A mother who lost her son in a few years ago and her daughter were charged in the sadistic slaying of a pregnant 19-year-old whose baby boy was cut out of her womb after she was strangled to death.
via NYDN:
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree, 24, were both charged with first-degree murder in the death of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, Chicago police said at a news conference Thursday.
A third person, Piotr Bobak, 40, was charged with concealment of a homicide. Bobak is the elder Figueroa’s boyfriend.
Cops said a coaxial cable was used to strangle Ochoa-Lopez. The device was discovered in the same garbage can where her body was found in the Figueroa’s backyard on May 14.
“Words really cannot express how disgusting and thoroughly disturbing these allegations are,” Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
When asked for a motive in the murder, Johnson replied, “Let’s look at what the crime was.”
“Only they can know that. We can only assume [they wanted to] raise the child as their own,” he added. Johnson noted that the 46-year-old Figueroa’s 20-year-old son died of natural causes in 2017.
Police said Ochoa-Lopez, who was nine months pregnant, had bought baby clothes from the elder Figueroa in the past.
The victim had gone over to Figueroa’s house the day she was murdered, on April 23, to purchase more clothes and other baby items.
A spokesperson for the victim’s family, Cecilia Garcia, said Figueroa made it seem as if she was “giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretense that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes.”
Four hours after Ochoa-Lopez was seen driving to the suspect’s home, Figueroa was spotted “standing out on the street with a baby” and calling 911. Authorities confirmed they did receive a call for help about a baby from the same address where Ochoa-Lopez’s body was later found.
They said at the time the call was made, authorities had no indication Ochoa-Lopez was in that area.
Figueroa’s daughter, Desiree, allegedly confessed to police that she assisted her mom in strangling Ochoa-Lopez, according to The Chicago Tribune. Police did not disclose details on how the baby was removed from Ochoa-Lopez’s womb.
The baby boy is currently still in “grave condition” and not expected to survive, Johnson said.
“I can’t even imagine, pretend to imagine, what that family is going through right now,” he said. “They should be celebrating the birth of a young baby. Instead, they’re mourning the loss of a mother and possibly that young child.”
Ochoa-Lopez’s father, Arnulfo Ochoa, questioned both the hospital’s and the police’s effort in the case, saying he believed they did not give it enough attention early on because of the family’s immigrant background, the Tribune reported.
“We came to this country to give a good life for my daughter,” he said Thursday. “We just want justice for what they did for my daughter.”
This sounds like something STRAIGHT from a horror film.
