Who Wrote the Walmart Shooting Family Member Mystery Email?

If you haven't seen this story that aired on KTSM recently, it is all the hub-bub in the El Paso County Courthouse these days.  The gist of the story is that a prominent El Paso attorney named Amanda Enriquez made comments to the media relating to the August 3rd Walmart Shooting case. The following day an email was sent to pretty much everyone in the media allegedly from Alexander Hoffman Valdez, a German national that was a victim of the shooting. 

The email sent red flags because of the tone of the email, the substance of the email, and the command of the English language of a German national that lives in Juarez. 

So lets just pull over real quick before we get too far down the road to discuss a quick couple of things. First - is it possible that a German national that lives in Juarez has flawless English? 

Sure it is. 

But put a pin in that, I'll get back to that in a moment. 

Second is the fact that the letter is as the younglings say these days, a little sus. For those of you that live on the westside or shop at Whole Foods, thats short for suspect. In other words, its straight cap. Wait, cap means....you know what, never mind. 

The point is, the letter is fishy. If it wasn't written by Hoffman Valdez, and was in fact written by someone else - and I'll get to the name being thrown around in the legal community - imagine the special place in hell for someone willing to victimize an August 3rd victim by impersonating them. 

Dante never imagined a ring of hell fit for someone like that. 

Okay so back to the pin I mentioned a minute ago about the letter being sus. A reporter for KTSM actually decided to try to track down Mr. Hoffman Valdez in Juarez and was unable to contract him. But he was able to contact his family. 

Hoffman Valdez's family says that the letter isn't from him. Here is what his next-of-kin had to say about the authenticity of the letter to the media:

I am appalled of this email, and I, the next of kin of Alexander Hoffmann, do NOT believe this was written by my brother, nor any of my family members. Not only is Alexander Hoffmann not fluent and eloquent in the English language, but he lacks the capabilities of writing such emails. 

Eventually someone in the media is going to find Mr. Hoffmann and ask him if he wrote the letter. That is inevitable. It might take a few days, but someone is going to find him and ask him directly. 

And that is when the real shit storm will start. Because if he says he didn't write the email, then there is going to be an effort to find out exactly who did write that email. And the digital tracks are going to lead somewhere. 

As I mentioned at the start of this email, the letter is all the buzz in the courthouse and in the legal community, I have heard one name, and one name only, constantly theorized as the real author of the letter. 

The person most of the folks in the legal field I have spoken to have opined is the alleged author of the letter comes down to one name - Curtis Cox. 

You remember him, right? He's the former internet troll who Rosales hired as one of her underlings in the DA's office. He's the one that spearheaded the prosecution of an alleged murder and the case was dismissed for prosecutorial vindictiveness. 

Now if you ask me why so many people think its him, I couldn't tell you. They say the letter sounds like him. I don't know because I don't know him personally and am only familiar with his writing within the context of being an internet troll. I never thought enough about the guy to remember his writing style. 

But El Paso's legal community is a small one and lawyers know one another. I'm certainly not saying he's the author, again because I don't know definitively. I'm just passing on what the legal community says. 

The only way one would be able to definitively tell would be to examine digital records. Funny thing about those records. Once you write something on the internet, it never really goes away. Even if you think you delete it. 

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Motive 

So lets address the actual substance of the letter and why it appears to have targeted Amanda Enriquez. It starts with an overtly political charge that Enriquez is using the case for political purposes. 

Thats an odd assertion to make given that she made fairly innocuous statements. In fact it was El Paso District Attorney Yvonne Rosales who sought to have a hearing on when the case would be tried before filing a single document relative to the case to the court to which the case is assigned. Many El Pasoans felt that was purely political theater on the part of the El Paso DA. 

But it is pretty obvious why Enriquez was targeted in this particular situation. Rosales knows that she's going to have an opponent in her re-election bid and by any measure, Rosales has been a failure as the DA so far. If another qualified Latina runs for the position, Rosales is toast. She knows that. And so does everyone around Rosales. 

Enriquez is a young qualified Latina who knows what hard campaigning is like. A lot of people would likely get behind her, especially given Rosales record of running the DA's office. A qualified candidate with an incumbent that is damaged goods is a recipe for a one-term DA. Especially when the DA is pretty gaffe-prone. 

Continuing with the substance of the letter, the family says they never spoke to Enriquez, but they also said that the DA's Office under Jaime Esparza was "nothing but supportive and outstanding". That is a far cry from what is in the alleged letter from Mr. Hoffman. 

The letter states that his family felt it was necessary to file a complaint with the State Bar about her - but her family says that didn't happen. 

So at least to me, the motive of this letter is pretty clear - in my opinion its a pretty thinly veiled effort of someone with an interest in the outcome of the next DA's race to discredit the strongest likely opponent. 

All is fair in love in politics. 

But its would be Hall of Fame Douchebaggery if the letter turned out to be fabricated and the real author were anyone connected to the DA's office. 

It would also be a media shitstorm and people would likely start calling for the DA's resignation. 

Is that a likely scenario?

Well, I think it depends on the extent to which local media is willing to be persistent and track down Mr. Hoffman and as him if he wrote the letter. If he indicates that he didn't, then the quest to find out exactly who the author was would kick in. 

I honestly don't know if that would be a law enforcement thing. But if it were, it would be pretty easy for them to procure the digital records they need to find out who the author of the letter was - down to the computer it was written on. 

But at a minimum, it would be a media thing and they would zero in on the author pretty quickly. 

This has the potential to be a political earthquake and would likely make national news if it turned out that Mr. Hoffman didn't write the letter. 

Get your popcorn folks, this one could get interesting. Especially if this is politically-motivated.