San Antonio — A major security lapse caused by a lack of connectivity between the Bexar County juvenile system and the adult system led to the wrongful release of convicted murderer Angel Salas, who was recaptured on Tuesday night.
Salas committed a murder while he was still a juvenile. He was later caught at age 17 and entered the adult system on a separate case. During that process, investigators connected him to the Twin Peaks killing of Michael Vargas. Salas accepted a plea deal for murdering the 32-year-old during an attempted car break-in at a Twin Peaks restaurant in November 2024 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
After taking the plea, Salas was transferred to the Bexar County Jail so he could be held until the state picked him up to begin serving his sentence. But once he arrived, jail intake staff could not see his murder conviction or his twenty-year sentence in the Odyssey system. That information was still inside the juvenile system, which the jail could not access. Without any warning or flag, staff believed Salas could be released, and they let him go.
Under the county’s previous software, juvenile information remained confidential, but the jail still received a clear alert that an inmate should not be released. Officials tell us tonight that the system provided at least partial connectivity that helped prevent these kinds of errors.
Law enforcement launched an active search for Salas. Twenty-five minutes after our story aired, deputies located him, and he is now back in custody.
Odyssey is the case management system now used by Bexar County and has been at the center of multiple reports of errors. Fox SA has previously exposed problems at the County Clerk and District Clerk’s offices, including sensitive documents appearing online, innocent defendants being listed as guilty, and expunged records being published on a public portal.
The public access portal was pulled offline in 2022 after reporters discovered sealed and expunged case information was visible. When the county expanded Odyssey to criminal records last year, similar issues resurfaced, and the site was shut down within days. District Clerk Gloria Martinez has acknowledged ongoing growing pains with the system and graded the rollout a D.
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The wrongful release of Salas is now raising new questions about whether those same system failures contributed to a convicted murderer walking free. Bexar County Sheriff’s Office tells us that as of Monday night, Odyssey has given the jail’s intake some access to the juvenile system.