SAN ANTONIO – New details released Thursday by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office suggest a John Jay High School coach placed on leave Wednesday had significant involvement in his son's death.
Daniel Chapa wrote a memoir in 2011 describing in vivid detail how he murdered his terminally-ill son Anthony Chapa back in 2003 by drowning him in a bathtub. He said that memoir is a work of fiction.
The memoir was given to the medical examiner's office by the ex-wife and mother of the little boy, prompting the office to re-investigate the boy's death.
They exhumed his body in late 2011 and re-classified the boy's death as a homicide, citing only the written confession of Daniel Chapa as their reason.
The 53-page memoir intimately describes how Chapa prepared his son for death, stating he kissed the boy's head and listened to his labored breathing.
He then brought the boy to the tub, and after telling the boy he loved him and that he was sorry, lowered his crippled body beneath the surface of the water, according to the book.
The memoir states the boy struggled and tried to breathe, gulping in lungs-full of bathwater. Chapa wrote that he held the boy underwater until he drowned.
San Antonio police and the district attorney's office have an ongoing investigation into the boy's death. Late Thursday, the San Antonio Express-News reported the D.A.'s office considered the case closed.
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