Wearing a baseball cap and hoodie, Mayra Velasquez walked up stairs to a second-floor Arlington apartment at 10:36 p.m. on Jan. 19, 2012, then knocked on the door, law enforcement authorities allege. After about a minute, Irasema Chavez let her in.
There, in unit 416 in a building in the South Collins Street corridor, Velasquez stabbed Chavez about 100 times, flinging blood on the white walls, authorities allege.
Last week, Arlington police arrested Velasquez on suspicion of capital murder.
The predicate crime that is the basis for the capital murder offense is not clear, nor is it publicly known what evidentiary development led to the cold-case arrest, which occurred on Thursday. Police plan to answer questions on the case at a press conference with the FBI on Wednesday.
Irasema Chavez Dan Gutier
The relationship between Velasquez and Chavez is also not clear. Chavez was 32. Velasquez, whose current home address is in Dallas, was then 27.
A state district court judge denied Velasquez a bond, and she is being held in custody at the Tarrant County Jail.
Velasquez’s defense attorney, Vincent Carrizales, did not immediately return a reporter’s telephone message.
The Star-Telegram featured the case in a 2018 episode of the Out of the Cold podcast.
A test of a single drop of fresh blood left behind on a nightstand in Chavez’s bedroom revealed that it belonged to a woman, though not Chavez nor a woman she had been dating and with whom she had broken up that night, police have said. Friends of Chavez told detectives that the girlfriend may have been selling drugs at Dallas nightclubs and that perhaps Chavez was indirectly involved.
In 2016, Arlington police paid a Virginia-based company to use an analysis of the nightstand blood drop DNA to predict the suspect’s physical appearance.
From those genetic predictions, the company created a composite image. It resembles Velasquez.
A composite of what Irasema Chavez’s killer may have looked like at age 25, created using predictions of the killer’s physical appearance based on the DNA left behind at the crime scene. Courtesy of Arlington Police Department 
Arlington police arrested Mayra Velasquez on July 16, 2026, on suspicion of capital murder. Tarrant County Jail
DNA tests ruled out Chavez’s girlfriend as the stabbing suspect, police have said.
Only a large flat-screen television appeared to be missing from Chavez’s apartment. Police surmised the killer may have known that Chavez had surveillance cameras so that she could keep watch over her pickup truck and that the recordings from those cameras could be watched on that television. But the killer left behind the recording device, and police recovered video of the suspect walking up the stairs.
Arlington police investigate the homicide of Irasema Chavez, on Jan. 20, 2012. Arlington Police Department
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Emerson Clarridge covers crime and other breaking news for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He works days and reports on law enforcement affairs in Tarrant County. He previously was a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, New York.