Mother died before DNA confirmed her daughter slain in Harlingen

The mother of a missing Corpus Christi woman was certain her daughter had been murdered in Harlingen, and on Tuesday her assertions were proven correct thanks to DNA evidence. The news just came too late for the grieving parent.

Anthony Eliff III, of Harlingen, is charged with killing Elyn Loera, 32, said Harlingen police Commander J.L. Garcia, of the Criminal Investigations Division.

Loera went missing in October 2019 after telling her mother she was traveling to Harlingen to visit her boyfriend, Eliff.

Loera’s mother had reached out to Harlingen police shortly after her daughter’s disappearance and had sought help from law enforcement to search for her daughter.

Rosie Loera, Elyn’s mother, has since died and Elyn’s sister was told an arrest had been made in her sister’s case, Garcia said.

Human remains found Feb. 10, 2020, in a brushy lot west of Business 77 in San Benito have been confirmed to belong to Elyn Loera, Garcia said.

The remains had been sent off for DNA testing at the University of North Texas, and the results indicated they are that of the missing woman, police said.

“It was conclusive,” Garcia said.

Although authorities don’t have a cause of death because the remains were badly decomposed, Garcia said, they do have enough information to charge Eliff with Loera’s murder.

Eliff was arrested by Harlingen police and the Texas Rangers at a Cameron County jail about three weeks ago and charged with Elyn Loera’s murder, Garcia said.

In an earlier interview, Rosie Loera said she last saw her daughter in September 2019 as she boarded a bus to make the trip to the Rio Grande Valley.

When police notified her about the remains, she had prayed that they were not those of her missing daughter.

“They told me they found a body,” Loera, 53, a home health provider, said during a telephone interview, in February 2020 with the Valley Morning Star. “I hope it’s not her. I hope she’s found. If it was my daughter, I’ve got so many things on my mind. How does anyone on the face of the earth just disappear without anybody seeing anything or knowing anything?”

Harlingen police in a previous interview with the Star said they were investigating whether the remains belonged to Elyn Loera.

Although Rosie Loera tried to get her daughter to tell her the exact location of where she was staying, her daughter didn’t want to give her an address.

The police department at that time did not say whether the investigation had connected Eliff to her disappearance.

Eliff remains jailed in Cameron County on a $1.9 million bond in a separate case for the murder of a Harlingen man.

Eliff is accused in the Feb. 6, 2020, shooting death of 41-year-old Guillermo Garcia, who was found inside a parked vehicle with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Harlingen police wrote in a February 2020 news release that officers responded to the 3300 block of Adams Landing in reference to reports of a male that was shot.

“The male had, what appeared to be, a single gunshot wound to the chest,” the department stated.

A Cameron County grand jury on March 25, 2020, indicted Eliff on one count of murder. The indictment states that Eliff “did then and there intentionally or knowing cause the death of an individual, namely, Guillermo Garcia, by shooting Guillermo Garcia with a handgun.”