A Chicago woman who killed a pregnant teenager and made the baby look like her own pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and was sentenced to 50 years in prison, prosecutors announced.
In April 2019, Clarissa Figueroa, 51, pretended to be pregnant and married Maren Ochoa Lopez, who was eight months pregnant, according to legal documents obtained by The Associated Press, known as a bail bond presenter. (19 years old) was strangled to death.
According to court records, Figueroa falsely claimed that Ochoa-Lopez's baby was his own and then cut it out of her body. The boy later died.
According to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, Ms. Figueroa will now serve her sentence in an Illinois state prison, ending a harrowing five-year case that shocked the community and left her husband widowed and sonless. It will be.
“The memory of my little son taking his last breath in my arms is completely painful,” the baby's father, Yovany Lopez, said in court Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Figueroa and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, said investigators found Ochoa-Lopez's car near Figueroa's home and later found Ochoa-Lopez's body stuffed in trash bags in Figueroa's garage. He was then arrested in May 2019. to the provider.
Ochoa-Lopez's family had reported her missing.
Mr. Figueroa knew Mr. Ochoa-Lopez. The two met in March 2019 on Figueroa's Facebook group page for pregnant women, when she visited her home in response to a post by Figueroa offering free baby clothes to expectant mothers. .
Ms. Figueroa appears to have joined the Facebook page to continue her fake pregnancy ruse.
A month earlier, she posted a photo of her nursery on the group and said she planned to name her baby Xander, based on a deception that began in December 2018 when she first claimed she was pregnant. Stated.
The news came as a shock to her daughter, as Figueroa had previously had her fallopian tubes tied.
The announcement came after Figueroa's 20-year-old son died earlier that year.
To kill Ochoa-Lopez and steal her baby, Figueroa enlisted the help of her daughter Desiree, then 24 years old.
They initially planned to kill her in her home on April 1, 2019, but the plan failed when Desiree's boyfriend heard of the plan and threatened to call the police. Desiree later told her boyfriend that the plan was an April Fool's joke.
But Ochoa-Lopez will return to Figueroa's home on April 23.
This time, Figueroa was able to strangle Ochoa-Lopez with a cable in the living room while her daughter held her down. After the murder, the two men cut open Ms. Figueroa's abdomen and removed her unborn baby, a male child, before calling 911 and claiming that Ms. Figueroa had just given birth to a baby that was not breathing.
Paramedics transported Figueroa and the baby to the hospital.
Prosecutors said medical staff suspected something was wrong with Figueroa because she showed no signs of giving birth.
Prosecutors say Figueroa continued the ruse in the weeks that followed, setting up a GoFundMe fundraiser in which she continued to claim the baby as hers. Her boyfriend Piotr Bobak shared the campaign on her Facebook page, along with a photo of the baby in critical condition. The baby died several months later, the Associated Press reported.
The search for the missing teen soon led investigators to Figueroa's home. Prosecutors said they executed a search warrant at the home on May 14, where they discovered Ochoa-Lopez's decomposed body.
DNA testing revealed that Ms. Figueroa was not the baby's mother, and confirmed that the parents were Ms. Ochoa-Lopez and Mr. López.
Figueroa, her daughter, and Figueroa's boyfriend were taken into custody. Bobak, who authorities say helped clean up the murder scene, pleaded guilty last year to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to four years in prison, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Figueroa's daughter, Desiree, pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 30 years in prison in January, according to the Chicago Tribune.