In the late summer of 2020, Selena Esquibel, a 19-year-old female from Alamosa, Colorado, was navigating the complexities of young adulthood. She was staying at the Walsh Hotel in her hometown, a detail her mother would later recount to police. But Selena’s life was cut tragically and violently short, making her the first of five victims in a string of brutal killings that would terrorize the remote San Luis Valley.
Selena’s mother, Rosaline Robledo, last heard from her daughter on
August 30, 2020. When days passed with no contact, a growing sense of dread prompted her to file a missing person report with the Alamosa Police Department on September 3. The investigation began immediately, and that same evening, a detective received a chilling text message from a woman who had heard that a man named Adre Baroz had killed a missing girl.
The man, whose nickname was "Psycho," was 26-year-old Adre Jordan Baroz. According to information later provided by a confidential informant, Baroz had lured Selena to her death on August 31. He allegedly believed she was telling people that he had raped her. In his apartment at the same hotel where Selena was staying, Baroz struck her in the head with a handgun, kidnapped her, and forced her into his Cadillac Escalade. He then drove her to a remote property in Los Sauces, a small community in Conejos County, about 20 miles south of Alamosa.
At the property, owned by an accomplice named Francisco "Pancho" Ramirez, the horror escalated. According to the informant who witnessed the crime, Baroz walked Selena to a pre-dug pit behind a garage and shot her, causing her to fall into the hole. Her body was later burned, and a stolen tractor was used to cover the pit with dirt, erasing the immediate signs of the grave.
For months, Selena's disappearance remained a mystery. The crucial break in the case came nearly two months later, on October 30, when a detective made contact with the confidential informant. The informant’s harrowing, firsthand account of witnessing Selena's murder was repeated in a second interview on November 10. Three days after that, the informant guided investigators to the exact location in Los Sauces. Police executed a search warrant on November 13 and, after excavating the area behind the garage, discovered two pits. One contained what a forensic anthropologist confirmed to be human bones and teeth. Though official identification would take time, investigators were confident they had found Selena’s remains.
The discovery launched a massive investigation involving multiple law enforcement agencies and led to a manhunt for Adre Baroz. He was apprehended in Gallup, New Mexico, on November 19, 2020. The investigation would soon reveal the shocking extent of his crimes. Over a seven-week period, Baroz had murdered four other people: Myron Martinez, 31, Shayla Hammel, 34, Korina Arroyo, 31, and 24-year-old Xavier Zeven Garcia. The remains of his other victims were also found in burn pits on two separate properties in the area.
After more than three years of legal proceedings, Adre Baroz finally faced justice. In February 2024, he pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder, five counts of tampering with a deceased human body, and additional charges of assault and kidnapping. On May 3, 2024, he was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 140 years. His brother, Julius Baroz, and two other men, Francisco Ramirez and CJ Dominguez, also pleaded guilty to various charges in connection with the murders and received substantial prison sentences for their roles in the horrific crime spree. The case that had cast a dark shadow over the San Luis Valley was officially closed, but the loss of Selena Esquibel and the four other victims remains a permanent scar on the community.
