Juan Tejeda & Jorge Magdeleno: After Living Quietly For 16 Years, Arrested On Murder Charges

Sixteen years later, caught

​Another week, another cold-case arrest in Houston.

This time it was two men who had been on the run since participating in a gang murder back in 1994, officials say.

Jorge Carlos Tejeda, 33 and Jorge Tejeda Magdeleno, 35, were quietly arrested July 7, Tejeda at the tire shop where he worked and Magdeleno at home.

Harris County District Attorney's office spokeswoman Donna Hawkins tells Hair Balls the two names the men were arrested under might be aliases. "They might be related, we don't know," she said.


The two were wanted in the 1994 murder of 17-year-old Juan Esparza, who was attacked and beaten to death with a baseball bat.

Esparza was walking in the 4400 block of Sherwood on the northwest side of town when "six gang members emerged from a van and attacked" him, the DAs office says. He was beaten and stabbed and died at Ben Taub Hospital.

Magdeleno remained at large after he hand Tejeda had been charged with murder; Tejeda was arrested but made bond and then went on the run.

The newly created cold-case squad of the U.S. Marshals Violent Offender Task Force worked with the DAs office on the investigation, which was cracked partly through tracking the issuance of fake driver's licenses.