Murder suspect targeted the homeless, killing them with sledgehammer, Dallas police say

A Dallas County man is behind bars, accused of committing two vicious slayings a month apart last year.

Police say he targeted homeless men, beating them to death with a sledgehammer in the dead of night.

Adelaido Amaya Esparza, 58, faces two counts of murder in the deaths of Fredrick Billmeier Jr. and Daniel Slusser. He was indicted in both cases in late December.

Dallas police did not respond to requests for comment about whether Esparza was a suspect in any other recent slayings of homeless men, including one that occurred under similar circumstances a day after Billmeier’s slaying.

Esparza’s attorney, Hugo Aguilar, said he had no comment about the murder cases.

Billmeier, 50, was found bludgeoned to death about 4:30 a.m. Oct. 20 at a DART bus stop along North Hampton Road, near Singleton Boulevard in West Dallas.

Police said in an arrest-warrant affidavit that surveillance footage from a nearby business showed someone strike Billmeier several times with an object, including blows to his head, but that the camera was so far away that “it was impossible to identify” the assailant.

One month later, on the morning of Nov. 20, officers were called to do a welfare check on Slusser, who had been found unconscious and bleeding at a west Oak Cliff strip mall. The location, in the 2100 block of Fort Worth Avenue, was a little more than a mile down Hampton Road from the site of the first attack.

Slusser, 60, had been beaten and suffered serious head injuries, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said in an affidavit that surveillance footage showed someone approach Slusser, who was sleeping under a blanket, and hit him “several times with a full size sledgehammer.” Additional footage showed the attacker put the bloody sledgehammer, which had duct tape wrapped around its handle, in an older black Honda SUV and drive off.

A detective searched a database for similar vehicles in the area, the affidavit says, which led police to Esparza’s Cockrell Hill home.

Patrol officers drove past the small brick house in the 4200 block of Meredith Avenue, on the Dallas-Cockrell Hill border, and saw a black 2001 Honda Passport parked outside. Looking through the SUV’s window, they saw what appeared to be a sledgehammer handle.

A few days later, officers surveilling the home saw Esparza leave in the SUV. Police stopped him a short time later for failing to signal a lane change and took him into custody because he didn’t have insurance and his driver’s license was expired, according to the affidavit.

One of the officers looked in the back of the SUV and saw a sledgehammer with duct tape on its handle. The hammer’s head appeared to have blood on it, the affidavit says.

In an interview with detectives, Esparza said he was the only person who drove the SUV. He denied any involvement in Slusser’s death, the affidavit says.

But someone who has “a close relationship” with Esparza was shown images of Slusser’s attacker and identified that person as Esparza, according to the affidavit. Police arrested him on a murder charge.

Because of the similarities between the attacks on Slusser and Billmeier and the close proximity of where they occurred, police said in an affidavit that they realized there was “a high possibility” that both crimes were committed by the same person.

Forensic analysis was performed on Esparza’s vehicle, where authorities found Billmeier’s DNA in the trunk and the backseat, the affidavit says. On the sledgehammer, they found DNA belonging to both Billmeier and Slusser, the affidavit says.

Authorities filed the murder charge against Esparza in Billmeier’s death in mid-December.

On Oct. 21, the day after Billmeier’s slaying, another homeless man was found beaten to death on a Pleasant Grove sidewalk. The Dallas County medical examiner’s office said 51-year-old Paul Parker died from blows to his head.

During a police news conference after Parker’s slaying, Assistant Chief Avery Moore highlighted similarities between the two cases — both men were homeless, by themselves in isolated areas and struck with a blunt object — but said there was no indication the men had been killed by the same person and that linking the cases that way would be “unfair speculation” on his part. Police didn’t respond to requests for comment about about whether investigators have determined whether the cases are linked or whether they believe Parker was killed by someone else.

Esparza remained in the Dallas County jail Monday, with total bail set at $1 million. A judge has ordered that he undergo a mental-competency exam to determine whether he is fit to stand trial.

Court records show that Esparza pleaded no contest in 2017 to a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass after his ex-wife found him sleeping in the detached garage of her Garland home; the couple had divorced several years earlier. Officers arrested Esparza after he refused to leave, and two weeks later he was sentenced to 30 days in the county jail.

His only other brush with the law, public records show, was a charge for driving with a suspended license in 1996.