Murder of Kristin Wiley and Lynara Carriero

When we looked into the Fair Forest case in northwest Harris County, the story that came up was the 1992 murder of two best friends, Kristin Michelle Wiley, 10, and Kynara Lorin Carreiro, 7.

It happened on July 20, 1992, inside the Wiley home. Fair Forest was described as a quiet neighborhood street in the Inwood North area of northwest Harris County. It was the kind of place that looked ordinary from the outside. Modest houses. Kept yards. Kids out for summer. Nothing about it looked like the setting for one of Houston’s most heartbreaking cases.

That afternoon, Kristin and Kynara were at the Wiley house. The girls were best friends and had spent time together often. Earlier that day, they had been sent to the Wiley home to clean. Around 2 p.m., Kristin’s half-brother, Jeremy Garza, called his mother to ask permission to go across the street to a friend’s house. He left after getting permission.

While Jeremy was gone, the girls were in the house with music playing. According to court records, Rex Warren Mays, the next-door neighbor, had been fired from his job earlier that day. Instead of going straight home, he parked down the street. He heard loud music coming from the Wiley home, went inside through the unlocked front door, and called out for Kristin.

Mays later told investigators he followed the girls and told them to turn the music down. When they refused and told him to leave, he grabbed a knife from the kitchen and attacked them. Both girls were killed inside the home.

After the attack, Mays tried to leave through a window and toward the fence between the homes. Then he remembered his car was parked down the street. He went back through the house, left by the front door, put the knife and his bloody shirt in a duffel bag, drove home, and showered. Later, he came outside and watched as emergency crews and police arrived.

Around 3:45 p.m., Jeremy came home. The front door was open, and the stereo was still loud. He went back to his bedroom and found Kristin and Kynara. That discovery is how the crime was first reported.

At first, Mays tried to push investigators away from him. He claimed he saw two men near the fence, but he later admitted that story was false after failing a polygraph. Investigators believed he was their main suspect, but they did not have enough physical evidence to arrest him right away.

The case stayed open for about a year and a half. Detective Bob Valerio worked to build trust with Mays, and in February 1994, Mays finally confessed. He said he had been fired earlier that day, stopped near his home on Fair Forest, heard the music, went inside, and lost control after the girls refused to turn it down.

Mays was later convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. He was executed in Texas on September 24, 2002.

This case is hard because the setting is so normal. It was not some dark alley or abandoned place. It was a home on a quiet street in a Houston neighborhood. Two little girls were spending a summer day together, and the danger came from next door.

Kristin Wiley and Kynara Carreiro are the names that should be remembered.