Man sentenced after Facebook helps solve 21 year old case

DALLAS: Justice was finally served after a man was sentenced for the crimes he did 21 years ago all thanks to Facebook.

In 1996 a Dallas woman, Manuela Dominguez was raped and murdered while her daughter of 6 months slept in a playpen nearby.

Dominguez’s husband, Manuel Serrano, found her dead in bed, next to their infant daughter sleeping in a playpen. He told authorities that Victor Serrano, his brother, was the only other person with a key to the Dallas apartment.

A neighbor also told police that she saw Victor Serrano leave the apartment that day.

The victim’s daughter, Daisy Serrano-Dominguez, was only 6 months old at the time of the murder. She didn’t learn of her mother’s death until she was 10 years old, having grown up believing that her stepmother was her biological mother.

Serrano-Dominguez, now 23, used Facebook to locate relatives in an effort to move the case forward. She made contact with a long-lost cousin in 2016 and the pair went to the police to see if officers would look into the cold case once more.

DNA taken from Dominguez’s body indicated that a male relative of the husband’s family would likely be a match. Investigators had initially suspected Serrano but believed he fled to Mexico after they questioned him.

They met with Dallas Police Detective Noe Camacho, who also turned to the social media site to track down the Serrano family. He located a known alias of Victor Serrano (victim’s Brother in law), which ultimately led to Serrano’s arrest last year in Utah.

Victor Serrano, 40, pleaded guilty to murder Thursday in the death of after DNA from the body connected him to the crime scene.

He has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for the killing.