Lakeville man who killed his sex attacker in '83, fled is acquitted 33 years later

A Twin Cities father and husband hiding from a killing he committed nearly 33 years ago has won acquittal, contending he acted in self-defense against a man who sexually assaulted him in a Texas hotel room.

Robert A. Otteson, 55, was arrested at his Lakeville home in August 2014. Days before, a Texas grand jury had indicted him in the fatal stabbing of 42-year-old Francisco Narvaez in a Dallas-area hotel room in September 1983.

Otteson's attorney, Earl Dobson, argued that the stabbing was in self-defense after Narvaez sexually assaulted him. Texas law allows such a defense in cases of sexual assault. In a trial that lasted less than a week, jurors deliberated for three hours Thursday before finding Otteson not guilty.

Before his arrest, Otteson told no one about what happened on that night. At the time, he was in his early 20s and had been living out of a backpack and hitchhiking from place to place. He'd recently started making his way back to his home state of Minnesota and was heading north on Interstate 35, when Narvaez stopped to pick him up.

According to Otteson's trial testimony, they ate together and Narvaez, a San Antonio businessman, offered him a place to sleep and a ride to Oklahoma City in the morning.

But in the night, Otteson woke to find Narvaez performing oral sex on him. In the next room, a woman heard someone yelling "Rape!" though she testified that she assumed it wasn't real because it was a man's voice.

Otteson stabbed Narvaez to death with a pocket knife, took a shower and left in Narvaez's car. It was found the next day, abandoned in Oklahoma City.

"He testified that every day of his life, he expected a knock on the door, and that it would be the police and they'd be saying, 'Come back to Denton,' " Dobson said.

It wasn't until 2013, though, that an Oklahoma crime lab matched Otteson's fingerprints from the hotel room and the car to prints collected in Minnesota in 1988, when he was charged for not having car insurance. The prints, plus DNA collected from a piece of trash at Otteson's house, led to his arrest.

Otteson was extradited late in August 2014 and held in the Denton County jail, but was able to return home in October 2015 while Texas officials figured out complications with the DNA evidence. He returned to Texas once for a pretrial hearing and then again for this week's trial, Dobson said.

The self-defense law invoked in this case changed on Sept. 1, 1983, to allow for male victims in rape cases — just weeks before the murder occurred.

"Had he told this story 30 years ago, he probably would've avoided prosecution," said Jamie Beck, first assistant criminal district attorney for Denton County.

On Friday, Otteson and his family were on their way home to Minnesota. He could not be reached for comment.

"This is the first time in 30-something years that he hasn't had this hanging over his head," Dobson said. "[He's] trying to put his life back together."