Harris County honors Bob Nuelle, father of unsolved murder victim Liz Barraza

A quiet corner of Burroughs Park became a farewell for Bob Nuelle, the father who spent years pressing Harris County for answers in his daughter Liz Barraza’s killing. Family members said the tree and bench there had already become an informal memorial long before Friday night’s gathering, and they asked reporters not to film the celebration so the goodbye could stay personal.

Nuelle died earlier in May after battling cancer, leaving behind a case he never saw solved. For years, he had been one of the most visible voices demanding accountability for the Jan. 25, 2019, shooting that took his daughter’s life in the 8600 block of Cedar Walk Drive. Liz Barraza was about 6:55 a.m. when investigators say she was shot multiple times while setting up a garage sale outside her home. Crime Stoppers says the suspect fled in a dark-colored Nissan Frontier pickup truck, and its public notice says the suspect may have been female. The reward for information remains up to $50,000.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office has kept the case open, and detectives continue to track new leads. That long wait is part of the burden many homicide families carry in Harris County, where public memory can become as important as police work. In Barraza’s case, surveillance video remains central to the investigation, and authorities still rely on witnesses, tips and images to move the case forward.

Nuelle’s role extended beyond his own family. He worked with Parents of Murdered Children and Crime Victims United, building connections with other families navigating the same stalled process and the same unanswered questions. Those efforts were reflected at Burroughs Park, where Crime Stoppers says Liz Barraza has a tree dedicated to her and where the family frequented the park when she was alive. The memorial space, the group says, gives friends and family a place to feel her presence.

The broader memorial effort is also growing. The We Remember Memorial Project, led by Harris County Precinct 3 Commissioner Tom Ramsey in partnership with Crime Stoppers of Houston, is planned for all 72 parks in Precinct 3. A January 2025 report said Liz Barraza was the first homicide victim honored in the project at Burroughs Park, a reminder that the tree by the path now carries both a family’s grief and a public demand that this case not fade. Liz and Sergio Barraza were days away from their fifth wedding anniversary when she was killed, and the couple’s work with a Star Wars charity group that visited sick children in the hospital remains part of the life she left behind.