A Texas Man Was Convicted of Murdering His Wife After She Divorced Him—But Her Body Was Never Found

It didn’t make sense for Julie Ann Gonzalez to run away from her life. The Texas, woman had a 2-year-old daughter, a steady job and had fallen in love with a man she wanted to marry. 

But after Gonzalez, 21, vanished in March 2010 and her abandoned car turned up in a drugstore parking lot, it took time for investigators to suspect foul play. 

And it would take more than three years for charges to be lodged against Gonzalez’s estranged husband, George De La Cruz. A key reason why it took authorities so long to act was the lack of a body to prove a murder had been committed.

Gonzalez and De La Cruz were high school sweethearts who moved in together after graduation and had a daughter named Layla. De La Cruz struggled to hold a steady job, but Gonzalez found meaningful work as a pharmacy technician. 

They married in May 2009, but their marriage quickly fell apart, driven by economic hardship and De La Cruz's gaming addiction. They were estranged by Thanksgiving and she filed for divorce in December. According to court documents, Gonzalez moved out of her home with De La Cruz and in with her grandmother. The couple shared custody of Layla.

Around the same time, Gonzalez rekindled a relationship with a previous boyfriend, Aaron Breaux.

Gonzalez disappeared on March 26, 2010, at a time when she was supposed to be picking up her daughter from De La Cruz’s house. That same day, she posted on Myspace that she had run off to Colorado with a man named James, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

She was responsive to texts from confused family members, reiterating her desire to leave Texas.

But Breaux didn’t understand how Gonzalez could have run off with another man. On the day of her disappearance, she left him a handwritten, two-page love letter on his pillow, declaring she wanted to marry him and have his children. 

“I still can’t believe how lucky I am to be with you,” Gonzalez wrote. 

Even though she seemed to be responding to Breaux’s texts and saying that she was ending their relationship, she did not answer his calls. 

Growing suspicious that he was not actually communicating with Gonzalez, Breaux texted to ask her what his middle name was as a sign of proof that she was the person writing the texts. There was no response.

De La Cruz appeared on The Dr. Phil Show in May 201, about two months after Gonzalez’s disappearance, where he failed a polygraph test. Experts said that De La Cruz conclusively flunked after giving negative responses to questions like, “Are you responsible for Julie’s disappearance?” and “Did you cause Julie’s disappearance during the month of March?” 

Polygraphs are not be legally admissible as evidence, but The Dr. Phil Show appearance raised the profile of the case.

Cass Castillo, a retired assistant statewide prosecutor for Florida and consultant who specializes in “no body” homicide cases, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that Gonzalez’s family, job and relationship served as circumstantial evidence prosecutors needed to prove that a murder had taken place.

“The first thing you have to establish is that she is dead, that she didn’t just take off,” says Castillo, who tried and won six such cases in Florida and was the subject of the book Murders Without Bodies: The Case Files of America's Top "No Body" Homicide Prosecutor. 

Castillo says the lack of traceable behavior after Gonzalez disappeared also worked as evidence that she had died.

“Social security records are very important. If she’s working anywhere in the country you’ll get social security earnings,” Castillo says, adding that Gonzalez's abandoned vehicle and inactivity with credit cards further painted a picture of a dead woman. “How is she getting around? How is she purchasing anything?”

Investigators uncovered ample digital forensic evidence that linked De La Cruz to the crime. 

Many of the Myspace posts “Gonzalez” ostensibly published from Colorado after her disappearance were posted in the vicinity of De La Cruz’s home. And in the first two days after her disappearance, her phone connected to cell towers that were consistent with locations that De La Cruz had been verified to be at.

He was also seen on camera making purchases with Gonzalez’s debit card shortly after her disappearance.

Following his arrest on September 13, 2013, De La Cruz allegedly confessed to another inmate during his pretrial detention, according to the Austin American-Statesman. That inmate testified against De La Cruz at his trial.

De La Cruz was found guilty of murdering Gonzalez on April 22, 2015. 

He was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years. Tension erupted at the sentencing hearing, with De La Cruz’s supporters saying, “We love you, George” as he was led away. Gonzalez’s family responded: “Rot in Prison, George,” KXAN News reported.

In an article that they penned about the case, the prosecutors of De La Cruz wrote that it was not an easy decision to prosecute him for the murder. 

Key to the effort “to quash any doubt for jurors that Julie Ann may still be alive, the state produced evidence at trial that there was no ‘proof of life,’” they wrote.

Castillo says “no body” cases can force prosecutors to humanize victims in ways that make jurors sympathetic.

“There’s a misconception that the absence of a body in a homicide is a disadvantage to the prosecution. But it’s not. It’s an advantage,” Castillo says. “That’s because, in the name of proving that a victim has indeed died, you’re allowed to get into evidence that humanizes her, like her relationship with her family, her relationship with her child, her employment. And all of that will bind her to the jury, and make them want to hold somebody responsible.”