Christopher Rhodes, a 25-year-old white male from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, spent the night of July 3, 2015, into the early hours of Independence Day in Del City, a working-class suburb east of his hometown. In the dark, just off Interstate 40 at Fantasy Island, a strip club on Tinker Diagonal, the parking lot lights cast a harsh glow over the mix of cars and the steady flow of people moving between the club and the street.
Sometime around 1:30 a.m., whatever had brought Rhodes there that night intersected with a volatile encounter that would end his life. Police later said they found him lying in that same parking lot, fatally shot, the scene marked by shell casings, scattered personal items, and the eerie quiet that follows sudden violence.
Officers from Del City Police Department responded to the club after reports of gunfire and discovered Rhodes dead in the lot outside Fantasy Island. Early reports could say little about who had pulled the trigger; investigators only confirmed that the shooting was being treated as a homicide and asked the public for help. The club, known locally as a late-night spot off the interstate, quickly became the focus of the investigation. Detectives began combing the area, interviewing patrons and employees, and collecting anything left behind in the scramble after the gunshots—small details that might tie someone to the killing.
Within two days, a clearer picture of the confrontation began to emerge through court documents and witness statements. Authorities obtained arrest warrants for two men: 24-year-old Jose Daniel Katz and 30-year-old Angel Luis Lopez, both named in first-degree murder complaints in connection with Rhodes’s death. According to information relayed to police by a friend of Lopez, the two suspects had been at Fantasy Island that night and were “doing a deal” in the parking lot with another man when the situation turned violent. The acquaintance claimed the other man produced a pistol when the deal went bad. In that version of events, Katz and Lopez responded by shooting the man and fleeing before officers arrived. Investigators, however, treated the killing as a straightforward homicide and moved quickly to link the physical evidence at the scene to the two men named in the warrants.
What police found in the parking lot made their focus on Katz and Lopez more concrete. Among the debris near Rhodes’s body lay a cell phone later identified as belonging to Katz. Nearby, officers recovered blood droplets and a set of car keys next to a spent 9mm shell casing. When they activated the remote on the keys, the lights of a Chevy pickup truck flashed in the lot. A records check showed the vehicle was registered to Lopez, and his driver’s license was found inside the truck. The combination of eyewitness accounts and these physical ties convinced investigators they had identified their primary suspects. Even so, the men were nowhere to be found, and authorities warned in their reporting that Katz and Lopez might try to leave the country rather than face the murder charges waiting for them in Oklahoma County.
In the weeks that followed, the killing of Rhodes became part of a broader public reckoning over Fantasy Island’s place in the community. Del City officials described the club as a magnet for crime and shut it down temporarily, labeling it a public nuisance and an immediate danger to public peace and safety. A body found in the parking lot in July—Rhodes—was cited alongside reports of drug activity, illicit sexual conduct, and a subsequent undercover operation that produced multiple arrests and citations for various violations. While city leaders and club owners fought in court over whether the business could reopen, one fact remained unchanged: the homicide investigation into Rhodes’s death still named suspects who, according to local coverage, remained at large. Later reporting about the property focused on eminent domain, demolition of the former strip club building, and redevelopment plans for the area, but did not describe any eventual arrest or trial for Katz or Lopez, leaving the story of Rhodes’s killing unresolved in the public record. 8view0
