Gloria Barrios’s search for answers brought her to the gates of Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, on October 3. Her 27-year-old daughter, Blanca Luna, had been found stabbed to death there seven months earlier. Barrios still didn’t know what exactly had happened to her daughter, and the air force had ignored her demands to see the autopsy report, photos, and other evidence in the case. So she’d come to see what she could find out herself.
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Barrios arrived at Sheppard in October with her sister and several friends and supporters, including Wright; Juan Torres, a Chicago-area man whose son had died under mysterious circumstances in Afghanistan in 2004; and her trusted interpreter Magda Castañeda. Barrios told officials she wanted to see the room where her daughter died.
Barrios was allowed to take a look around the base hotel where her daughter had lived but not the actual room where she’d been found dead. Barrios left the base feeling even more angry and frustrated at how little information she’d been given.
As painful as these details were for Barrios, the conclusion of the report was even worse: “The autopsy findings and circumstances of death alone are insufficient to discriminate between homicide and suicide and, at the time of this report, the subsequent investigative and evidentiary information are inconclusive. Therefore, the manner of death is undetermined.”
As the season’s first snow fell in mid-November, Barrios sat in her home in west Pilsen leafing through childhood photos of Luna, showing birthday parties where she dug into chocolate and strawberry cakes, her favorites. Barrios reminisced how people often thought she and Luna were sisters, and she was often the only parent hanging out with Luna and her teenage friends. Luna was on the swim team at Curie High—Barrios called her “my little fish”—and said she was the leader of her group of friends. The other girls were usually satisfied to hang out in Pilsen and Little Village, but Luna would convince them to go downtown “to the big stores” instead.
