Raul Meza: Judge denies plea offer presented for suspected serial killer

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Raul Meza, a convicted killer who faces two additional murder charges, was in court for a pretrial conference Tuesday.

Defense attorneys approached the state and Judge Julie Kocurek with a plea offer, which Kocurek denied, saying she would not accept an offer that gives Meza the option for parole.

“I need it to be life without parole for me to accept it or it needs to be tried by a jury," Kocurek said.

Meza killed 8-year-old Kendra Page in 1982. The conviction came as a result of a plea deal. Due to lax state laws at the time, he got out of prison after 11 years for good behavior.

The Austin Police Department arrested him in May 2023 in connection to the murder of Jesse Fraga, 80, of Pflugerville. When Meza turned himself in for that crime, police said he implicated himself in the 2019 killing of Gloria Lofton, 65, of east Austin.

During Meza's last court proceeding in April, prosecutors told the judge Meza’s attorneys presented them with a plea deal. Russ Hunt, Jr., who’s representing Meza, said the offer is 50 years for each case, to be served concurrently. At that stage, the District Attorney's Office said the State was in its early stages of reviewing the offer.

Family members of Page, Fraga and Lofton have long opposed a plea deal following what happened in the 1982 case.

Meza is currently 63 years old, which is a factor his attorneys addressed while discussing the plea offer.

KXAN will update this story once Tuesday's hearing is complete. Check back for updates including more insight from victims' family members as well as Meza's attorneys.

APD ‘deeply sorry’ about DNA ‘oversight’ in Lofton’s murder case

In early April, the Austin Police Department (APD) addressed an internal investigation into the handling of a DNA hit as investigators looked into Lofton’s 2019 death on Sara Drive in east Austin.

Meza’s arrest affidavit stated that in 2020, a DNA profile obtained from a sexual assault kit for Lofton’s matched Meza’s DNA, but police did not arrest Meza at that time, which was roughly four years before Fraga was killed.

Former Police Chief Joseph Chacon, who held the role at the time of Meza’s arrest, launched the internal investigation last year to address what he called “potential investigative lapses,” an APD spokesperson previously told KXAN.

After that internal investigation concluded, APD said a detective working Lofton’s case received information about a DNA hit on Raul Meza but did not follow up. He will not face any discipline, the department said, because state law prohibits the formal discipline of officers more than 180 days after an incident.

Interim Chief Robin Henderson issued the following statement on this matter:

“The Austin Police Department is deeply sorry about the oversight related to the DNA Lab Report in the Raul Meza case. We realize the impacts this has on the case itself, community and most importantly the victims and their families. As soon as the error was brought to our attention, we addressed it as quickly as we could to identify how it happened and implemented policies to avoid incidents like this from reoccurring. Since this occurrence, the Austin Police Department has added redundancies into the notification process to ensure this does not happen again.”

Interim APD Chief Robin Henderson