On March 3, 1993, Saint Joseph Academy high school senior Albert Joseph "Joey" Fischer Jr. was shot dead outside his home in Rancho Viejo, an upscale community north of Brownsville, Texas. Dora Cisneros, the mother of his ex-girlfriend, was responsible for orchestrating Fischer's murder after he broke up with her daughter Cristina. Fischer and Cristina had broken up the previous summer, but Cisneros became obsessed with their relationship and insisted that Fischer date her daughter again. After he refused a US$500 offer from Cisneros, she consulted María Mercedes Martínez, a fortune teller, to cast a spell on him.
The fortune teller told Cisneros she was unable to cast spells, but Cisneros insisted that she would pay to have someone beat him up. She decided later to have Fischer murdered instead, and told Martínez she was willing to pay US$3,000 to anyone who would kill him. Martínez offered to help, and Cisneros gave her the money and a photograph of Fischer. Martínez gave these to one of her clients, Daniel Orlando Garza. He contacted two Mexican hitmen from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Israel Olivarez Cepeda and Heriberto Puentes Pizaña, who killed Fischer and then escaped to Mexico. The killing drew national attention because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the crime.
Garza, troubled by what he had done, confessed to the police that he acted as a middleman in Fischer's murder. He cooperated with the police to incriminate Martínez, who then aided in Cisneros's arrest. Cisneros and Garza were eventually sentenced to life in prison by a state court in 1994, but Cisneros's sentence was overturned. She was convicted again in 1998 by a federal court and sentenced to life in prison. Martínez was given a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty and testifying against the two in court. Though U.S. officials tried to have the two assassins extradited, the hitmen never faced trial in Texas. They were prosecuted in Mexico and given a 15-year sentence.
Background
Albert Joseph "Joey" Fischer Jr. was born in Brownsville, Texas, on January 16, 1975. His parents were A. J. "Buddy" Fischer and Corinne Nelson. The couple divorced in 1987 and remarried separately. Fischer lived with his mother and his stepfather Vernon "Beau" Nelson. He was a senior honors student at Saint Joseph Academy (St. Joe), a Catholic private school in Brownsville. He had a 98.5 grade-point average, was ranked eleventh in his class, and was going to attend the honors program at the University of Texas at Austin on graduation. At 18 years old, he enjoyed basketball and was a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, loved computers, and talked about pursuing a career as an engineer. Along with two other classmates, he was voted "Most Sarcastic" by his high school class, and was known for sometimes acting foolish, and having a good sense of humor. He was also "often attracted to the more Latina girls of the school". During his junior year, he dated Cristina, who was a year younger than him. Most of Fischer's friends described her as quiet, although some said she was only reserved with people she did not know. Cristina's mother Dora Garcia Cisneros approved of Fischer's relationship with her daughter and thought he was potentially a good candidate for marriage. In Cisneros's eyes, Fischer was an overachieving student from a good family, and "wasn't wild, like many of the St. Joe boys".
Cisneros grew up in a well-off ranching family from Los Indios, Texas, and was married to David Cisneros, a surgeon from Brownsville. They had five children. She was a well-respected volunteer in the local medical community, and was president of the southern chapter of the Cameron-Willacy Counties Medical Society. The association where she volunteered helped raise funds for medical scholarships. In addition, people close to Cisneros said she was a practicing Catholic and that she cared a lot for her family. She volunteered at St. Joe, and was well-liked in the social group she was part of. Since Los Indios was mostly a ranching community close to the U.S.-Mexico border, Cisneros's religiosity was heavily influenced by curanderismo, a practice of religious and folk medicine healing rooted in ancient Mexican culture.