On April 23rd, 2025 after spending more than 20 years on death row, Moises Sandival Mendoza was executed by lethal injection in Texas. His crimes were as brutal as they were senseless, leaving a trail of devastation. In this video, we’ll uncover what happened that day, his last meal and his last [Music] words.
For most people, the story begins on March 18th, 2004, when a quiet morning in Farmersville, Texas, turned into a nightmare. A young mother wasn’t answering her door. Her home looked ransacked, like someone had been desperate to find something or someone, and in the bedroom, her 5-month-old baby was found crying, alone on a bed that had been turned upside down.
The woman’s name was Relle Tollison. She was just 20 years old and she was gone. But to understand what really happened, we need to go back back to the night before, March 17. That day, Relle had visited her mother’s house, then returned home with her baby around 1000 p.m. It was a normal evening. But sometime between that moment and sunrise, everything changed.
The next morning, Relle’s mom came by to check in like she always did. But this time, the back door was wide open, and the house was in chaos. The bed had been shoved out of place. The headboard knocked loose like someone had fallen into it, and a nightstand was pushed away from the wall. But the weird thing was that Relle’s purse was still sitting there, and her car was untouched.
On the kitchen floor, her divorce papers were lying face down, smudged with a large, muddy bootprint. And baby Avery, who was just 5 months old, was lying on the mattress alone. But Relle was nowhere in sight. When police arrived, they knew right away something bad had happened. This wasn’t someone who packed up and left. And within hours, a full search was underway.
Dozens of neighbors on foot, on ATVs, even on horseback, searched the fields and roads around Farmersville. They kept looking for 5 days straight, but they found nothing. Then about 10 miles outside of town, a man hiking through the woods saw something in the dirt. It looked like the sight of a fire. He got closer and saw the burned remains of a young woman.
Later, investigators confirmed the truth. It was Rashelle. Her body had been dumped in the middle of nowhere, set on fire, and buried under a pile of logs. It quickly became clear what the killer had tried to do. Erase everything. There were no fingerprints, no DNA, nothing left behind. At first, detectives focused on Andrew, her aranged husband.
The divorce had been messy, and it was Relle who had filed it. But Andrew told them he’d been at a party the night she disappeared. He said that he drank too much, got a ride home, and never left his house after that. His alibi seemed solid. People at the party remembered he’d been there and remembered how drunk he was.
But there was one detail that wouldn’t go away. There had been a bonfire at that party. And the wood used to burn Relle’s body. It looked a lot like the mosquite wood from that same fire. All the logs were tested, eight from the crime scene and three from the bonfire Relle had been to on the night of her death.
Every single one had the same strange chemical signature, the same mix of metals, the same weird amount of titanium. This meant the logs came from the same area, maybe even from the same tree. It was a breakthrough. For the first time in forensic science, burned wood had become a piece of hard evidence. At first, that pointed suspicion straight at Andrew again.
He was at the party. He had access to the fire. But when detectives started digging, witnesses stepped forward. They told the police something new. Andrew didn’t bring the firewood. Another man did. a 21-year-old named Moises Mendoza. Witnesses told the police that Rachel and Moyes knew each other from high school.
After her separation from Andrew, Moyes had shown interest in Relle, and they had spoken briefly at the bonfire, but Relle had told friends she wasn’t interested in him. When officers first questioned him, he didn’t deny knowing Relle. In fact, he admitted picking her up that night, claiming she had left with him willingly.
But that would mean she chose to abandon her infant daughter alone in a ransacked house, something no one believed. But then the story got darker. The next time he was questioned, Moyes said that while they were in his truck, he choked her until she passed out. He then took her to a field behind his house where heully assaulted her, choked her again, and dragged her deeper into the field.
That’s where he strangled her for a third time. This time until she stopped moving. And to make sure she really was dead, he stabbed her in the throat. At first, he left her body where it was, thinking no one would find it. But as police closed in, panic set in. And suddenly, he knew he had to hide the evidence before it was too late.
So he loaded her into his car and drove deep into rural Colin County, pulling off onto a remote dirt pit far from any road or home. There, in the quiet of nowhere, he set her on fire. When the flames died down, he buried what was left beneath a brush pile, thinking no one would ever find her.
But 6 days later, they did. Investigators had started looking into Moyes’s past, and what they uncovered set off alarm bells. He had a history. Just months earlier, he’d tried to abduct multiple women in Dallas. And at the time Michelle vanished, he was already out on bail. When they searched his house, things got worse.
They found a pair of boots in his room, caked with soot and soaked in the stench of gasoline. Crime scene investigators compared the tread to the bootprint left on Relle’s divorce papers, and a forensic analyst examined the wear patterns and scuffs along the heel. It was a perfect match. Then they found the jeans.
They were buried beneath ash and grime, but hidden in the fabric were tiny flexcks of dried blood. They sent it off for testing, and when the results came back, there was no doubt it was Michelle’s blood. The case was building fast. Physical evidence, DNA, the matching bootprint. But when they confronted Moyes, he didn’t react.
No denial, no apology, no emotion at all. He sat there cold and quiet like none of it had anything to do with him. Moyes was arrested and charged with capital murder. And when it came time for trial, it wasn’t about whether he did it since he had already confessed, but it was about whether he’d be sentenced to death.
And it didn’t take long before the jury decided on his fate. On July 1st, 2005, Texas law required the jury to answer two key questions. Was Moyes a future danger to society? and were there any reasons he should be spared? They said yes to the first and no to the second. Moyes began his life on death row, launching a legal battle that would stretch for years.
His lawyers argued that his defense team failed him, that they didn’t dig deep enough into his past, that they missed signs of mental illness, trauma, or anything that might have changed the jury’s mind. But all his appeals were denied. First in Texas, then at the federal level, the sentence stood. On April 23rd, 2025, after spending over two decades on death row, Moyes was finally executed.
He wasn’t allowed to choose a last meal. Texas removed that option in 2011 after two inmates ordered a massive feast and refused to eat it. Now they receive the same food as everyone else. After he was strapped to the gurnie, his spiritual adviser prayed over him for about two minutes. Then Moyes turned to the victim’s family.
One by one, he addressed them by name. Relle’s parents, her two brothers, her cousin, and her uncle, all watching through a window from the adjoining room. “I am sorry for having robbed you of Relle’s life,” he said. He also said he had robbed Relle’s daughter of her mother, adding, “I’m sorry for that.
I know nothing I could ever say or do would ever make up for it. I want you to know that I am sincere. I apologize. Her daughter wasn’t present, but his words were directed to her anyway. Then turning toward another window, he spoke in Spanish to his wife, sister, and two friends who sat watching. I love you. I am with you. I am well and at peace.
He said, “You know that I’m well, and everything is love.” At 6:21 p.m., the drugs began to flow. Moyes let out two loud gasps, then began to snore. After about 10 snores, his body fell still. He was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. At 41 years old, Moises Sandival Mendoza was dead.
