The two killers were dressed in black and wearing gloves. One was armed with a .223 caliber rifle, and the duo also carried a revolver with extra rounds in a speed loader. One had listened to a podcast about homicide investigations to learn what techniques investigators would use.
It was Dec. 3, 2021. In the driveway outside the Tijuana home, a basketball hoop was surrounded by children’s toys and bicycles. Inside the home, the black-clad men found a U.S. citizen and her 8-year-old daughter, shooting them in the kitchen. The woman’s husband tried to barricade himself inside a bedroom with two more children, ages 9 and 4. The gunmen shot them through the door, barged into the room and shot each child once more in the head.
On Thursday, Victor Armondo Aguilar pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court to one count of murder conspiracy and five counts of stalking resulting in death for his part in the slayings of the family, which had recently relocated from Fresno to Tijuana.
In his plea agreement, federal prosecutors detailed the horrific crime for the first time publicly.
Attorneys for Aguilar did not respond to a message seeking comment. Aguilar’s co-defendant, Christopher Baltezar Hernandez, has pleaded not guilty in the case and is due in court next month for a status hearing. Prosecutors alleged he was the one armed with the rifle during the killings.
The victims of the shooting were a Mexican man, Gerardo “Jerry” Moreno, who had previously lived in Fresno but was deported in 2019; his U.S. citizen wife, Jazmen Hernandez; the couple’s 4-year-old daughter, Sofia; and Hernandez’s children from a previous relationship, Andrew Lewis Morales, 9, and Anamarie Jasmine Morales, 8. All three children were U.S. citizens.
Prosecutors have not provided a motive for the slayings, but online court records from Fresno County Superior Court indicate Baltezar Hernandez and Jazmen Hernandez had some sort of previous relationship. The duo filed domestic violence restraining orders against each other in 2019, though both cases were dismissed in August of that year when neither of them showed up for scheduled court hearings.
In the months leading up to the deadly attack, Baltezar Hernandez and Aguilar began researching the area where the victims lived, according to the plea agreement. Aguilar admitted that in the three weeks before the killings, he searched for the victims’ address and the surrounding area 163 times using Google Maps.
The day before the killings, Baltezar Hernandez went to a store in Fresno and purchased two revolver speed loaders, then set out on the roughly seven-hour drive to the San Diego-Tijuana border, according to the plea agreement. The next morning, he drove across the San Ysidro Port of Entry with the rifle, .223 caliber ammunition and the speed loaders in his Toyota Corolla.
Once in Tijuana, he headed to Aguilar’s residence there, and the two men illegally purchased a revolver, according to the plea agreement. Aguilar admitted that during the day he listened to a podcast related to homicide investigations. It “discussed who is first on the scene to a homicide and the steps they take when they arrive, such as taking photographs and identifying suspects through DNA, fingerprints, and hair.”
Aguilar also admitted that he used Google Maps once again to look up the victims’ address. Then he and Baltezar Hernandez drove to the home and carried out the killings, according to the plea agreement. The document states “Hernandez carried the assault rifle” into the residence. It does not say which of the men was armed with the revolver.
After the attack, “Aguilar worked to sell both the AR-15 ‘ghost gun,’ revolver, and speed loaders,” according to the plea agreement.
An FBI agent’s affidavit in a separate case in Fresno showed the agency identified Baltezar Hernandez as “one of the suspects of the quintuple homicide” in Tijuana within about 10 days. Two weeks after the killings, agents arrested him while serving a search warrant at his Fresno home, where they found firearm ammunition and silencers that a previous criminal conviction prohibited him from owning.
He pleaded guilty to firearm charges in that case and was sentenced to 10 months in federal custody. Two months after his guilty plea, while still in custody, a federal grand jury in San Diego handed down the indictment against him and Aguilar in the killings. A judge ordered Baltezar Hernandez to remain detained without bond. Aguilar was arrested in January in Arizona.
According to his plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend that a judge sentence Aguilar to life in prison.
