Texas Rangers arrest suspect in missing woman Amanda Bates’ death

Texas Rangers and Howard County deputies have turned Amanda Bates’s disappearance into a homicide case, arresting Andres Perches, 31, and charging him with murder in her death. The case now carries the starkest possible shift for a missing-person file: what began as a public search for a woman last seen alive has ended with a suspect in custody.

Bates was 39 when she vanished on Sept. 12, 2024, in the Knott and Big Spring area of Howard County. By early March 2026, the Howard County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Rangers were still publicly asking for help finding her, saying her whereabouts were unknown and that they were concerned for her welfare. That appeal made clear the file was still being treated as a live missing-person case, not a closed one.

Then, on April 2, 2026, investigators moved decisively. The Texas Department of Public Safety said Perches was arrested in coordination with the Howard County Sheriff’s Office and booked in connection with Bates’s murder. DPS said he was charged under Texas Penal Code Section 19.02, which makes murder a first-degree felony except in limited sudden-passion cases. He was also charged with failure to comply with sex-offender registration requirements, a third-degree felony.

Perches was being held in the Howard County Jail on a $1 million bond, according to DPS. Online jail records listed a total bond of $1.1 million, with $1 million attached to the murder charge and $100,000 to the registration count. DPS said the investigation remained active and had not released a detailed account of how Bates died.

The arrest also puts a spotlight on the state systems investigators use when a missing-person case goes cold. Texas DPS says its Missing and Unidentified Persons Online Bulletin serves as a searchable repository for missing people, abductors, runaways, traveling companions, and unidentified remains, while the Texas Crime Information Center gives law enforcement 24-hour access to wanted, missing, sex offender, and protective-order status data. In Bates’s case, those tools now sit in the background of a homicide arrest, where uncertainty has given way to a murder charge and a case that is still developing.