112 October 2019_Esquirea complete skeleton, the forensic anthropol-
ogist can piece together a more detailed nar-
rative. Is the skull noticeably asymmetrical? If
so, the living person likely would have had an
irregular face. Do any of the bones show dis-
tinct bulges around them, kind of like a stick
wrapped in duct tape? That’s a healed fracture,
which looks very different from the jagged line
of a freshly broken bone. Even a detail as faint
as a ridged pattern in a person’s tooth enamel
can indicate stress or malnutrition early in life.
When Spradley turns on the lights in the
room where all the cardboard boxes of OpID
cases are stored, row upon row, each box an
individual life with a story and a family, she
knows these are the remains of people for
whom life went very wrong. As a scientist,
she knows she can’t fix that.
But she can do this.When the researchers analyzed Case #0383
in November 2016, they were able to cross-
reference it with a body-recovery report from
the Brooks County Sheriff ’s Department. Late
in the evening of Friday, September 14, 2012,
two Border Patrol agents had found the body
of a young man under a cluster of scrub oak
on the La India Ranch, a trophy-hunting pre-
serve that specializes in nilgai, a large species
of Asian antelope. He had been dead for sev-
eral days. If, like most migrants attempting the
same route, he was dropped off by a coyote, a
human trafficker, on route 755 and told to walk
around the CBP checkpoint, then north to a
pickup vehicle on highway 285, he would have
trekked twenty miles in some of the state’s hot-
test and most disorienting terrain. He had col-
lapsed beside a white rock road, three miles
from the public highway and five from the
town of Falfurrias.
The checkpoint was already nine miles be-
hind him.
The Border Patrol agents called a sheriff ’s
deputy and a justice of the peace out to the
scene. The deputy checked the man for iden-
tification but found none, though he did find
a plastic bag containing a few grooming items
and a cracked iPhone wrapped in a Mexican-
flag bandanna. The justice of the peace pro-THE REMAINS (^) nounced the time of death as 1:31 the next
morning, September 15.
“It’s very difficult,” U. S. Border Patrol
spokesperson Henry Mendiola told The
item about the recovery of this particular body.
“A lot of these folks end up in paupers’ graves
or John Doe. It’s unfortunate.”
Case #0383’s skeleton was almost com-
pletely intact, save for a few small bones in his
hands and feet. The anthropologists estimated
that he had been twenty-six to forty-four years
old and stood approximately five-seven to five-
ten. The thing that struck them almost imme-
diately was the condition of his teeth: straight
and white, with no cavities or fillings. That led
them to believe he had not spent much of his
life in poverty, as perfect teeth generally re-
quire good nutrition and dental care, which
are hard to come by for economic migrants.
The only other feature the scientists noted
was that a section of #0383’s right femur and
several of his left ribs were stained a deep blu-
ish green. Whoever buried him had thrown
their medical gloves into the plywood coffin
before they nailed it shut.
On November 15, 2016, the staff at FACTS
finished #0383’s final report and sent it to
Brooks County’s Urbino Martinez, who had
just been elected sheriff. The tidy box of bones
went back on the shelf. With the DNA sam-
ple and photographs having already been up-
loaded to NamUs, there was nothing else to
do but wait.
II. CHRISTIAN
By the summer of 2017, Zaira Gonzalez had
been searching for her older brother, Chris-
tian, for almost five years. The last time she
saw him, in May 2012, they were both getting
ready for the day in their family’s small home
in the east Texas city of Palestine.
Then a junior in high school, Zaira was try-
ing to make sure she fulfilled all her credits
for graduation the following year. Christian,
who was twenty-two at the time and working
a maintenance job at a nearby ranch, told his
sister he’d pick her up from school, then come
back home and take their mother to the gro-
cery store.
Later that afternoon, Christian texted
Zaira and said he’d be late. He needed to run
an errand downtown but promised he’d still
be home in time for the shopping trip. Zaira
shrugged it off and took the bus.
Ever since the family had come to the United
States from Mexico in 1997, when Christian
was eight, Zaira was three, and their younger
brother, Gustavo, was only eleven months, the
Gonzalezes had worked to build a life in Texas
that was more solid than the one they had on a
chicken farm outside Monterrey. Their father
installed carpet and worked as a mechanic in
the oil fields; their mother provided childcare
for neighborhood kids and cleaned rooms at a
local motel. Their rental house contained lit-
tle more than a television and a mattress on
the floor, but eventually they saved enough
for a used Chevy truck and their own three-
bedroom home.
Most important, the children grew up as
Americans.
As the oldest child, Christian wanted to
make his parents proud. They depended on
him not only to help out around the house and
look after his younger siblings but also to act as
a bridge between the family’s Mexican roots
and its American future. They spoke little En-
glish when they arrived in the States, but Chris-
tian picked it up immediately, having watched
hours of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in
Monterrey. He became their interpreter. “His
parents made the money, but in a lot of ways,
he really took care of them,” says Christian’s
best friend, Lizz Bailey. “He always wanted to
take care of everybody.”
Christian played varsity soccer and ran
cross-country at Palestine High School. He
went out to restaurants in Tyler, doused him-
self in Hollister cologne, and wore cowboy
boots with his letter jacket. He listened to Blake
Shelton in his dad’s truck and fussed over his
hair before taking his girlfriend to prom.
On weekends, Christian four-wheeled
through the piney woods of east Texas or
watched romantic comedies with Lizz, who
never complained when he wanted to see Sweet
Home Alabama for the hundredth time. She
did, however, tease him for being “a dark-
skinned white guy,” while he ribbed her for
not speaking Spanish. (“He called me a ‘Sam’s
Choice Mexican,’ ” she says, laughing.) Lizz
eventually gave Christian the nickname Bud-
dha because of his cheerful, unflappable de-
meanor—and because of how much he could
eat at school fundraisers.
Christian also mediated his parents’ dis-
putes with his siblings—especially Zaira,
who was testing out the role of family rebel.
Whenever she was grounded for partying with
her friends, their parents deputized her older
brother as chaperone. “If I left the house, it
had to be with Christian,” she says. “He was
like a second dad to me, always trying to keep
me in check.”
Christian was a member of Life Teen, the
youth group at Sacred Heart Catholic Church;
volunteered at the local soup kitchen; and
helped lead vacation Bible school for the
younger class. “He was particularly good at
welcoming new people,” recalls Marty Flynn,
the leader of the youth group. Christian at-
tended more regularly than most kids, which
Flynn says is one of the reasons he remembers
him. When Flynn’s wife gave birth to their son,
Christian showed up at the hospital with bal-
loons. “He was a popular kid, he was friendly,