GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Early on, police thought they knew who killed Ruby Garcia.
They just didn’t know where he was.
In the investigation into Ruby Garcia’s killing, state police cracked the case with high-tech tools, old-fashioned detective work and luck: her boyfriend turned himself in two days later and confessed.
Early on, state police suspected that Brandon Ortiz-Vite shot Garcia, then left her body on the side of U.S. 131 in Grand Rapids.
But Ortiz-Vite and her car, a red Mazda 3, were gone.
Ruby Garcia, 25, of Grand Rapids, was killed on March 22, 2024, on U.S. 131 near Leonard Street NW.
The manhunt for her killer began soon after her body was discovered along the heavily traveled highway that cuts through Michigan’s second-largest city. In nearing the one-year anniversary of the tragic homicide that grabbed national political attention, MLive is taking a deeper look at the police investigation and the woman whose life ended much too soon.
State police reports, obtained by MLive in a Freedom of Information request, detailed police efforts to track down the killer, Ortiz-Vite’s travels before he turned himself in and the unlikely pairing of the couple – something she kept from her parents and others.
Related: Funeral service set for Ruby Garcia, shot and killed on U.S. 131
Her family kept a low profile throughout the ordeal.
The killing did not.
President Donald Trump, then a candidate for a second term, visited Grand Rapids after it was revealed that Ortiz-Vite was in the U.S. illegally when he killed Garcia.
Ortiz-Vite’s mugshot was featured prominently on Trump’s TV ads. In the Grand Rapids stop, Trump said he spoke to Garcia’s family.
“He did not speak with any of us,” sister Mavi Garcia told WOOD-TV.
Garcia wrote about her sister in a written victim-impact statement provided to the judge when Ortiz-Vite was sentenced to 39 years in prison for second-degree murder and felony firearm.
She and her family were in court but no one spoke.
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In her three-page letter, Mavi Garcia said she didn’t want pity or sympathy. She wanted justice. Her sister “had such a good heart and had a pure soul,” she wrote.
“The best sister, aunt, daughter, cousin you name it!
“Now imagine waking up to a call at 3 a.m. to hear your sister has been murdered. My only sister. She was all that I had left in the world.”
She could not accept the possibility that Ortiz-Vite could someday leave prison. She is haunted by her sister’s last moments. What did she feel? Did she fight? Did she beg him to stop? Did she even know he was about to shoot her?
“How I wish I could hear her one last time. Hug her and say I love you and everything would have been OK.”
Her family described Garcia as “really more of a homebody.”
She avoided drama and trouble and kept to herself. She worked first shift at a greenhouse with her father and lived with her parents.
She wasn’t a “partier” and did not like being around a lot of people.
She liked to go to bed early and use her cellphone. On the night she was killed, she shared a photo of her Stanley cup on Snapchat.
She had mentioned she was hanging out with a guy a few months earlier but did not give his name, a friend said. The friend did not believe that the two were dating anymore.
Garcia had gotten into health and fitness and recently bought a Bible to get more involved in church. It would be out of character for her to be involved in anything illegal or unsafe.
Related: Ruby Garcia’s killer frustrated his immigration status was used in Trump campaign
Ortiz-Vite had lived in Kent County most of his life but was not a U.S. citizen. He entered the U.S. unlawfully but stayed under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
The status expired May 10, 2019. He was arrested Aug. 30, 2020, for driving while intoxicated in Grand Rapids. He was deported that fall.
Related: Once shielded from deportation, man accused of Michigan killing sparks political fight
He told police he returned illegally around March 2022.
Kent County sheriff’s Lt. Mario Morey found Garcia’s body around 11:35 p.m. She was lying partly in the right southbound lane of U.S. 131, just south of Leonard Street NW. She had an obvious head wound.
There was an unspent 9mm hollow-point bullet near her body.
Police talked to the victim’s family into the early morning.
Detective Sgt. Aaron Tubergen, with the family’s permission, searched Ruby’s bedroom. No one knew the passcode for her phone or password for her email to access a “My Mazda” app.
The investigator found a small piece of paper for a bank account. He used her Gmail address and a possible password to open the app and find the vehicle at North Shore Drive and Miami Avenue in South Haven area.
The state police Emergency Support Team cleared the vehicle before police approached. The driver’s window was down. There was an apparent bullet hole in the door handle.
State police contacted Borgman Mazda. A vehicle report showed the driver’s window had malfunctioned at 11:21 p.m.
“This information led me to believe that this could have been the time shots were fired, with bullets striking the driver door, causing these malfunctions,” a state police investigator wrote in a report.
Garcia and Ortiz-Vite had talked for about a year but only dated for two or three months before the killing. Most of her family, including her parents, didn’t know they were dating, a source of frustration for Ortiz-Vite.
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He and Garcia might have seemed an unlikely match. He was known to sell cocaine and carry a gun, a 9mm Taurus that he said he bought on the street for $300, police reports said.
He carried it on his right hip, held by his belt.
On the night of the killing, he told a friend he needed a ride to Garcia’s house.
He called her and texted, starting around 8:35 p.m., but she didn’t want to talk. She had to work the next day, picking up a Saturday shift.
“Call if you care,” he wrote.
Forty-nine minutes later, after all of his calls went to voicemail, he begged her in rapid-fire texts to answer.
“Please answer … Babee … Please … Rubby … Ruby …,” he texted.
“No,” she finally said. “For what?”
They talked at 10:05 p.m. for one minute, 43 seconds. He texted that he was five minutes out.
At 10:16 p.m., she said she was in her car. He showed up two minutes later. Phone records showed they stayed there until 11:13 p.m., when they headed for U.S. 131.
She was going to drive him home.
“Both Ruby’s device and the suspect device are supported as traveling from her residence towards the scene of the homicide merely 14 minutes before Ruby was discovered dead,” state police said.
Related: Man charged in woman’s killing was in U.S. illegally after being removed to Mexico
Ortiz-Vite later told police he had been drinking heavily – disputed by a friend – and using cocaine. The intoxicants caused “the anger he built up inside” to come out, he told police.
“To be honest with you, the reason she pulled over to the side of the road, is because I yanked the wheel of the car, and then she stopped and that’s when the commotion happened.”
The killing happened on a busy stretch of the expressway leading to downtown Grand Rapids, as well as the exit for westbound I-196 toward Lake Michigan.
He said he wanted her to talk, not take him home. She had already made up her mind and told him to get out, he told police. He believed that she was calling police, knowing he faced two years in prison and deportation if caught. He feared police would check on them if they sat in the car on the side of the road.
He told police that “we were yelling so she takes out her phone, that’s when everything happened. It all happened so fast. I leaned over and I hit her, she was fighting back, and then in that instinct, I had the gun right here in my right hand. I don’t know if I stepped out or if I just shot her from inside, but I shot her like four times, and then I went around the back of the car, and then I took her out of the car and shot her once more, and then I took off.”
He said his mind “was just blank.” He said he had no intention of killing her, “it just happened,” reports said.
He pulled Garcia out of the car and shot her in the head when she moved. He then drove south on U.S. 131.
A motorist later reported seeing a vehicle on the U.S. 131 shoulder near Leonard that appeared to drive over something before merging onto the highway just before the westbound I-196 ramp.
The vehicle, with its hazard lights flashing, “shot right up on me” on the ramp, repeatedly flashing headlights. He lost sight of the “red, sporty looking car” near Chicago Drive.
The witness “stated it ‘looked like they were trying to get away from something,’” police said.
Ortiz-Vite feared other motorists saw what happened. At one point, he pulled to the shoulder because he could not figure out how to turn off the hazard lights. He saw spent shells and tossed them outside.
He had a half-tank of gas and realized that Garcia had the key fob so he would not be able to start the car once it was turned off. He took a “low key” exit in the Fennville area to find a rural area to park.
He backed into an empty lot at Lakeshore Drive and Miami Avenue, a neighborhood of mostly vacation homes and rentals near Lake Michigan. He stayed in the car until 7 a.m.
He had already ditched his cellphone on I-196, knowing it could be used to track him. He kept the gun. He started walking north, looking for a McDonald’s, to use its wi-fi for an old phone when, around 10 a.m., he came upon Chicken Scratch Farm & Bakery on Blue Star Highway.
He asked to use a phone and made several calls. His calls appeared to have gone unanswered.
He bought juice and a brownie. He spent a half-hour in the bathroom.
He told a couple at Chicken Scratch that he was waiting for his brother after his car broke down at a nearby party store. The couple hadn’t seen any disabled vehicles. After 90 minutes, he was asked to leave.
He was polite and mild-mannered but gave the wife a “funny vibe,” police said. He headed off, eventually reaching Ganges United Methodist Church on 68th Street, north of 122nd Avenue.
It was a 35-minute walk to the rural church if he walked directly there. It is surrounded by woods and farmland, only a mile or so from the Lake Michigan shoreline in southwest Allegan County.
Related: A church took in a young man. They didn’t know he was wanted for murder.
He needed a ride back to Grand Rapids. But his friends heard on Facebook that her family blamed him for the killing.
Using his nickname, Walo, and a borrowed cellphone, he texted a friend:
“It’s walo”
“U coming for me???”
There was no answer.
At Ganges United Methodist Church, a parishioner, preparing for an upcoming Boy Scouts’ Pinewood Derby, was startled to see Ortiz-Vite inside. The parishioner noticed the door was unlocked – probably inadvertently after a funeral two days earlier.
Ortiz-Vite asked to use the parishioner’s phone and said he was waiting for a ride home. He told the parishioner he needed to talk to someone. The Rev. Marcia Tucker showed up minutes later.
“Thank you, Lord, that he didn’t get violent, and I think the only reason he didn’t is because he was listening to God,” Tucker previously told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press.
She did not think he was ready to turn himself in. He was quiet and troubled but gave no clue he was wanted for murder. They talked for some time.
She knew no one was coming for him. She said he could spend the night in the church annex.
The next morning, after breakfast, he took an aisle seat in the second-to-last row. After the start of the service, Tucker saw he was gone. Ortiz-Vite had called 911 from the bathroom.
The parishioner who first encountered Ortiz-Vite summoned another man. They saw Ortiz-Vite go outside, drop a gun and approach police. Churchgoers were told to go downstairs.
Tucker knew Ortiz-Vite only as Brian, not Brandon. His status as a wanted murder suspect gave her a jolt.
Ortiz-Vite told police he was afraid that the victim’s family would torture or kill him. Friends told him that the family posted on Facebook that he was wanted in Garcia’s killing.
He asked for solitary confinement in jail.
“I know I have to face the music. I know what I did was a horrible, horrible thing.”
Investigators said Ortiz-Vite virtually blurted out a confession once he gave himself up. He told police everything happened so fast.
He had just parked her car near the Lake Michigan bluff when he finally grasped what happened.
“I just sat down and realized I killed the person I love, and knew that once she was dead, I also was dead.”
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and other charges. He was sentenced in November to at least 39 years in prison.
He is temporarily held in the Charles Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson for assessments and classification before he will be placed in a general population prison in Michigan.
If he is ever granted parole, he will be deported.
Now-retired Kent County Circuit Judge Mark Trusock called the killing “cold-blooded.”
Ortiz-Vite recognized that in his first statements to police.
“I know when I get into the courtroom and try to explain my side, it’s not going to be justifiable.”
