Fort Worth resident Maria Narez, who has been under suspicion for over twenty years since the death of her 3-year-old daughter in 1996, was arrested in Mexico on August 8, 2026. At forty-eight years old, Narez has been a fugitive for almost thirty years ever since she had to contend with a capital murder charge filed against her in Tarrant County.
The arrest ended a decades-long search that began when Narez, then 19 and working as a grocery store clerk, fled before her case could reach trial.
In mid-November 1996, at an apartment in the 2500 block of Park Hill Drive in Fort Worth, authorities allege Narez grew angry when her daughter, identified in reports as Kasandra or Kassandra L. White, refused to go to bed. Court documents and police accounts from the time say Narez shook the child, threw her against a wall so that her head struck a door edge, and struck her with an unknown object.
Fort Worth Police Sgt. Fred Pendergraf told the Star-Telegram in 1996:
“It angered her. She picked the baby up by the chest under her arms, threw her into a wall, and her head struck the door edge.”
He added that Kasandra
“started crying and said ‘It hurts,’ and went to bed.”
The child later lost consciousness. Narez initially told hospital staff the girl had fallen off a bicycle before acknowledging she had caused the injury. Kasandra died about three days later from blunt-force trauma to the head, according to the autopsy. Narez was jailed around November 13, 1996.
In December 1996, she was accused of capital murder, with an initial bond amount of $500,000 reduced to $25,000 if certain conditions were met, such as not having any dealings with kids younger than 17 years old. She was indicted for capital murder by the Tarrant County Grand Jury in either 1997 or 1999.
Narez failed to appear in court. By late August 1997 her bondsman reported he could not locate her. A warrant issued, the bond was forfeited in October 1997, and she fled to Mexico.
She remained on Tarrant County’s wanted lists for decades. The District Attorney’s Office said it never abandoned efforts to find her. Little public information has emerged about her life in Mexico during that time. Exact details of how investigators located her have not been released.
On August 8, 2026, Narez was taken into custody in Mexico through a joint operation. The Tarrant County DA’s Office announced the arrest on August 10 and credited Mexico Interpol, the U.S. Marshals Service Mexico Foreign Field Office, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, DA investigators Tiffany Johnson and Victor Espino-Nevarez, and Assistant DA Steven Elliott.
“The DA’s office never gave up on bringing Narez back to face the charge against her and answer for the death of her daughter,”
The office stated.
Narez remains in Mexican custody. Extradition under the U.S.-Mexico treaty typically requires assurances that the death penalty will not be sought. Once returned, she would face the outstanding capital murder charge in Tarrant County. She is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. The case now moves into formal extradition proceedings.
