news, and he calls the police on September four, this is two days later, and this mechanic tells the detective Barnes that on September two, two days before, he had a friend named Brenda Delgado, and she was with her friend Crystal Cortez, and they had actually brought a

BMW into be fixed. So he loaned her his jeep and the mechanic tells Barnes that he didn't have any idea how his jeep wound up in a garage speeding away from the scene of a crime, a murder, no less, and so Detective Barnes talks to the mechanic. He calls Ricky, and Ricky told him that Brenda Delgado was his ex girlfriend,

but they were just friends now. And Ricky also mentioned that for a moment when he watched the surveillance video the jeep, he actually thought the driver looked a little bit like Brenda and he wondered if it could be her. So it was a really shocking moment, not only for Ricky but the detective too. It's insane, but it's also like it's real life. This is actually happening, you know.

In this poor mechanic sees his his SUVs crime scene. Ricky, here's the name of his ex girlfriend, thirty one, Brenda Delgado, and she's born in Mexico, so she's a Mexican citizen, but her parents immigrated to the US when Brenda was little, and so she grew up in a lower income neighborhood of Dallas called Pleasant Grove. And so she's been ambitious. She excelled at school herself. She dreamed of going to Meddle School school, but unfortunately, you know, her parents couldn't

afford to send her there. So she spent some time working at dental offices and then decided to go to dental hygiene school at a place called Sanford Brown College. Brenda definitely had aspirations and dreams. When she met Ricky. It was he took her to a Jennifer Lopez concert for their first date, and things moved really fast, and they had moved in together just after about three months,

and eventually Ricky gave her a promise ring. Brenda thought they were getting married, and then everything was over, you know. He told her one day that they had to move on. This relationship was just not going to be working for him. It was about three years into it and they broke up. And um, Ricky actually considered Brenda a really good friend and he just couldn't imagine that she would have had

anything to do with killing Kendra. He he couldn't. He couldn't believe that because he felt like she was such a good person and she even offered to bring over food for him and do anything she could to be of help after Kendra was murdered. Yeah, I mean, I think they even talked that night, didn't they. He texted or called her and told her what had happened. You don't do that with someone you don't think is a good friend. No, you don't. We're going to take a break.

We'll be back in just a moment. The only logical thing that Detective Barnes can do next is talked to Brenda Delgado, so he brings her in for questioning, and she swears she she doesn't know Kendra Hatcher or that she was Ricky's new girlfriend. And she also throws her

friend Crystal Cortes under the bus. And she tells Detective Barnes that she had no idea how the jeep Cherokee wound up in Kendra's garage that night, and she told Barnes that it was actually Crystal and not her that borrowed the mechanics jeep, and that she'd only known Crystal for about a month. And she gave Detective Barnes a receipt for an airtight alibi. She said she was at Chili's having drinks with the classmate when Kendro was murdered.

Here here it is, here's the proof. But Dallas PD had actually tracked down Crystal and brought her in for questioning. And you know, this is a woman who's twenty three years old. She doesn't have a lot of money, she's a single mom and lives with her grandmother, and she was making like eleven dollars an hour working as a receptionist. So Detective Barnes had interviewed Brenda and then bounced between the two rooms. You know, this is like something you

see on television shows. You know, you go to suspect one and then get their story, and then you go into suspect two and you say, well, suspect one told me this in blah blah blah, and they play the two off of each other when they don't even know

what the other is saying. And so Crystal is really nervous, and she goes through several versions of of what's going on in the parking garage and what happened in there, and Detective Barnes was obviously able to knock her off her game, and she just breaks down and she tells him that Brenda hired her and this guy named Lamar to rob Kendra, but she didn't know who Lamar was and or that he was going to shoot Kendra. And

so Crystals arrested. She's charged with capital murder. And before Crystals taken to the county to jail, she actually gave investigators a description of Lamar, and she told them a crucial piece of information that he drove a blue sea bring. So she provides kind of like another big key to this whole thing. I mean, this must be a detective's dream, right. He's got two suspects in two separate rooms, and he

can bounce between the two. He probably knows he's got the right people here, just having to break them both down to try to figure it all out. Brenda obviously tried to think this through the best she could. She comes up with the Chili's receipt. You know, that's my air tight alibio is at Chili's. But it really shows you how manipulative Brenda is. Because Brenda had actually courted

Crystal through this old roommate of hers. She had met her through her because the roommate had brought Crystal over to let her a little boy go swimming in the pool. And then she starts praying on this woman. She realizes that this is somebody I can bring into my life and I can groom her to do this for me. Brenda's got some issues. I think she's a pretty manipulative

person to be able to cajole Crystal into this. And Crystal basically later says she had a little boy to take care of she did this for six hundred bucks. So as Crystals trying to keep all of these stories straight, she she tells like a bunch of different things, you know, she tells all these different versions. She she told Detective Barnes she was looking for a place to park that night and that's why she in the garage, and she

wanted to go to this Mexican restaurant nearby. And then she said she had had her six year old little boy with her and wanted to find a park to take him too, and was looking for a parking spot for that. And then she actually told him that there was a man that she didn't know called Lamar who had Carjacktor and he had held a gun to her and forced her to go into the parking garage and so he could rob Kendra. So that she's kind of grasping at straws here. She's coming up with all these

different stories. And you see that in these cases sometimes where people are lying at first, and then the truth slowly starts to bleed out, you know, Lamar is introduced into the story and and then that's when finally, you know, Crystal just can't do it anymore. She admits that Brenda hired her and Lamar to go to the garage and rob Kendra. But she says that she didn't know that

Lamar was going to actually shoot Kendra. She thought he was just going to rob her, and so she didn't really put up a fight about driving away because Lamar was armed. She didn't know what would what would happen if she said she wouldn't drive him away. Even if she drove in there, for Lamar to just rob Kendrew, it's still a crime. I do wonder what Barnes thinks

is going on now. I mean, this is he's got these two women in these two rooms, and they're telling all kinds of wild stories, right, and yet he's got this poor woman, Kendrew. Why would anyone want her debt? Detective Barnes had started to get a picture of why Kendra Hatcher had been killed, and it involved Ricky's jealous ex girlfriend. Back in Brenda Delgado's interview room, he tested his theory. Here's a clip of Detective Barnes trying to get Brenda to show emotion and crack. Do you really

say or anybody else? It's probably you know, I'm Marrea, this guy that you're sell in love with Did you just say the world to believe that you had nothing to do with this? I think you didn't have anything at all. Even though you made an arrangement for the younger boy beginning this VI. You set that up. You said that, you said it's playing emotion. It starts because you make a song called every day you started like you, and I can prove that your phone records. I can

prove that through your text someone. I'm not asking you what she did because I know what she did and I'm will improve what she did. I mentioned why because that is the single most important thing. I can't understand why somebody would kill someone else. I never killed anybody, but I haven't had my heart brooking, and I know what it feels like. There's another person in this world hasn't going through that kind of man. Now, I can't

tell me what was the one through your head. This one by for you is important for you to say of the why because people are going up and think about the people that are close to you. I think about the people that are imported to you. They're gonna to know why you're coming up in this situation. But if you let Crystal telling, it's gonna come out totally different because Crystal is here for her baby right now.

She's not here for you. She came down her because she didn't know what you were gonna say about her. But she's got a very strong description of how she ended up in your friend's car, this guy that grew up with you, that you do very well, and how she ended up in that garage that that belongs to this young lady to stay your a boyfriend that she still talk to all the time. People will put this together very fast. That's why I'm asking you why he

absolutely a motive You're gonna be explain to people. Motive is because you may not known definition of logive motive. This wouldn't drive something. Sometimes just hate so I was love. Sometimes it's three in this situation. Hate. I think you needed it back and she weren't good enough. That's true, you weren't good enough. It is very hard swallows I gonna have and it hurts. Yeah, I don't like what

you're saying. I don't know. This is just somebody who obviously is deeply disturbed, and so he's trying to get her too. You know, he's trying to say, I I feel your pain. I I've been I've been there girlfriend, you know that kind of thing, and um, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You would think that after all of this, maybe he would be able to get through to her and get her to just admit, yeah, I was so in love with them, but she she doesn't. She doesn't

budge an inch. So it's it's really kind of disturbing in a way. It shows kind of a lack of feeling, kind of like only she's only feeling things for her, for herself, not for anyone else. In that clip, we we also heard a little bit of her basically saying she didn't know who Kendra was. How is that possible if she remains such good friends with Ricky, and Ricky's telling her on the night that Kendra died and she's offering to bring food that she didn't know who this

person was. She knows exactly who Kendra is. I think she thought she was smart enough to outsmart the police. So one of those things in her head was if I say I don't know this person, they can't connect me to her. Detective Barnes really he tries his best trying to get Brenda to spill the beans to give herself up, but she stuck to her story. He doesn't have a confession from her, he doesn't have any you know, hard evidence. He's got another co conspirator basically implicating her.

She's got this Chili's receipt with her airtight alibi. I say that in air quotes, And so he has to let her go. But he knows that Brenda's basically the mastermind here. He knows that she's responsible for what happened to Kendra. But he has to build a case, and he knows that. A couple of days after Detective Barnes interviewed Brenda Delgado and Crystal Cortes, investigators had found a number for the man Crystal had called Lamar. Crystal had texted with this person quite a bit in the days

leading up to Kenja Hatcher's murder. Investigators called the FBI in to help them track down Lamar, and the FBI discovered that the man's name wasn't in fact Lamar. The person they were looking for was named Christopher Love. He was a thirty one year old petty criminal and small time drug dealer. Christopher had a rap sheet going back to his teenage years. The Peah I quickly located Christopher's phone pinging from a Dallas apartment complex, a blue seabring

set in the parking lot. Dallas PD staked out the car, and soon a man matching the description Crystal Cortes had given investigators came out to the Blue Seabring. Investigators brought Christopher to Detective Barnes for questioning and executed search warrants for his blue seabring and his apartment. Here's an Jeanette. The Lifetime movie script keeps unraveling and writing itself. Here the cops spring Christopher Lovin, and he's pretty cool. He's

been through this drill before. And so Detective Barnes has Christopher in this interrogation room for hours, and Christopher just remains calm. He doesn't give Detective Barnes anything. The investigators, though, are going over the Blue Seabring with a fine toot comb. They have search warrants. They don't find anything, and then they bring in a cane line and the canine dog sniffs around the vehicle and actually smells gunpowder near the

ashtray and the center console. So they take apart the console and the dashboard and lo and behold they find this forty caliber semi automatic Smith and Wesson, and it's buried behind the glove box. And so Barnes tells Christopher Love that they found the Smith and Wesson in the car, and Christopher starts to talk and he knows he's caught,

and he tells Detective Barnes that Brenda hired him. She had told him she had ties to a Mexican cartel and get him a mix of money and drugs to bump up his drug dealing operation if he'd just go and rob Kendra. And Detective Barnes arrested Christopher Love and charged him with capital murder. What's interesting is with the cops, it was a bit of a big stroke of luck

with the canine unit. So the cars at the impound unit where they're going over with a fine tooth comb and at the same time there was a canine unit and his handler. The handler was giving a uh m a demonstration to other police officers, So the canine unit

wasn't brought in specifically for this. He happened to be at the same place as the car that they were going over, and when the investigators saw the canine unit there, they approached him and asked if he would have the dogs sniffed the car, just that like a happenstance kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, but that seems to be what

this case is about, right, definitely. It's just a matter of days after Kendra Hatcher is murdered, Detective Barnes he's already got the getaway driver in custody, the hitman's in custody, but he doesn't have Brenda Delgado, and he knows that she is responsible for this, that she orchestrated the whole thing, so he goes looking for He wants to bring her back in, wants to take another run at her to see if he can knock her off her story. And it had been about two days since he had interviewed

Brenda and she took off. She'd gotten on a bus. She went south and crossed the border into Mexico where she had family living. So it's another kind of plot twist where the young girl from Mexico who came to

America then flees to Mexico after the big murder. It also is just one of those moments for for the detective, for you know, he had her in his hands and then he had no ability to keep her in custody, and this you know, if she's got extended family there, she could probably disappear pretty easily in Mexico, or at least she thinks she can disappear really easily. You know

who who knows. You know that Mexico is a big place, and so you know a lot of people think they'll flee to Mexico and nobody will ever see them again. Detective Barnes has decided to dig a little more into that relationship between Ricky and Brenda, and of course he has to keep building a case because it's all circumstantial with Brenda. So the more he can dig up and

the more proof of, the better the cases. While they're trying to figure out how to get Brenda back right to the US, so he finds out that in June, Brenda found out she was pregnant, but she wound up aborting the baby. After talking to Ricky in early Ricky gave Brenda a promise ring. I think we mentioned that earlier. So at some point Ricky too pro what we had thought it was going to go to the next level. And about a month after giving Brenda the promise ring,

that's when he had a change of heart. So something happened in that month that made Ricky ask Brendotta to break up and asked her to move out. It sounds to me like Brenda wasn't expecting that. I don't think Brenda was expecting the break up at all. I mean, she aborted her baby for this guy, which kind of makes me wonder if they were going to get married,

why they would go that route. Anyway, She'd put three years of her life into this, and she had an abortion, she she had the promise ring, and then just one day it's over. And I think she probably was just devastated, and it probably just unearthed some really unhealthy stuff going on with her, you know, in her mind. Um, and she's she's going to start stalking him, and she wants to get him back, and you know, she's acting like

their friends. And I'm sure she thought, oh, you know, even if he starts dating somebody, he'll he'll eventually come back to me. I'll just be the you know, the good friend or whatever. And they had lived together, and Ricky and Brenda had shared a wireless you know, cell phone plan, and he may have asked her to move but he left her on the cell phone plant. That's a lot for someone, and I think she went over

the deepened. Let's stop here for another break. Ricky Paniagua has no clue that Brenda has started stalking him after they broke up. She could track him. She knew how to get into his texts and his emails, and she would just start showing up. She was randomly showing up on a hike that he was taking, at a coffee shop, at salsa class, and the whole time she's just acting like she's too, totally cool with the two of them being friends. And it seemed to work. I mean, her

just kind of being wherever. He was paid off for her because in November, she surprisingly took the same salsa class that Ricky signed up for and they really started to hit it off again and they started dating. But a few months later, you know, February fift Ricky had lost interest again and he broke up with her, and she's just so obsessed with him. In June of Ricky emailed Brenda to tell her he was seeing someone new

and it was going really well. All the while, Brenda was seeing his text to Kendra and pictures that Ricky and Kendra would post on social media. Detective Barnes would learn from seven old friends and family members of Brenda's that by the summer of Brenda was so obsessed with Ricky and Kendra it was all she would talk about to them. Brenda went so far as asking some of her friends if they quote knew anyone who would hurt someone.

Brenda's plans to do something about Kendra Hatcher escalated when in late August of Ricky told Brenda that he was going to remove her from a cell phone plan. On August thirty one, Ricky also told her he had gotten a job in northern California and that he was moving there on October. Detective Barnes had a pretty clear motive for why Brenda Delgado had wanted Kendra dead. Just seven

weeks after Kendra Hatcher was killed. In November of Brenda Delgado, who was still having out in Mexico, was formally indicted on capital murder charges. After months of appealing to Brenda Delgado's family to help get her back on US soil with no love, Um Dallas p D turned to the FBI for help. On April sixteen, Brenda Delgado became only the ninth woman to have been put on the FBI's ten most Wanted Fugitive list. The FBI held to press conference.

Kendra Hatcher's family was there, overcome with the motion, Let's hear a little of the FBI's announcement. Delgado's addition to the list underscores the violent and calculated nature of the crime she's accused of committing. It's April eighteen. It's just two days after the FBI announced that Brenda Delgado was on the ten most Wanted Fugitives list. And they enlisted the help of Mexican law enforcement, and they find Brenda

in the city of Torreon, Mexico. She was taken into custody without incident, but there was a hurdle to getting Brenda back into the US. Mexico constitutionally abolished the death penalty in two thousand five, and because Brenda Delgado was born in Mexico, she was considered a citizen, so Mexican authorities would not extradite Brenda if she could be sentenced

to death. So the prosecutor and Brenda Delgado's case actually dropped the death penalty for Brenda despite her facing capital murder charges, and Mexico then extradited her back to the US. You know, that just must have been a pretty tough decision for the prosecutor. Either give up the death penalty and get her back into the US, or are you risk her going away and you know, maybe fleeing forever.

So I'm sure it wasn't a pleasant conversation if Kendra's family supported, you know, a death penalty and death sentence in this case. But I think they had to take what they could get. Knowing he had a mainly circumstantial evidence case against Brenda Delgado, the Dallas prosecutor turned to Crystal Cortes. Crystal agreed to a plea deal. She would testify in both Brenda's trial and Christopher Loves in exchange for the death penalty being removed from her case. The

prosecutor tried Christopher Love's case first on October. With the damning evidence of the gun found in his car and Crystal Cortes's testimony, the jury found him guilty of capital murder, and he was sentenced to death by lethal injection on October thirty one. Christopher is serving his time on death row at the Allen B. Polunsky Unit, a notoriously harsh correctional facility near Livingston, Texas. Brenda Delgado went on trial

on June three. When Crystal Cortez took the stand to testify against Brenda, it was the first time most people heard the actual details of the revenge murder plot that Brenda had sent into motion to kill Kendra. Here are some excerpts from Crystal's testimony during Brenda's trial. Was discussion about about the situation, what she wanted to have done? Yes? What was the discussion? She wanted to get rid of Kendra Hatcher? And why did she want to get rid

of Kendra Hatcher because she was envious with her? Did she ask for any help? Brand? What was your role? She did ask her help? She asked if I knew anybody who could take care of it. That's how I became a play member in it. And did you at some point time I started help planning this this event? Yes, I did. How often do you think you and Brendon Delgado had discussions about about doing something in this Hatcher

Almost every day. I go and pick up Christopher a little in the g we go back to Kendra's play some job. We parked across the street at the Salvation Army and when we wait for her to leave. As soon as she leaves, we follow her, but we lose her in traffic. So we beat her to the apartment complex where she stayed, and we waited for somebody to come in, and when we did, we followed the vehicle into the gate. The part where Kinder don't really parked was packed, so we had a park on the opposite

side of the game. And here's way he had Christopher the and where's for love in the back seam? How does he have a gun with it? Yes? What are you wearing? I am wearing a hoodie with a Day of the Dead mask and ribs on it. It's a black hoodie. Uh. And what's lover? He's wearing jeans and a black T shirt. And what is he doing with the guy and the bullets and all that? He's cleaning the bullets and the cliff and the gun cleaning him? Yes? For what reason? So that he will not leave finger

parents time? And eventually what happens um Miss Kender comes in and she parkes caddy corner to where we park, and Christopher Love gets off the vehicle through the driver's sign in the back and he exists the vehicle close to the vehicle and he um approaches Kendra and I didn't see him kill her. I heard the shots fired. I backed down and when I backed down, he ran into the jeep with you can't just belong with the guy.

When he comes back, he's got a purse, the camera, the verse, the camera, and again why does he have those isems? Because Brenda wanted it to make it look like a robbery. Not bad Crystal did her into the deal. She's pretty descriptive of everything that happened with her and Brenda, and I think she's very guilty of having taken part in this and being willing to be part of a murder that she's also a little bit of a victim of being manipulated. She's twenty three year old single mom

who needs money. You know, she was desperate six. She wanted that money to help take care of her son. She's living with her grandmother. So it's incredibly sad. You know. When she was asked later on why she chose to take the plea and testify against both Christopher and Brenda, it's because she'd gotten a visit from her mother. Came to visitor and told her she was disappointed and she realized she had really gone off the rails and needed to make up for it, so Crystal came very clean

on trial. I think that anybody who's feeling like this about a man or a woman should really seek out some professional help, because this is a whole another level of being scorned and jilted. This is beyond that. So it never ceases to amaze me how horrible or how terribly I should say human beings can treat one another over things that are just really not that important. It's just a disturbing case, that's for sure, and and ultimately

so sad for Kendra Hatcher's family. A woman is dead and three people are now imprisoned, including the mother or of a six year old boy. I think people need to think a little more thoughtfully about things before they act. Kendra Hatcher's family felter loss deeply, and there will now always be a missing piece in their family puzzle. Several members of Kendra's family gave emotional victim impact statements after Brenda was found guilty. Here's a portion of what Kendra's sister,

Ashley Turner had to say. Had almost four years to think about what I would say to you when I at least saw your disgusting space. And here I am with another book. Who knows that I made? And I'll even think about for my two children, aw who asked me every single day why they here? Cool? Three kaf my son wanted to be here, was so bad he was eight when you had My sister executed, my ei girls,

her god daughter, and I'm nants our third. That will never get to me, Kendrath, because you because we're evil. Because if you're envy has a so perfectly put it, No matter how envious you were of any human being, does not be the right to destroy lives, many lives. Your own family's lives are lives, Kendra's lives, my children's lives.

Who the helly thing you are? We the You will go down in history as one of the most hated women in Dallas, possibly in America, and stud me will be forgotten, but Kendra's legacy won't, because we'll make sure that it's not. You can't even look at me. After only a five day trial and deliberating for just eighteen min it's the jury found Brenda Delgado guilty of capital murder and sentenced her to life in prison with no possibility of parol. Brenda is currently serving her time at

William P. Hobby Unit in Marlin, Texas. Crystal Cortes is serving her thirty five years sentence at Christian Melton Crane Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She has a parole eligibility date of shameless plug. If you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review to view our recent documentary Murdered Missing in Montana. You'll find it extreaming now on Peacock, Follow us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy and Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves, and

me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound designed by Jeff Ta. Crazy in Love is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shoes. Stay safe, lovers,