On the morning of September 25, 1988, the body of Maryann Wells, a 31-year-old woman, was discovered in a downtown San Diego, California, alley. She was found fully clothed in an industrial area characterized by warehouses and low-rent hotels. An autopsy would later reveal that she had been shot once in the head. Maryann, who was known to work as a sex worker along El Cajon Boulevard, became another victim in a string of violent deaths that had plagued San Diego County throughout the mid-1980s,
though her case would remain unsolved for nearly a decade.
At the time of Maryann’s murder, a special homicide task force was investigating dozens of killings of women in the region. However, her death was not officially linked to the others because the method differed; most other victims had been strangled and left in remote rural areas, whereas Maryann was shot and left in a city alley. Investigators collected evidence from the scene, including a shell casing and a used condom, but with no witnesses and few leads, the case quickly went cold. For years, her death remained a mystery, one of many unsolved homicides that left the community on edge.
The break in the case came nearly nine years later and hundreds of miles away. In 1997, a 32-year-old former U.S. Marine named Andrew Urdiales was arrested in Chicago, Illinois, in connection with the murders of three women there. During his interrogation, Urdiales, who was working as a security guard, made a shocking and detailed confession to not only the Illinois killings but also to a series of unsolved murders in Southern California committed while he was stationed at various Marine Corps bases between 1986 and 1991.
Urdiales told investigators that on the night of September 24, 1988, he had picked up Maryann Wells in San Diego. He drove her to a deserted industrial complex, paid her, and after they had sex, he shot her in the head and took his money back before leaving her body in the alley. His confession provided details that only the killer could have known and was later corroborated by DNA evidence from the condom left at the scene. San Diego police announced that they strongly believed Urdiales was responsible for Maryann's death.
Andrew Urdiales was a serial killer responsible for the murders of at least eight women across California and Illinois between 1986 and 1996, using both knives and firearms. His victims in California included 23-year-old Robbin Brandley, 29-year-old Julie McGhee, Maryann Wells, 18-year-old Tammie Erwin, and 32-year-old Denise Maney. He was first tried and convicted in Illinois for three murders and sentenced to death. That sentence was commuted to life in prison when Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011.
Immediately following the commutation, prosecutors in Orange County, California, sought his extradition to face trial for his five California murders. In May 2018, a jury found Urdiales guilty of all five counts of first-degree murder. The following month, the jury recommended the death penalty. During his sentencing, Urdiales offered what he called "sincere apologies" to the families of his victims for the "gory" details they had to endure. On October 5, 2018, a judge formally sentenced him to death.
Less than a month later, on November 2, 2018, Andrew Urdiales was found unresponsive in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison. His death was ruled a suicide. For the families of his many victims, the end of his life brought a final, albeit somber, close to a decades-long nightmare. Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas called Urdiales a "human monster" and stated that his suicide "robbed the victims' families of the right to be present when the state put him to death.”
