(MCT) — CHICAGO — For 13 years, the family of Alma Chavez clung to dwindling hopes that law enforcement would catch up to the man accused of killing the soft-spoken nursing student.

Chavez’s ex-boyfriend, Raul Andrade Tolentino, was out on bond facing murder charges for the brutal stabbing in 2000 when he slipped across the U.S. border to Mexico. Stretching from Chicago’s Pilsen community to California and then Mexico, the fugitive manhunt was marked by blown opportunities and inexplicable delays—before it seemed to stall completely.