Bio 

Ramiro Rubi Ibarra was born on May 10, 1954, in Chalchihuites, Zacatecas, Mexico. Texas Department of Criminal Justice records list him as a Mexican-born Hispanic male with a ninth-grade education and prior work as a laborer. He had no prior Texas prison record before the capital murder case.

By 1987, Ibarra was living in the Waco area of McLennan County, Texas. He was known to the family of Maria De La Paz Zuniga, a 16-year-old girl who was attacked while caring for two young nephews inside her family’s home. Because he was a family acquaintance, he had access to the household in a way that later became important in the investigation.

Murder Story

On March 6, 1987, Maria De La Paz Zuniga was babysitting two young nephews at her family’s home in Waco, Texas. Ibarra entered the home, attacked her, sexually assaulted her, beat her, and strangled her with a yellow electrical cord. Trial evidence later showed that she had skin and blood under her fingernails, and Ibarra had fresh scratch wounds on his face and chest. DNA testing matched Ibarra to sperm recovered from the victim and her clothing.

Ibarra was arrested after the body was found, but the original case was disrupted when evidence obtained through an improper search warrant was suppressed. The first indictment was dismissed in 1988 because prosecutors could not then obtain a second evidentiary warrant. After Texas changed the relevant warrant law in 1995, investigators obtained a new warrant, collected further evidence, and Ibarra was reindicted on September 18, 1996.

A jury convicted Ibarra of capital murder on September 17, 1997. He was sentenced to death on September 22, 1997, and Texas prison records list his death-row received date as December 10, 1997.

His conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal in 1999. He later pursued state and federal appeals, including claims involving intellectual disability, ineffective assistance of counsel, DNA-related issues, and Mexican consular notification under the Vienna Convention. Courts rejected several of those claims over the years.

In 2021, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered further proceedings on two claims, including intellectual disability and DNA-related reliability issues. A 2025 report stated that the required hearing had not yet been held and that Ibarra was not eligible for another execution date until those appellate issues were resolved.