Austin Man Charged in Two Murders After DNA and Cellphone Links

Austin detectives say a six-year gap collapsed into one case when DNA and cellphone evidence tied 26-year-old Luis Fernando Benitez Gonzalez to the killings of Alyssa Ann Rivera and Alba Jenisse Aviles Marti. The new murder charge in Rivera’s death now reaches back to a 2018 Bastrop County homicide, turning two long-running investigations into one linked file.

Sgt. Nathan Sexton said, "There was a DNA link found between this case, and April 14th, 2018, in the unsolved murder of Alba Jenisse Aviles." That link came from a CODIS hit in August 2024, when evidence from Rivera’s homicide matched evidence from the Bastrop County case. At the time, Austin police said the DNA did not match anyone already in the system, a detail that suggested the killer had not previously been entered into CODIS. The later charge shows how that original hit became the thread detectives used to build a suspect profile.

Rivera was found inside an abandoned home near East Metcalfe Road in southeast Austin on June 21, 2024. Investigators documented blunt-force trauma, strangulation signs, drag marks, blood evidence, and handprints at the scene. An autopsy ruled her death a homicide caused by trauma to the right side of her head and blunt-force injuries. KVUE reported the killing was Austin’s 27th homicide of 2024. Police also released surveillance footage showing a person of interest walking with Rivera within 24 hours of her death, and they said the figure appeared to be a short Hispanic male.

The older case had its own grim trail. Aviles Marti’s body was found inside an abandoned silver Ford sedan off Old San Antonio Road in Bastrop County on April 14, 2018. She had last been seen leaving Club Caribe on Felter Lane in southeast Austin the night before. Bastrop County investigators later determined she had been sexually assaulted and strangled. The two scenes were just over three miles apart, a detail that has made the connection between the cases even harder to ignore.

Cellphone records pushed the investigation from pattern to person. Detectives working 2025 shooting cases used search-warrant returns, booking photographs, and witness information to tie a phone in those investigations to Benitez Gonzalez. Reports say he was arrested in Dallas on April 27, 2026 by the Dallas Lone Star Fugitive Task Force before the murder charge was filed. The result is a rare kind of breakthrough in true crime terms: one suspect, two dead women, and two cold cases now moving forward together. The broader Austin serial-killer speculation that swirled online was later rejected by Texas State University research and Austin police, but these two homicides now stand on their own, connected by forensic proof rather than rumor.