A young man went missing in August 2024. His roommate is now charged with murder. The roommate told cops that another man strangled Jorge Garza Perales. Then they drove the body to a ranch in South Texas and left it there.

It took seven months to find Perales. His remains turned up at a ranch near the Live Oak County line in March 2025. The case cracked open because his mother never gave up.

Perales was in his twenties when he vanished. His mother told the Bexar County Sheriff's Office she had not heard from him since Aug. 21, 2024. She said he called her every day. One day he just stopped. She drove to his home in south Bexar County. Both his room and his roommate's room were empty. His car was gone too. She reported him missing on Aug. 26, 2024.

Investigators pulled his cell phone data. It showed his phone moving south from San Antonio into Atascosa County, near a small town called Whitsett. The phone went dark on Aug. 22, 2024. It never came back on.

A gas station camera gave them more. A Valero off Interstate 37 caught a man getting out of a silver Nissan Sentra. The car looked just like Perales' car. The man walked over to another man. That second man was sitting in a black Nissan Sentra. They talked. Then both cars drove off together.

Investigators ran the plate on the black Nissan. They tracked the car all the way to North Carolina. It was last seen there on Sept. 4, 2024. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation found the car and the driver. His name was Yesid Villabona Leon, 38. He told investigators he had moved out of Perales' home on Aug. 16, 2024. That was five days before Perales was last heard from.

On Nov. 21, 2024, Perales' car turned up in a downtown San Antonio parking lot. It had been sitting there, abandoned. A search warrant let deputies look inside. They found blood inside the car. They also found an empty bleach bottle.

A tip put a second man at the gas station that day. Surveillance video from the Valero matched his face. Investigators named him as Marlon Garcia. Warrants went out for both men.

U.S. Marshals tracked Villabona Leon to North Carolina. They arrested him and booked him into the Durham County Jail. Texas brought him back.

Once he was back in Texas, Villabona Leon talked. He told investigators what happened. He said Garcia strangled Perales and killed him. He said the body was loaded up and driven to a ranch near the county line between Atascosa and Live Oak. After his arrest, authorities also placed an immigration hold on him.

On March 13, 2025, investigators went to the Davis Ranch area in Live Oak County. They searched the land. They found human remains. Villabona Leon confirmed it. That was where Perales had been left.

Villabona Leon now faces three charges. The first is murder. The second is tampering with or making up physical evidence. The third is abuse of a corpse without legal right to do so. He is locked up in the Atascosa County Jail.

Marlon Garcia is still free. An arrest warrant is active. No one has said where he is