Retired FBI Special Agent captivates audience

Ron Rawalt discusses the 1999 murder of 3-year-old Adam Gomez of Scottsbluff with students, faculty, community

The 1999 murder of 3-year-old Adam Gomez, of Scottsbluff, was Chadron State College alum and retired FBI Special Agent Ron Rawalt’s focus during his presentation last Thursday, hosted by the Justice Studies department.

Rawalt assisted on the case after the Scottsbluff Police Department asked for help with the investigation. After being informed of the details regarding the case, Rawalt immediately headed to Scottsbluff.

Gomez had been reported missing by his mother, Patricia Gomez. Patricia’s boyfriend at the time, Raymond Mata, was a main suspect in the disappearance of the child.

Rawalt detailed every hour of each day individually from when he received the phone call to assist in the investigation, until trials began for the suspect. Each piece of evidence and how the team came reached conclusions was also described, laying out the crime scene and investigation for the audience to understand.

Not only did evidence point the investigators to suspect Mata, but they had previous reason to believe he was capable of such a crime. Mata had been suspected of killing his cousin four years before Adam went missing, but lack of evidence to convict Mata allowed him to go free, according to Rawalt.

As Rawalt was giving details of the investigation, he reminded the audience he did not work on this case alone.

“I worked side-by-side with the cops,” Rawalt said.

Throughout the presentation, he said that in no way did he solve the case himself. The Scottsbluff Police Department solved the case, he just assisted.

After a few days of thorough investigation of Mata’s sister, Monica Mata’s house, law enforcement found the crime scene and discovered how Raymond committed the crime.

Once the investigation was finished, law enforcement had an “overwhelming amount of evidence” to convict Raymond on the kidnapping and murder of Adam, according to Rawalt.

A retrial for Raymond to be given the death penalty was in 2005, and before that the final trial on the case was in 2002 where Raymond was initially found guilty and sentenced.

“The case lasted about a year and three-quarters to two years,” Rawalt said.

However, the investigation only lasted a few days from the initial report of Adam missing until trials began.

The Justice Studies department brought Rawalt to campus because “it’s an infamous Nebraska case that Ron worked on,” Associate Professor and Department Chair of Justice Studies Jamie Wada said. “And he’s a CSC alum.”

“George Watson (former department head) always talked about Ron, and Chief Lordino is good friends with Ron,” Wada said.

Chadron Chief of Police Tim Lordino contacted Rawalt for the Justice Studies department, they corresponded over the phone, and Rawalt was “gracious enough” to come speak, according to Wada.

Rawalt has presented this case many times before and hadn’t been back to CSC for a while; the presentation gave him a chance to visit.