Ernesto “El Gallito” Gonzalez, a Harlingen attorney, disappeared under ominous circumstances in 2017. Gonzalez was reported missing from his law office shortly after he had filed a temporary protective order against several family members. Early suspicions centered on a family dispute involving Gonzalez’s relatives. Law enforcement – including Harlingen police and the Texas Rangers – began investigating leads within the family.
A breakthrough came three years later. Acting on new information, investigators executed a search warrant on a rural goat farm property in La Feria owned by Gonzalez’s nephew, Salomon “Sonny” Campos Jr. Human remains were discovered buried on the farm and were soon identified as those of Ernesto Gonzalez. Authorities now believed the long-missing attorney had been kidnapped and murdered, and the focus narrowed to Campos. Texas Rangers and Harlingen police arrested Salomon Campos Jr. – Gonzalez’s own nephew – and charged him with his uncle’s murder. The arrest marked the case as effectively “solved” in the eyes of law enforcement at the time.
Campos was initially indicted on charges of capital murder and aggravated kidnapping in July 2020. Pre-trial proceedings quickly grew contentious. In August 2020, Campos’s defense attorneys raised complaints of prosecutorial misconduct (even prompting a judge to strike certain statements by prosecutors). By late 2022, in a surprising twist, the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office moved to dismiss the original indictment – and a judge formally dismissed those initial charges on January 12, 2023. However, the case was not over: prosecutors had already re-filed new capital murder charges against Campos in August 2022, even before the first case was dropped. This maneuver effectively reset the clock and kept Campos in custody awaiting trial under a new case number.
During a pre-trial hearing in the refiled case, defense attorney Ernesto Gamez Jr. made a dramatic oral motion to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Texas Ranger Raul “Roy” Garza for perjury. This marked the first of several serious misconduct allegations against the lead investigator and others. The judge, 445th District Court Judge Gloria Rincones, denied that request at the time, but the defense’s accusations had been formally lodged.
Campos’s defense filed a motion to produce missing evidence and documentation, pursuant to Texas discovery law (Article 39.14). In this filing, Gamez’s team revisited the perjury concerns – specifically highlighting that Texas Ranger Garza had denied under oath using a confidential informant in the case, even though a document bearing his signature suggested otherwise. This discovery would fuel further defense claims that investigators had misled the court.
As the case headed toward trial, Campos’s attorneys escalated their tactics by filing a motion for a Franks hearing. The motion alleged that Ranger Garza and Harlingen police investigator Scott Vega had included false statements and material omissions in the affidavits used to justify key searches in the case. Among the claims: officers listed incorrect search locations, failed to disclose that an initial March 2018 search of Campos’s property had found nothing, and falsely wrote that a cadaver dog’s failure to alert was due to “newly born farm animals” interfering – a statement the defense said was outright false, backed by photographs from the scene . These allegations, if proven, could have led to suppression of evidence. The court record shows the defense was methodically building a case that the investigation into Gonzalez’s death was tainted by deception.
After years of delays, Salomon Campos Jr.’s murder trial finally commenced in Cameron County. The prosecution presented over three weeks of testimony while the defense countered by emphasizing investigative failures. Campos’s attorneys argued that Harlingen police had not preserved critical evidence, including video interviews that were inexplicably lost in the first six months of the investigation. They pointed out that multiple relatives had access to the farm where Gonzalez’s remains were found, and suggested Campos was unfairly singled out despite a broader family feud.
The case reached a dramatic conclusion. After only a few hours of deliberation, a Cameron County jury acquitted Salomon “Sonny” Campos Jr. of all charges.
One year after his acquittal, Campos fought back in court – this time as a plaintiff. He filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against those he alleges orchestrated a malicious prosecution against him. The suit names the City, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Ranger Raul Garza, multiple Harlingen police officers, and Cameron County prosecutors among the defendants. This extraordinary lawsuit would compile years of alleged misconduct into a single narrative, seeking accountability for what Campos says was a deeply flawed investigation and prosecution.
Allegations of Misconduct in Campos’s Lawsuit
Campos’s federal lawsuit lays out a stunning catalog of alleged misconduct by investigators and prosecutors during the “El Gallito” murder case. The pleadings paint a picture of a rush to judgment and manufactured evidence in order to implicate Campos at all costs.
The lawsuit claims officials “manufactured probable cause” by using falsified police reports, fabricated evidence, and even perjured testimony to build the murder case. Harlingen Police Detective Manuel Tovar is accused of knowingly including false statements in an affidavit for a search warrant – specifically by copying a Texas Ranger’s report that misquoted Campos as saying he filmed the victim “because [Gonzalez] has not always been a saint,” a statement Campos never actually made. These false claims were used to obtain warrants, meaning critical searches may have been based on fiction. The complaint further notes that multiple grand jury subpoenas and official reports were falsified to support the case.
Perhaps most disturbingly, the suit alleges that law enforcement destroyed or concealed evidence that might have proven Campos’s innocence. During a June 2020 search of Campos’s property, DPS troopers allegedly “cropped and edited” body-camera video footage to remove exculpatory material. Important hard drive data seized by Harlingen police was destroyed – either intentionally or recklessly – while in police custody. No backups or explanations were provided for this lost digital evidence. Additionally, the defense learned that video recordings of police interviews from early in the case had vanished within months of Gonzalez’s 2017 disappearance. The lawsuit asserts that these lapses were not accidents but part of a pattern: “All HPD officers involved in destroying evidence on a hard drive were promoted, and none were reprimanded,” suggesting an institutional culture of cover-up.
Echoing the issues first raised at trial, Campos’s lawsuit accuses Texas Ranger Raul “Roy” Garza of lying under oath on multiple occasions. Garza allegedly denied using any confidential informant (CI) in the investigation, but handwritten case notes and internal forms showed that a CI was used twice. When confronted with a document referencing a CI – a request Garza signed to obtain an undercover “spy watch” recorder – Garza belatedly admitted he had written the term “confidential informant” on the form but claimed he was just “being brief” in his wording. The complaint cites this incident as a clear example of perjury and deceit. It also alleges that Cameron County prosecutors (specifically Assistant DA Adela Garza, no relation to Ranger Garza) knew about these lies and failed to correct them, even instructing the Ranger to pursue certain evidence lines, which calls into question the prosecutors’ role in the investigation.
Investigators brought cadaver dogs to Campos’s farm in the years before the body was found, always with negative results. Yet the search warrant affidavits later implied a cadaver dog’s alert had been confounded by “newborn farm animals” on site – a false claim, as photographic evidence showed no such newborn animals were present. In another instance, Ranger Garza sought and obtained Campos’s DNA in July 2023, claiming in an affidavit that he needed to compare it to “trace DNA” on items found with Gonzalez’s remains to bolster the case. But the lawsuit notes Garza violated DPS procedures for handling DNA and questions the truthfulness of his affidavit, implying the request was a fishing expedition based on a misleading premise.
Campos also levels serious accusations at the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office. The lawsuit states that ADA Adela Garza repeatedly acted with malice, at one point calling Campos “a murderer and a killer” during a Zoom meeting – a meeting that was recorded and disseminated publicly. Such a statement by a prosecutor about a not-yet-convicted defendant is highly unusual and prejudicial. Moreover, prosecutors allegedly withheld evidence from the defense in violation of Texas discovery rules – for example, failing to turn over a cellphone video in the possession of Detective Scott Vega until trial. The DA’s office also churned through three different lead prosecutors over the course of the case, and at one point an official falsely claimed a crucial DVR containing surveillance footage had “crashed.” Only later did a subsequent prosecutor admit the DVR had been intentionally overwritten, with no logs or evidence explaining why. The picture painted is of a prosecution team that was disorganized at best – or deliberately suppressing unfavorable evidence at worst.
Collectively, these allegations portray a systemic breakdown in the search for truth. Campos asserts that law enforcement and prosecutors, driven by pressure to solve a high-profile case, “acted with malice” and trampled his rights. In the lawsuit, he argues that the investigation was so corrupted by falsehoods and negligence that it violated his Fourth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights – essentially turning an innocent man into a murder suspect for over four years. Campos’s acquittal, in his view, was not just vindication but evidence that the real story of what happened to Ernesto Gonzalez was obscured by official misconduct. The defendants, of course, are expected to dispute these claims as the civil case moves forward. But the detailed pleading – from cropped videos to phantom informants – raises profound questions about how this murder case was handled from day one.
Media Spotlight and the Clara Benitez-Cortez Connection
Benitez-Cortez’s reporting on the missing-person case back in 2017–2020 brought significant attention to the mystery of the vanished attorney. She spent three years in the Valley covering important stories, and “El Gallito” was one of her marquee investigations. By her own account, the information she uncovered, and broadcast assisted law enforcement in zeroing in on Campos as the prime suspect. It is not specified what tips or leads her journalism provided, but it’s clear she was closely following the case developments that led to the June 2020 search of Campos’s property and his subsequent arrest.
However, the outcome of the case has complicated this narrative. Campos’s 2024 acquittal undercuts the neat ending implied in the reporter’s bio. The phrasing “helped Texas Rangers arrest and charge a family member” is technically accurate – but it stops short of the full story. The family member in question was found not guilty by a jury and cleared of the murder charge. In light of the trial’s revelations, one might ask: Did the media attention and early assumptions about Campos’s guilt contribute to a rush to judgment? Benitez-Cortez’s reporting, like much early coverage, presumed Ernesto Gonzalez was murdered and that someone close to him was likely responsible. The fact that her work is celebrated for helping bring about an arrest – rather than helping uncover the truth – points to a broader issue in high-profile criminal cases. When journalists become part of the narrative of an ongoing investigation, their involvement can inadvertently shape that investigation’s direction, for better or worse.
Clara Benitez-Cortez has since moved on to a new market and new stories, but her connection to the Gonzalez case remains part of her public persona. In fairness to Benitez-Cortez, at the time of Campos’s arrest the case appeared to be solved. The evidence (as presented by authorities) seemed compelling enough for an indictment, and her reporting was based on information available then. Yet, with Campos now acquitted and alleging a web of official misconduct, the conclusion that the “El Gallito” mystery was neatly resolved has proven premature. It serves as a cautionary tale about declaring a case “solved” too soon. For the Gonzalez family, there is still no legal accountability for Ernesto’s death. And for Benitez-Cortez, the claim that her investigation helped catch a killer must contend with the reality that the man caught walked free, and the real killer – if different – is still unpunished.
A Case Still “Solved” on Paper: The DPS Cold Case Listing
But this designation now stands at odds with reality. The website has not been updated to reflect the conclusion of Campos’s trial. It still states “A trial date is pending” – frozen in time before the October 2024 acquittal. In effect, the DPS site gives the public the impression that the 2017 murder of Ernesto Gonzalez was resolved, when in fact the only person ever charged was exonerated.
Inside the Courtroom Battles: What The Hawk’s Eye Reported
Some of the most detailed revelations about the Campos case came not from mainstream media, but from a small independent news outlet, The Hawk’s Eye. Throughout 2023 and 2024, we doggedly covered the pre-trial maneuvering and allegations of misconduct, bringing to light many facts that would later feature in Campos’s civil lawsuit. Our reporting provides a window into how the defense unraveled the prosecution’s case.
In our article titled “Texas Ranger Accused of Perjury by Defense Counsel,” we recapped the bombshell moment on Jan. 18, 2023, when Campos’s attorney openly accused Ranger Raul Garza of perjury in court. According to The Hawk’s Eye, the defense made an oral motion before Judge Rincones to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Garza for lying under oath. This came on the heels of a contentious battle over extrajudicial statements and prosecutorial conduct in the case, which Judge Rincones had partly addressed by striking certain improper statements by the state. While the judge did not grant the perjury inquiry at that time, The Hawk’s Eye noted the significance: it is exceedingly rare for a murder defendant’s counsel to accuse a Texas Ranger of perjury in an ongoing trial. We pointed out that this indicated just how deeply the defense distrusted the investigative work against Campos. We contextualized the moment with a timeline of the case’s procedural history – including how the initial 2020 charges were mysteriously dismissed and then refiled in 2022, which we suggested might have been related to the brewing misconduct issues. This early reporting by The Hawk’s Eye flagged for the public that something was amiss beyond the usual defendant protestations of innocence.
On March 17, 2023, we published an update after obtaining a new defense motion filed March 1, 2023. Titled “Motion to Produce All Missing Relevant and Material Supplemental Narratives, Case Reports, Videos, and Audios…”, this filing laid out, in painstaking detail, the defense’s allegation that Ranger Garza had lied about using a confidential informant. The Hawk’s Eye article quoted directly from the hearing transcript included in the motion: When asked under oath, “Did you use a confidential informant in this case?” Garza answered, “No, sir,” not once but three times. Yet the defense had unearthed a “Request for Technical Assistance” form signed by Garza, which clearly mentioned a confidential informant and was used to procure an undercover recording device. We highlighted the Kafkaesque turn during Garza’s testimony: confronted with his own signature, Garza claimed he didn’t remember filling out the form, then later said he used the term “confidential informant” merely “figuratively… being brief.” The Hawk’s Eye reported that the defense argued this amounted not only to perjury but also to a violation of Campos’s rights under Texas discovery law. Our coverage gave readers an early glimpse of a key inconsistency that would later feature prominently in Campos’s lawsuit and Franks hearing request – namely, that investigators might have hidden the existence of a secret informant or investigative tactic and lied about it under oath.
As the trial approached, The Hawk’s Eye published a June 8, 2024 piece titled “Defense Alleges Texas Ranger Perjury, Requests Franks Hearing.” This article distilled the contents of the April 30, 2024, Franks motion and its potential impact. We wrote that Campos’s attorneys were seeking to prove that Garza and Investigator Scott Vega included false statements in their warrant affidavits, which if shown to be intentional lies or reckless disregard for the truth, could nullify those warrants and suppress the evidence obtained. The Hawk’s Eye outlined several specific falsehoods alleged: for example, one affidavit listed an incorrect address for a March 27, 2018 search, and when Vega applied for a second warrant on March 28, he failed to inform the judge that the first day’s search had yielded nothing – creating a misleading impression of probable cause. Another example was the cadaver dog story: we reported that Ranger Garza swore a cadaver dog search was inconclusive due to “newborn farm animals” present, but the defense produced photographs and reports showing no such animals existed to interfere. This, the defense argued, was a fabrication. Additionally, The Hawk’s Eye noted an odd timeline inconsistency: Garza claimed in an affidavit to have reviewed FBI GPS data in the case, even though that data was not actually available until a month later – suggesting he made assertions about evidence he did not yet have. By showcasing these points, the article underscored the defense’s broader narrative that investigators bent the truth to make their case seem stronger than it was. We also explained the significance of a Franks hearing in layman’s terms – if the defense could prove by a preponderance of evidence that the affidavits contained deliberate or reckless falsehoods essential to finding probable cause, the judge could throw out any evidence obtained from those warrants. Such an outcome could have gutted the state’s case. (In practice, Judge Rincones did not hold a full Franks hearing before the trial’s end, but much of this material still came out during cross-examination of officers.)
Throughout The Hawk’s Eye’s reporting, we clearly attributed information to court filings and hearing transcripts, lending credibility to the defense’s claims even before the trial took place. Our articles often read as forensic analyses of the prosecution’s case file – a contrast to some local TV reports that leaned more on soundbites. We also placed these revelations in context. For example, we wrote that ADA Adela Garza had instructed Ranger Garza to seek out specific evidence – implying potential undue influence by the prosecutor on an ostensibly neutral investigator. We noted that when Campos’s lawyers lodged an official complaint of perjury with DPS’s Office of Inspector General, Ranger Garza suddenly retired the next month, halting that internal inquiry. Facts like these, drawn from the lawsuit and records, suggest there may have been concerns within DPS about Garza’s conduct.
In summary, The Hawk’s Eye’s coverage compiled a narrative of an investigation gone awry: officers possibly lying under oath, evidence being manipulated or omitted, and prosecutors pushing the limits of ethical conduct. By the time Campos stood trial, much of this narrative had been aired in pre-trial hearings and captured by our pen. When the jury delivered its “not guilty” verdict, those who had followed our reporting were perhaps the least surprised – the foundation of the state’s case had been thoroughly undermined by then. Our reporting not only informed the public but also raised early alarms about the integrity of the prosecution, arguably contributing to a climate in which the authorities’ actions are now under federal civil review.
A Verdict Without Closure
The saga of Salomon Campos Jr. and the death of Ernesto “El Gallito” Gonzalez is a cautionary tale of a criminal justice process under strain. A beloved local attorney was slain, and in the urgency to solve the case, investigators and prosecutors may have cut corners that led to an innocent man being accused. Campos’s acquittal, and his subsequent lawsuit, shine a harsh light on those alleged investigative failures – from falsified affidavits and lost evidence to public smears by officials. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers still officially tout the case as solved, and a journalist once praised for helping crack the mystery now sees that narrative clouded by doubt. The breakdowns in this case – if proven – suggest not only individual misdeeds but systemic issues of accountability. Who killed Ernesto Gonzalez, and will they ever be brought to justice? As Campos fights his civil battle and the Gonzalez family seeks real closure, South Texas observers are left with troubling questions about whether the institutions meant to deliver justice instead manufactured a story that justice was done. The truth, it seems, is still waiting to be fully unearthed.
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