- Dallas dentist Kendra Hatcher, 35, was shot execution-style in her apartment car park in September 2015, the day before a trip with her boyfriend, Ricardo Paniagua.
- Police uncovered a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated by Ricardo’s jealous ex, Brenda Delgado.
- Brenda fled Mexico but was later captured.
When Kendra Hatcher, 35, started dating Ricardo Paniagua, 38, it seemed like her life was complete.
Kendra, a dentist, matched with dermatologist Ricardo on Tinder in February 2015.
Both had made a career out of helping others, and they made a beautiful couple.
Sharing loving snaps on social media, Kendra and Ricardo enjoyed exciting trips together and even discussed getting married.
But in September 2015, their dreams were dashed when Kendra was shot in the head while standing in the car park of her apartment.
It was the day before she and Ricardo were due to go on a lavish trip to Mexico.
Instead, Ricardo would never see his girlfriend again.
Kendra’s neighbour, Hashim, heard the gunshot and dialled emergency services.
He also spotted a black Jeep Cherokee car zooming out of the garage.
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Paramedics arrived and tried to save Kendra but devastatingly, it was too late.
When police arrived on scene, bullet shards and a handgun magazine were found near Kendra’s body.
Her purse was missing but her mobile had been left behind.
It looked like a robbery gone wrong, but the way that Kendra had been shot said differently.
The bullet had entered the upper part of her head and exited through the front of her chin. Police could determine that she had been shot in an execution style, with her hands held up and behind her head as she was shot.
But why anyone would kill Kendra remained a mystery.
Bullet shards and a handgun magazine were found near Kendra’s body
She was a kind-hearted woman who spent her Christmas breaks overseas to do free dental work on underprivileged kids.
Detectives assessed the CCTV from the garage complex, which showed the Jeep that had been reported by Kendra’s neighbour had been parked there for some time, suggesting her murderer had been waiting on Kendra.
The footage also showed the killer returning to the passenger door, indicating another person had been driving.
When police held a press conference urging for information, a man named Jose Luis-Oritz came forward as the owner of the car.
He denied being involved in the crime but said he’d lent his Jeep to a friend, Brenda Delgado.
Seeing his car on TV, Jose confronted Brenda, who claimed that she lent the car to someone called Crystal Cortes but hadn’t told him because it was used for a drug deal.
Suspiciously, Brenda offered to pay for Jose’s car to be resprayed in order to avoid the car being connected to the crime, but Jose declined and went to the police.
Detectives quizzed Brenda and she said she was at a restaurant at the time of the shooting, even producing a receipt to support her alibi.
But when they showed a still from the CCTV footage and asked if this woman resembled Crystal, Brenda began to crumble.
When they questioned Crystal- who had confessed to driving the car – she claimed that she’d been driving the vehicle with her son, when an armed carjacker had forced her to drive to the crime scene.
Yet when cops checked surveillance footage, it showed her son wasn’t in the car at the time of the shooting.
Crystal changed her story again before eventually confessing that Brenda paid her $750 to drive the gunman to the crime scene.
The single mum claimed she thought it was a robbery, not a murder, and agreed as she needed the money.
Crystal told police she believed that Kendra had unknowingly ended up in a love triangle with Brenda and Ricardo.
It turned out that Ricardo and Brenda had dated on and off from 2012 until the beginning of 2015, just before Kendra and Ricardo had met.
When an enraged Brenda heard that her ex had moved on, she hacked Ricardo’s email and iCloud, gaining access to every text and email he sent.
She also used an app to track the location of his phone.
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In an even more twisted move, Brenda even started dating other men, using them as rides to park outside Kendra’s apartment block to keep tabs on her movements.
Crystal had tipped off police that a man called ‘Lamar’ had been the gunman and it eventually led them to Kristopher Love.
He denied being involved with the murder, but a clever police dog unearthed the gun that had shot Kendra buried deep within the centre console of Love’s car.
Both Cortes and Love were charged with first-degree murder.
Eventually, they revealed to police that Brenda had recruited the pair to carry out the murder – and then she had promised to pay Love $4,500 worth of cannabis and a wad of cash.
As the plot unravelled, Brenda fled to Mexico. But after six months on the run, Brenda Delgado was arrested in April 2016 and charged with murder.
In October 2018, Kristpher Love, 35, was found guilty sentenced to death, while Crystal Cortes, 27, was given a 35-year sentence for her role.
In June 2019, Brenda’s trial began at Frank Cowley Courthouse in Dallas.
During proceedings, lead prosecutor Kevin Brooks claimed the case wasn’t a love triangle, as other people had labelled it.
She had promised to pay Love $4,500 worth of cannabis and a wad of cash
‘In a love triangle, those three individuals generally know each other. The only person in a love triangle is [Delgado] and it’s a love triangle she created,’ he said, arguing Brenda was a jilted ex-lover who went to extreme lengths to prevent Kendra from spending her life with Ricardo.
It took the jury took just 20 minutes to decide that she was guilty. Brenda Delgado, 36, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Speaking at the sentencing, Kendra’s mum, Bonnie Jameson, called Delgado ‘the root of all evil’.
‘You could have never measured up to be the woman that my Kendra Hatcher was.’
In 2021 Delgado appealed her conviction but the decision was upheld.
