Jose Alejandro “Alex” Perez, a 44-year-old Hispanic male from Tyler, Texas, was known among friends as the kind of person who lit up every room he walked into, a devoted son and loyal friend whose life revolved around caring for others. On the night of April 26, 2024, he left the Towne Oaks Apartments, where he lived with his mother, around 9 p.m., driving away in his white 2016 Hyundai Sonata.
He was described as tall and solidly built, dressed casually in a pink shirt, sweatpants and slide sandals, heading out, his family later said, to help a friend — the sort of simple act of kindness that fit perfectly with who he was.
When he did not come home, worry set in quickly. Perez was not someone who disappeared without explanation; he worked as an operations manager for continuing education at Tyler Junior College and was the primary support for his mother, who was battling cancer, making his sudden silence deeply out of character. As days passed with no word, his family reported him missing and the Tyler Police Department issued a public alert, asking for help to find him. Detectives soon located his Hyundai on April 29 at an apartment complex on Hollytree Drive, only a short distance from where he’d last been seen, but there was no sign of Alex himself. Friends and relatives organized searches, put up flyers and spoke to local media, describing a man who took care of his mother’s medical needs, kept his personal life private, and yet was loved by an unusually wide circle of friends.
The break in the case came in early May, but it was not the hopeful news his family had been praying for. On May 5, deputies with the Smith County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call about possible human remains off FM 346 East, between Troup and Whitehouse. A landowner had discovered a body along an oil well service road roughly a hundred yards from the highway, in a heavily wooded, swampy area that lay just out of sight from passing traffic. Investigators from the sheriff’s office and crime scene unit secured the remote location, and a justice of the peace ordered the remains sent to the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences in Dallas.
Within days, forensic experts confirmed what the family had feared: the remains were those of Jose Alejandro “Alex” Perez. The discovery transformed the missing-person search into a homicide investigation. The body had been left in a ditch along that secluded service road, a place local authorities later described as the sort of out-of-the-way spot someone might choose if they wanted to dispose of a body quietly. The ditch itself had previously been underwater, making recovery and examination more difficult and contributing to the advanced condition of the remains when they were found. From the start, investigators spoke openly of foul play, saying it was clear the body had been placed there deliberately and that “some activity occurred that caused his death by another person.”
The full horror of what had been done to Perez only emerged with the autopsy. In July 2024, a report from the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences concluded that his death was a homicide caused by “homicidal violence including chop/blunt force and neck compression.” Officials who reviewed the findings said his body had been “chopped up and mangled” and was severely decomposed by the time it was recovered, details that underscored how brutal the attack had been and why investigators had no doubt that foul play was involved. Authorities described the case as especially disturbing, both because of the condition of the remains and because someone had taken the time to carry the body deep into the wooded area, down the narrow service road, and leave it there in an effort to keep it from being discovered.
In the months after the discovery, the investigation widened. Detectives from the Tyler Police Department and the Smith County Sheriff’s Office worked together, combing through Perez’s movements and relationships in the days before he vanished. They gathered evidence from his car, which had been found abandoned at the apartment complex on Hollytree Drive, and from the rural scene where his remains were located. Investigators said they had collected items that could prove crucial, though they declined to specify what those pieces of evidence were, citing the ongoing nature of the case. They asked residents to check security and doorbell cameras in the area where he was last seen and where his vehicle was found, hoping that someone’s footage might capture a clue — another vehicle, a person following him, or some other small detail that could help reconstruct how he ended up miles away in the woods off FM 346. Forensic testing on the collected evidence was sent to crime labs, with officials warning that DNA and other analyses could take many months to come back.
As investigators worked quietly through leads and lab results, Perez’s friends and family grieved in public. They remembered him as “a light in this world,” a social, charismatic man who celebrated differences and welcomed people of all backgrounds, someone who could make a stranger feel like an old friend within minutes. A close friend recalled how Thanksgiving had become synonymous with Alex; once he learned that some of his friends from overseas had never experienced the holiday, he made it his mission to bring them into the tradition, hosting annual gatherings where good food, wine, and long conversations stretched late into the night. Colleagues spoke of his pride in his work at Tyler Junior College and of how seriously he took his responsibility to support his mother through her illness, traits that made his disappearance all the more jarring to those who knew his routines.
By the spring of 2025, a year after he was last seen, the case remained unsolved. Local coverage described Perez’s death as an open homicide investigation, with authorities reiterating that they believed someone — likely more than one person — knows what happened and has not come forward. A Facebook page called “Justice for Alex” was created to keep attention on the case, share memories, and encourage anyone with information to contact law enforcement. Investigators said they were still awaiting the full results of lab testing on evidence taken from both his car and the remote site where his body was left and expressed confidence that those results might eventually help them identify whoever was responsible.
Despite early statements from the sheriff’s office that they felt confident they could follow investigative leads to the person or people responsible, public records and news reports through April 2025 do not indicate that any suspect has been publicly named, arrested, or charged in connection with Jose Alejandro “Alex” Perez’s killing. His case stands as an unresolved homicide: a man remembered for his warmth, generosity, and devotion to family, taken in an exceptionally violent way and left in a hidden patch of East Texas woods, with his loved ones still waiting for someone to be held accountable.
