Augustin Canales, 48, was found dead in Houston on December 7, 2007. The circumstances were initially recorded as unclear by the Houston Police Department, and the case was not labeled a homicide at first. After an internal review, HPD quietly reclassified his death as a murder and reported it to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI as part of corrected crime statistics.

The delayed classification meant Canales’s family was unable to seek help from the Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund until the death was officially recognized as a crime. HPD’s Homicide Division and its Cold Case Squad, which reviews unsolved murders for fresh leads, list Canales’s case among those still needing more information to move forward.

Did anyone in the Houston area have contact with Augustin Canales or information about his activities around December 2007?