Son indicted for father's death

Published: Thursday, October 21, 1999

Ariel A. Tavarez, 29, was indicted Wednesday evening by a Lubbock County grand jury for the murder of his father.

Tavarez was charged last week with the shooting death of 55-year-old Anastacio Tavarez, a father of eight.

The younger Tavarez was taken into custody with his wife for their expired immigration visas, shortly after the murdered man was found stuffed in a barrel behind his home on Oct. 8.

Family members had called the Lubbock County Sheriff's Office to report the 55-year-old welder missing Thursday. When sheriff's officials searched the five-acre property just inside Shallowater, they found a bloody mattress in Tavarez's bedroom and a metal barrel holding his body in an outdoor storage shed. He had been shot twice in the head.

Court records show that the younger Tavarez had changed his version of what had happened to his father several times. First, he told investigators that two men he didn't know showed up, killed his father, threatened him and then forced him to clean up the blood while they loaded the body into a barrel.

His next story was that the men made him assist them in putting his father in the barrel.

After visiting the scene with investigators and being told authorities might be able to garner fingerprints from plastic bags found wrapped around the dead man's head, Tavarez confessed to acting alone in killing his father, reports showed.

Deon Daugherty can be contacted at 766-8759 or