The doomed young couple got married on Oct. 22, 2022. The husband Jared Dicus, met his future wife Anggy Diaz, 21, at her restaurant job where they both worked. They moved to Waller County, Texas into a smaller home on his parents’ property on the 200 block of Oak Hollow Blvd. The honeymoon period didn’t last long, because by January Dicus had brutally murdered his young wife, dismembering her head from her body in the process. Here’s how this unspeakable true crime tragedy went down.
From neighborly accounts, the couple seemed rocky but relatively normal. Waller County Judge Trey Duhon had married the lovebirds and called them a “very nice young couple.” Diaz’s manager Veronica Jimenez called Diaz a “very bright girl” who was “full of energy” and “never negative.” She was ambitious and “had so many goals in life.”
Her uncle Irvin Orellana called her “the light to our family,” someone who was always smiling and cheerful. “The absence of her from our lives will be felt forever,” he wrote on a GoFundMe page set up for funeral expenses. Before her death, Diaz worked at the Hispanic restaurant and she had recently become a fitness coach.
However, Jimenez also noticed that despite Diaz’s obvious love for her husband “there were days when she was different” and Jimenez said she didn’t know if it was due to fatigue or because Diaz was having issues at home with Dicus.
What Diaz knew about her husband’s past is unknown, but old police records tell the story of a man with a pretty obvious anger problem.
Ominous signs
About a month into the marriage, Dicus was arrested for driving under the influence, per KHOU. Court documents show that cops were called to a Whataburger around 2 a.m. after employees called and said a man was getting aggressive and kept trying to barge into the dining room. “He was so belligerent that they locked him out,” an officer wrote at the time.
When officers inspected the vehicle, they found a three-quarters full bottle of Bud Light. Dicus told police he was also on pills but couldn’t name them. He was arrested on charges of a DUI and when he was taken in he “was extremely agitated and threatened the arresting officer, members of the jail staff, and law enforcement” per the report.
He continued to be aggressive and his mood would fluctuate wildly, the document said, and he even punched at the windows. Officers were forced to put him in a restraint chair to take blood from him for a DUI test.
Before the murder, police had been called out to the residence a few times for some domestic squabbles, but it was never to the level of violence that happened on the last night Diaz was alive. Following the tragedy, an unnamed friend told the NY Post that Dicus was a “jealous person.”
“He posted a video saying, ‘She is mine,’ to social media, and it was weird because no one was questioning that….it was out of nowhere,” the friend said. One of Diaz’s friends the last time they saw her alive was at a Christmas party less than a month before the murder, a party that she left abruptly.
“Everyone was having a good time and he left looking really upset,” the friend said, reiterating that the couple had dealt with domestic violence issues in the past. “She never said there were any problems; maybe she was just embarrassed to admit her relationship wasn’t perfect,” the friend said.
Diaz even confided in the friend that she wanted children eventually, but the friend said she advised Diaz to “get to know him more and enjoy just being a couple.”
The night of the murder
On that fateful night Dicus talked to his father about something and, according to Waller County Sheriff Troy Guidry, “something felt off.” The parents took a look inside the couple’s house and made a shocking discovery: it was covered in blood.
Deputies were called out just before 4:30 p.m. the day following the murder. Using a kitchen knife, Dicus had stabbed his wife of barely three months multiple times, leaving trails of blood, as well as “parts and pieces” of the victim all over the residence. The deceased Diaz was found “near the bed with multiple stab wounds in her back.” Her head was separated from her body and “appeared … to be in the shower.”
What’s even more unsettling is that there’s surveillance video of Dicus from the night before pulling up to the restaurant where Diaz works, grabbing a beer without paying, and then drinking it before he got back into his car. Had he just murdered his wife? Was he about to? Regardless, Guidry called it extremely unfortunate and grisly.
“That’s the world we live in today. It’s a gruesome scene,” Guidry said. “Both sides of these families will be altered by it.” Diaz was arrested and charged with murder on the scene. He reportedly confessed at the police station.
At his bond hearing in front of a judge the next day, prosecutors argued that his bond should be raised from $500,000 to $1 million to “protect the community as a whole from his violent tendencies, but also his own family members,” per ABC13.
The judge who married the couple took to Facebook to say that he was “greatly saddened and shocked by the news of this tragic event and my prayers are with all of their families” and that he was removing a photo of the couple due to “the insensitive nature of some comments that were being made on that post.”
During his bond hearing, Dicus sobbed so hard Judge Gary Chaney was forced to stop the proceeding and handed the defendant a tissue. During his pre-trial court phase, the judge had Dicus evaluated mentally to see if he were competent enough to stand trial, and whether he knew the consequences of his actions. Once a therapist deemed him competent, Dicus made a plea deal with the state.
On Aug. 1, 2024, Dicus was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of his wife. As part of the deal, he cannot appeal the verdict or his sentence or potentially use an insanity defense in the future. He will not be eligible for parole until 2043 the soonest. He will serve out his term in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice – Institutional Division.
Published: Aug 5, 2024 03:25 am