Lorena “Lori” Sandoval loved Halloween and horror movies and Anne Rice’s vampire book series — scary make-believe stuff, said her sister, Karen Ribera.

The horror story that played itself out in Sandoval’s bedroom late Friday wasn’t make-be­lieve. In an apartment done up in black with ghouls and a large cardboard Elvira figure in the living room, Sean Kresse allegedly strangled her to death.

The two had been dating, and there is some confusion about whether they had started seeing each other again. Her sister said she wasn’t sure of their relationship.

“The last we knew, he was just friends with her. We didn’t know he was living there,” Sandoval’s friend and co-worker, Amanda Cappe, wrote in an e-mail to the Record-Chronicle.

Sandoval, who was 21 and a senior at University of North Texas, had broken up with Kresse several weeks ago, Cappe wrote.

“They were definitely not together at the time that he murdered her,” Cappe wrote. “She is a very kind and giving person, and so she was letting him crash on her couch because he didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Cappe did not return a telephone message asking for comment.

Kresse, 24, called his mother about 11 p.m. Friday asking for help. The mother drove from Fort Worth to the apartment off Coronado Street, attempted CPR on Sandoval and called 911.

Kresse yelled at paramedics and scuffled with police on the scene and was taken to jail for intoxication other than alcohol, police said. Later, he was charged with murder. An investigation is continuing into the circumstances surrounding the death.

Kresse remains in Denton County Jail on a murder charge in lieu of $200,000 bail.

Denton County judicial records show that since 2003, Kresse had been charged with two counts of consumption of alcohol by a minor, for driving while his license was suspended, and for evading arrest.

Sandoval grew up in El Paso, the middle of three children. Her parents flew to Dallas when they learned of her death but left Sunday to return to El Paso to make funeral arrangements. Ribera, her sister, and Sandoval’s friends Nikki Diaz, Eva Martinez and Nani Rivera-Cox stayed behind to clear out the apartment.

They talked about her Monday as they pulled pans out of kitchen cabinets and unloaded her dresser drawers.

“When we were growing up, she wanted to open a business in New Orleans,” said Diaz, a childhood friend. “She was a big fan of Anne Rice and the Interview With a Vampire books [that] were set in New Orleans. We used to make our own Halloween costumes together.”

After she graduated from high school in El Paso, Sandoval came to Denton to study at UNT. She would have graduated in May, Martinez said.

“She was a business entrepreneur major,” Martinez said. On the other hand, Sandoval was “artsy,” her friends said. She liked to draw and take photographs.

Her sister remembered her as a private person — yet she made friends easily.

“She would try to help people,” Ribera said.

She worked part-time at a movie rental store. She loved her job because of the movies she loved to watch and because the job allowed her to take home some movie posters and decorate her apartment with them.

“But most of all she loved her nieces,” Ribera said, referring to her small daughters as she wiped tears from her eyes. “Most of all, she loved her family.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .