Zoe Campos: Disappearance, Rodriquez Confession, and Life Sentence

Zoe Campos was an 18-year-old woman from Lubbock, Texas, who was murdered on November 17, 2013, the night she met Carlos Rodriquez for the first time. Her family searched for her for five years before her skeletal remains were discovered buried in Rodriquez’s backyard in November 2018. He pleaded guilty to her murder in August 2022 and was sentenced by a Lubbock jury to life in prison.¹

The Night She Disappeared

On the evening of November 17, 2013, Campos was recorded on surveillance video with her sister at the Copper Caboose Restaurant near Avenue Q in Lubbock. The sisters then went to Zoe’s apartment at 3532 50th Street. Later that night, Zoe traveled to Carlos Rodriquez’s home at 1924 70th Street in south Lubbock. Prosecutors said the evidence showed the two had met for the first time that night.²

Two days later, on November 19, 2013, her mother, Melinda Campos, reported her missing after Zoe failed to pick her up from work.³ Her 1997 silver Lincoln Town Car was found abandoned at an apartment complex on the 5500 block of Utica Avenue, with her jacket and phone charger in the trunk. Her aunt, Monica Rivas, had spotted the car being driven by an unidentified man before police arrived to find it abandoned.⁴ The case was upgraded to missing and endangered.¹

Why the Case Stayed Cold for Five Years

Rodriquez surfaced as a person of interest almost immediately. Cellphone data confirmed his home was the last known location Campos had visited, and detectives first questioned him on November 25, 2013. He told them he had met her through a mutual friend and denied any involvement. Officers noted that he appeared unusually calm during the search of his home.⁵

In 2014, cadaver dogs from the Crosby County Sheriff’s Office alerted on Rodriquez’s house, backyard, and alley. Investigators conducted a visual search but did not find a burial site.⁶ It later emerged that Rodriquez had moved Zoe’s body to a deeper hole in a different part of the yard months after burying her, which made detection harder.⁷ Despite the dogs’ alerts, Rodriquez was ruled out, and the investigation stalled.

The family kept the case alive. Melinda Campos testified that they searched for Zoe “every day for about a year” after she vanished.⁸ They put up billboards, organized neighborhood searches, held public walks, and ran a “Missing Zoe Campos” Facebook page, with a community advocacy group called “Team Zoe” helping keep the story in front of the public.⁹

How the Case Broke

The break came because Rodriquez ended up in jail on a different case. In November 2017, he was convicted of stalking and sentenced to four years in prison. While he was awaiting transport at the Lubbock County Detention Center, fellow inmates began passing information to police.¹⁰

In March 2018, one inmate told detectives Rodriquez had bragged that the body was hidden under concrete and that investigators would never find it unless they moved the slab. In July 2018, a second inmate provided specific details about the burial location at 1924 70th Street that had never been released to the media.⁶ Detective David Schreiber, assigned to the case in July 2017, had already re-identified Rodriquez as the primary suspect after DNA testing put him on the jacket recovered from Campos’s abandoned car.¹

On November 7, 2018, cadaver dogs returned to the property and again detected human remains. Police began excavating. They first unearthed what they believed was a human bone but turned out to be from an animal. Faced with the dig, Rodriquez summoned Detective Schreiber to the jail and confessed. On November 16, 2018, he led officers to the exact spot in the backyard where he had buried Campos roughly three feet underground. The Medical Examiner’s office identified her remains using forensic dental records and forensic anthropology.⁷

What Rodriquez Said He Did

Rodriquez told detectives that on the night of November 17, 2013, he invited Campos to his home, where they had sex and smoked cigarillos laced with K-2 synthetic marijuana. He claimed the drug caused him to hallucinate that Campos had turned into a “demon.” He said he struck her in the face and then strangled her with a “rear-naked choke.” He buried her in the backyard shortly afterward and later moved the body to a deeper hole in a different part of the yard to better hide it.⁶

In 2019, while awaiting trial, Rodriquez sent a handwritten confession letter to KCBD repeating the same account. He wrote that he had felt “an immediate attraction” to Campos when he met her and described the hallucination he said led to the killing.¹⁰

Guilty Plea and Life Sentence

The trial opened in the 140th District Court in Lubbock before Judge Douglas Freitag. Before trial, the defense moved to suppress Rodriquez’s confession. Judge Freitag denied the motion and ruled the statement admissible. The defense had also signaled it would argue the killing was reckless rather than intentional, characterizing it as manslaughter based on voluntary intoxication from synthetic marijuana. The court noted that under Texas law voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime, though it can be considered as mitigation at sentencing.³

On August 15, 2022, after jury selection, Rodriquez pleaded guilty to murder. The case moved straight to a punishment phase before the jury, which had to choose a sentence in the range of five years to life. Prosecutors Jessica Gorman and Barron Slack had declined to offer any plea bargain. Slack later said, “He didn’t deserve anything other than absolutely the most that he could get as fast as he could get it.”¹

Jurors watched Rodriquez’s recorded confession, body-camera video of him leading detectives to the burial site, and text messages between him and Campos from the night of the murder.¹⁰ On August 18, 2022, the jury sentenced Rodriquez, then 29, to life in prison. Deliberations lasted roughly 20 minutes.¹¹ He is eligible for parole after 30 years.¹

Prosecution’s Pattern Evidence

To argue for the maximum sentence, prosecutors presented testimony from three women who described violent encounters with Rodriquez, framing the evidence as a predatory pattern. One woman testified that about seven months before Campos disappeared, Rodriquez had assaulted her in her home, struck her with a backpack, knocked her down, and pinned her to a bed; she said she believed he intended to rape her and de-escalated by talking about his daughters. A second woman said that in 2016 Rodriquez blocked her car on Interstate 27 near Lubbock, masturbated while driving alongside her, and rammed her vehicle twice, an incident that resulted in a felony charge. A third witness, Rodriquez’s ex-fiancée and the mother of his children, described a relationship she said was marked by sexual violence and coercion.¹

Gorman argued that Rodriquez killed Campos not for any specific motive but because he had the “opportunity.” She told jurors he showed no emotion during his confession, calling him “cold” and “flat” and noting he was “laughing at times.” She also played a recorded jail phone call in which Rodriquez told a relative he planned to walk into court “looking like a gangster” and said he was indifferent about the outcome. After the verdict, Slack described Rodriquez as a “rare kind of killer” who “actively takes steps to get away with it.”¹

The Family in Court

Dozens of Campos relatives filled the gallery through the punishment trial as details of Zoe’s final moments and photographs of her remains were shown. Slack read a victim impact statement from Melinda Campos, who called Rodriquez an “evil human being” who “showed no remorse” and deserved “no mercy,” telling him: “You took my baby girl and asked not to be labeled a murderer.”¹

Zoe’s older sister described her as her best friend: “That was all I had when I needed somebody.” She said knowing Rodriquez would spend his life in prison gave the family “some closure.”¹² Their father, Alejandro Campos, said the life sentence “eased the uncertainty” about whether his daughter would get justice, but added, “The fact remains that our daughter is still gone. I think we’ll individually have to deal with that and find closure in our own individual ways.”¹ Melinda Campos put it in a single sentence: “He’s still breathing, and she is not.”⁸

1
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Zoe Campos Killer Sentenced to Life in Prison
2
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Melinda Campos Shares Heartbreak at Carlos Rodriquez Murder Trial
3
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Trial Begins for Zoe Campos Accused Killer
4
Houston Chronicle. Texas Family Searching for Woman 3 Years After Disappearance
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KCBD. Family of Zoe Campos Details Heartbreak at Carlos Rodriquez Murder Trial
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KXXV. Warrant Shows Zoe Campos Murder Suspect Choked, Killed Her in His House
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KCBD. Officials Hold News Conference About Human Remains Found
8
EverythingLubbock. Mother of Zoe Campos Testifies at Rodriquez Sentencing Trial
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EverythingLubbock. Candlelight Vigil Marks 3 Years Since Zoe Campos Disappeared
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KCBD. Carlos Rodriquez Sentenced to Life in Prison for Murder of Zoe Campos
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EverythingLubbock. Rodriquez Gets Life in Prison for Zoe Campos Murder
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KCBD. Carlos Rodriquez Sentenced to Life in Prison for Zoe Campos Murder