A train-hopping serial killer, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz murdered up to 23 innocent people in Mexico and the United States in the late 1980s and ’90s.

Railroad Killer

DAVID J. PHILLIP/AFP via Getty ImagesÁngel Maturino Reséndiz, a Mexican drifter suspected of murdering at least eight people, is escorted into court.

Am itinerant Mexican serial killer who illegally rode freight trains across the U.S., Ángel Maturino Reséndiz hopped on and off at will to target victims he found close to the railroad. His attacks were distinctive for their brutal blows to victims’ heads, often caused by objects found in the victims’ own homes. Known as the Railroad Killer, he was at one point the FBI’s most wanted fugitive.

The FBI linked the Railroad Killer to at least 15 murders across several states in the 1990s — and only one woman survived to tell the tale, after being beaten, raped, and left for dead. And after Ángel Maturino Reséndiz escaped capture several times by being voluntary deportated back to Mexico, it would take the combined effort of an FBI task force and the Railroad Killer’s own sister to finally bring him to justice in 1999.

Ángel Maturino Reséndiz’s Tumultuous Early Life Along The U.S.-Mexico Border

Ángel Maturino Reséndiz

FBIAn FBI handout depicting the face of the Railroad Killer, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz.

According to Justice Department documents, Reséndiz was born on Aug. 1, 1959, in Puebla, Mexico, as Ángel Leoncio Reyes Recendis. At age 14, he illegally entered Florida, before being deported in 1976.

In fact, over a 20-year period, Reséndiz was deported or voluntarily returned to Mexico 17 times, having illegally entered the U.S. using a series of aliases. Convicted on at least nine occasions for serious felonies, including burglary, Reséndiz would be deported after he served his sentence — then head right back to the U.S. to resume his criminal activities.

Drifting back and forth across the border, Reséndiz illegally hopped freight trains while working seasonal migrant farm jobs, riding railcars to Florida for orange-picking season or up to Kentucky to harvest tobacco.

In 1986, Reséndiz killed his first victim: an unidentified homeless woman in Texas, according to The Houston Chronicle. But it wasn’t until Reséndiz killed two teenage runaways in 1997 near railroad tracks in central Florida that investigators linked those slayings to his previous crimes and realized that they had a serial killer on their hands.

The Gruesome Crimes Of The Railroad Killer

The Railroad Killer's Hiding Place

Lexington, KY, Police DeptThe electrical box Reséndiz hid behind before attacking Maier and Dunn.

On the night of Aug, 29, 1997, in Lexington, Kentucky, young couple Christopher Maier and Holly Dunn were walking along railway tracks back to a party near the University of Kentucky when Reséndiz suddenly emerged from a crouched position behind a metal electrical box.

Binding the terrified couple’s hands and feet and gagging Maier, Reséndiz wandered off — then came back with a large rock, which he dropped on Maier’s head. Reséndiz raped Dunn, who stopped struggling when he reportedly told her just how easy it would be for him to kill her.

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