An ex

A former probation officer and his wife tried for decades to help a convicted killer, even taking up a legal fight after state officials banned contact between them. Texas authorities say that didn't stop the man from confessing to fatally stabbing the retired officer last month in an admission that linked him to another slaying.

The alleged admission from Raul Meza, 62, has Texas officials re-examining as many as 10 unsolved homicides in the Austin area dating to the 1990s.

Jesse and Otilia Fraga sued state authorities in federal court in 2012 after parole officials imposed the ban, according to their lawyer at the time, Jim Harrington. Harrington said that Meza, who was identified as "John Doe," was also a plaintiff in the suit.

"Jesse and my sister, they went to court to help that man," Oscar Mota, Otilia Fraga's brother, said in a brief interview.

Meza was arrested last week on suspicion of murder in Fraga's death. He's also accused of murder in the 2019 strangulation of Gloria Lofton, 62, and is being held at Travis County Correctional Complex, jail records show.

Lawyers for Meza did not respond to requests for comment.

NBC affiliate KXAN of Austin first reported the lawsuit.

Meza was arrested in Fraga's killing on May 29, nine days after authorities discovered the 80-year-old's body inside a closet at his home in Pflugerville, just north of Austin.

The medical examiner's office found stab wounds in Fraga's neck, according to an affidavit in support of Meza's arrest filed last week in Travis County District Court.

After authorities launched a manhunt for Meza, whom they described as Fraga's caregiver and roommate, he called a city of Austin hotline and told a homicide detective: "My name is Raul Meza, and I think you’re looking for me," according to the affidavit.

During the call, Meza confessed to the murders of Fraga and Lofton, the affidavit says. Meza said that he killed Fraga after becoming frustrated over a sexual relationship the two were having, according to the affidavit. Authorities have not corroborated the claim.

A possible motive in Lofton's killing remains unclear.

In the 2012 lawsuit, Meza, who served 11 years in prison for the 1982 sexual assault and killing of an 8-year-old girl, was identified as "John Doe" to protect the Fragas from public backlash, Harrington said.

"Raul Meza was really badgered by the press and public" after his release from prison, said Harrington, who was then-director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "That's why they reached out to him."

Video from the time broadcast by KXAN shows protesters outside the family home that he was returning to. The move came after five Texas cities had rejected his efforts to resettle there, the station reported.

Jesse Fraga, who spent decades working in local and state law enforcement, first as a probation officer and later as a special investigator with the attorney general's office, believed society had neglected Meza, Harrington said.

"He felt it was his spiritual and religious duty to take in Meza," Harrington said.

He and his wife, a retired purchaser with the Texas Rehabilitation Commission, befriended Meza through their church after his 1993 release from prison, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in Texas’ Western District.

The Fragas invited Meza to Bible studies and helped him find housing and work, the suit says. Eventually, the couple came "to love him like a son, and appreciate the hard work he was doing to change his life," it says.

When Meza returned to prison two years later for violating the terms of his release, the Fragas stayed in touch and continued to support him, the suit says.

After eight years in prison, Meza was ordered to live at a jail as a condition of his supervised release, according to the suit.

In 2010, when Jesse Fraga went to the facility to give Meza $20 to buy a pair of pants to wear to a job interview, an official with the state parole division asked the parole board to ban all contact between Meza and the Fragas, according to the suit.

The suit describes the condition as unique to Meza and the Fragas: No other parolee in the state was prohibited from contact with a law-abiding citizen who was not a victim of the parolee.

It isn't clear why the official asked for the ban or why the board imposed it. The parole official named in the suit retired from the department in 2016 and did not respond to a message left on a number listed under his name.

Spokespersons for the department and the board declined to comment.

When Fraga asked Harrington to file a lawsuit, the civil rights lawyer said he advised caution during what he described as a "very heavy conversation." Harrington said he could not recommend that Fragas, as a retired probation officer who still occasionally worked in the position part time, "cross that line" and take in a parolee.

"Then there was a deeper discussion about, are you sure this is the right thing to do? There's all kinds of danger," Harrington recalled. "He knew the risk."

Despite his reservations, on April 20, 2012, Harrington filed the suit pro bono — Texas Civil Rights Project is a nonprofit organization — arguing the couples' First Amendment and other rights had been violated.

The state agreed to drop the conditions for reasons that were never disclosed, Harrington said. A final judgment issued less than a year later said the parties had reached an agreement and the suit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it couldn't be refiled.

Harrington, who retired from the civil rights project in 2016 and is now an Episcopal priest and the director of a Christian outreach mission in Austin, said he felt awful after hearing about Fraga's death.

"After dealing with him and what I believe to be the depth of his religious conviction, I really had a lot of respect for him," Harrington said. But taking in Meza, he said, "isn't something I would do by any stretch of the imagination."

For Fraga's brother-in-law, Oscar Mota, the death was especially painful: Meza had returned to Fraga's life after the retired probation officer lost his wife and son to Covid, Mota said.

"He was alone after 50-plus years of marriage," Mota said of Fraga. "Raul Meza used the opportunity to get back into his life because they had spent many years trying to help him."

"This is the most awful story ever," Mota added.