Ivan Cantu sits in a small cubicle in the visitors’ area at the Polunsky Unit, penned in by a metal grate at his back and a thick pane of glass in front. Over a closed-circuit phone, he talks quickly about the murder case that put him in prison. He can recall decades-old details with clarity and track complicated timelines in his head. For the past 22 years, he’s been going over the details of his case with family, lawyers, and investigators—all in an effort to prove his innocence.
Cantu was sentenced to death in October 2001 after being convicted of murdering his cousin, James Mosqueda, and Mosqueda’s fiancee, Amy Kitchen. Both were found fatally shot in the bedroom of their home in North Dallas on November 4, 2000. When the bodies were discovered, Cantu was hundreds of miles away, having left that morning for a trip to meet his own fiancee’s parents in Arkansas. He was arrested days later when he returned to Dallas.
The state’s case against Cantu, the jury decided, was airtight. Mosqueda’s Corvette was found parked outside of Cantu and his fiancee Amy Boettcher’s apartment, just over a mile away from the crime scene. A pair of jeans and socks with droplets of the victims’ blood were discovered in the apartment’s kitchen trash can. And Amy Boettcher herself later told police that Cantu had committed the murders—that he had even taken her to the scene and shown her the bodies.
