Their Testimony Died in the Rio Grande. His Lives on the Internet.

A Written Testimony

Robert "Doc" Beckett wanted people to know who he was.

He said so himself, in a written testimony published on a Christian ministry website called christian-faith.com. His testimony, submitted by his wife, identified only as "GG," covers Beckett's life from childhood in Rio Grande City to drug smuggling along the Texas-Mexico border, shootouts with federal agents, years in Mexican and American prisons, stabbings, a prison riot, Russian roulette, and an eventual conversion to Christianity at the Eastham Unit in Texas on September 15, 1985.

It is, by any measure, a remarkable document. It is also the closest thing to a public accounting that exists for the 1971 murders of Maria Christina Ponce, 16, and Leticia Marie Acevedo, 15, two girls from Rio Grande City who left their homes to watch a movie and were found strangled in the Rio Grande River days later.

Beckett did not confess to their murders. He was careful about that. But he was not careful about everything else.

Beckett was born in 1948 in Kentucky and moved to the Rio Grande Valley as an infant when his father took work in Starr County. By his own account, he was dealing drugs by his early twenties, running operations that supplied marijuana, heroin, and speed across the border and into multiple states. He describes high-speed chases with federal agents on South Texas back roads, a network of corrupted police officers in Acapulco on his personal payroll, and a reputation in Rio Grande City that made it impossible to seat a jury in his county — or the next one over — because potential jurors openly stated they feared his gang would kill them or their families.

He also describes, with the same matter-of-fact tone he uses throughout, how law enforcement came to charge him in the first place.

"The police used 2 young girls, ages 15 and 16 to say that I had given them drugs and that I had sexual relations with them," he wrote. "They arrested me for statutory rape and furnishing drugs to minors."

Court records from The Monitor, dated March 7, 1971, show Beckett was facing five charges at the time of his arrest: contributing to the delinquency of a minor, furnishing drugs to a minor, possession of heroin, possession of marijuana, and statutory rape. The two girls referenced in those charges were Ponce and Acevedo. They were expected to testify.

Beckett denied the sexual and drug charges involving the girls specifically, though he acknowledged in the same breath that he supplied drugs freely to everyone around him. "I never had sex or any other relationship with those two young girls, nor did I ever give them any drugs," he wrote. "However, I did give drugs to all the guys that worked with me and I knew these girls hung around with some of my friends."

He was in Starr County Jail awaiting trial when the girls vanished.

On the evening of April 21, 1971, Ponce and Acevedo left their homes in Rio Grande City to watch a movie. Witnesses placed them walking toward town, alive. By the following Tuesday, ranchers on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande found two nude bodies floating near Camargo, roughly eight miles south of the girls' hometown. Autopsies performed in McAllen revealed that both had been strangled. Ligature marks were found on their necks. One girl had been strangled with her own western belt. The large buckle was missing. Buckles had been removed from the other girl's shoes.

District Attorney Randall Nye Jr. acknowledged that both girls were expected to testify in pending proceedings but stated publicly that he was keeping the criminal case separate from the homicide investigation. He confirmed Beckett was in Starr County Jail before the girls disappeared and remained there at the time of their deaths.

Texas Ranger B.J. Green of Kingsville joined the investigation. Authorities interviewed at least 35 people in the early stages. Investigators traced the girls' movements to within hours of when they left home, and then the trail dissolved. They could not determine whether the murders occurred on the Texas side of the river or across the border in Mexico. Jurisdiction fractured along the waterline.

Then law enforcement turned its attention to the man already in their custody.

Beckett describes what happened next in plain language.

When news of the girls' deaths reached the jail, officers and Texas Rangers came to his cell. They told him he was going to sign a statement saying he had arranged to have the girls killed. He refused. They beat his head against the walls and bars of the cell, then dragged him to an interrogation room. They pushed a paper in front of him and told him to sign it. He asked what it said. They told him it stated he was responsible for having the girls killed. He refused again. He writes that the Rangers took him out daily, running what he called good cop, bad cop routines, pressing him to sign and to talk about the deaths. He never signed anything and never said anything. He took the beatings and was returned to his cell each time.

He was never charged in connection with the murders.

What happened to the statutory rape and drug charges is documented in his own words. After two attempts to seat a jury failed, in his home county and then in a second county, both times because prospective jurors openly cited fear of his gang, his lawyer obtained his release. All charges were dropped. His lawyer then told him something that does not appear anywhere in the official public record of the case: do not return to Rio Grande City or Starr County. If police saw him there, his lawyer said, they were going to kill him. They did not want him in their town.

The morning he was released, he went directly to the home of a man he called Magdaleno. By Beckett's own description, Magdaleno was a pistolero, a gunslinger, who had killed four people in bar fights by that point. He wore the suits of four playing cards etched in gold across his front teeth. He always carried a gun. His hobby was raising fighting roosters. Beckett arrived at his door, got high with him, and told him he had come back to Starr County to kill the sheriff. Magdaleno said he would come along because he did not like that family either.

The sheriff died of a heart attack that same day before Beckett could reach him.

This is the man who was facing charges in a case where the only two witnesses ended up strangled in the Rio Grande.

Beckett also writes at length about his brother, known as Little, who he believed had stolen money from him and abandoned him while he was in jail. The hatred Beckett carried for Little was not passive. He writes that the desire to torture his brother to death was the primary motivation that kept him alive during years in a Mexican prison. When Little came to visit him in Matamoros after Beckett had been stabbed nearly to death, Beckett writes that if he could have gotten his hands on his brother's neck, he would have strangled him. He tracked Little to Austin after his release and arrived at the house with the stated intention of killing him or, at minimum, shooting his knee cap off.

He did not do it. He was talked out of it. But Beckett resolved problems through violence or the credible threat of it, and he did so through his network as often as he did so personally. He writes openly about how he cultivated relationships by paying people's bills and rent, knowing he could call in favors later. He describes a lawyer who, the same day he obtained Beckett's release and warned him not to return to Starr County, asked Beckett to source up to $100,000 worth of black mollies and handed him a gun and $5,000 in cash to do it.

This is the ecosystem in which Ponce and Acevedo were witnesses.

Years later, when Beckett was captured by Mexican Federales in connection with a massive drug trafficking operation, the question of the girls surfaced again. During a brutal multi-day interrogation in Nuevo Laredo, after Beckett had been shot with a shotgun and knocked unconscious with a rifle butt, the Federales asked him to sign a statement saying he had killed two Mexican girls in Rio Grande. He writes that they told him American federal agents had informed them he was responsible and wanted a signed confession. He again refused. He told them he had been in jail when the girls were killed. They used a cattle prod on him and electric shock, throwing water on him before touching wires to different parts of his body. He still would not sign.

Beckett eventually paroled from a Texas prison, moved away from the border, and built a life in Christian ministry with his wife. The testimony on christian-faith.com appears to have been submitted sometime after his release, written in his voice and posted under his name. It is publicly accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a search engine.

In it, he confirms the girls were his witnesses. He confirms they were killed before his trial. He confirms the charges against him were dropped after their deaths. He confirms that law enforcement on both sides of the border believed he was the killer. He describes his friendship with a man who had killed four people. He describes planning to kill his own brother and tracking him across the state to do it. He describes a life built around the principle that debts are collected and scores are settled, one way or another.

He framed all of it as the life God had delivered him from.

Maria Christina Ponce and Leticia Marie Acevedo were never delivered from anything. They were 16 and 15. They were strangled. Their killer was never identified, never charged, never tried.

@Santitos

@salinasmariasantos

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