A Chicago woman accused of luring a pregnant teenager to her home and cutting her baby from her womb with a butcher knife nearly five years ago pleaded guilty to murder Tuesday and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. prison.
Clarisa Figueroa, 51, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit, did not make a statement but answered “Yes” when Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas asked if she understood that she would have to serve her entire sentence and would not be received earlier. parole, media reported.
Prosecutors said Figueroa strangled Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, with a wire on April 23, 2019, after luring the teen to her home with promises of free clothes for her unborn child. Ochoa-Lopez was nine months pregnant. Figueroa then called 911, saying she had given birth and the child was not breathing.
The child died about two months later.
Yovanny Lopez, the victim’s husband and father of the child, Yovanny Jadiel Lopez, described how the tragedy affected him and the couple’s eldest child, Joshua, who he said “lost his mother to always “.
“The memory of my little son’s last breath in my arms is utter agony,” he said in a statement read in Spanish and English in the courtroom. “…God’s justice will be done to you on the day you die.”
Authorities say that shortly after Clarisa Figueroa’s adult son died of natural causes, she told her family she was pregnant. She is said to have plotted for months to acquire a newborn and posted an ultrasound and photos of a room decorated for a baby on her Facebook page. In March 2019, she and Ochoa-Lopez connected on a Facebook page for pregnant women
Detectives investigating Ochoa-Lopez’s disappearance learned that she had gone to the defendant’s home. Two weeks after she disappeared, police found her car parked nearby and Desiree Figueroa, Clarisa’s daughter, told her that her mother had recently given birth.
DNA testing later determined that the child was not Clarisa Figueroa’s.
Ochoa-Lopez’s body was found in a trash can outside the Figueroa home.
Clarisa Figueroa tricked her boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, into believing he was the father, police and prosecutors said.
Bobak cleaned up the crime scene and was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to obstruction of justice.
Desiree Figueroa, 29, pleaded guilty to murder in January for helping her mother and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. She had agreed to testify against her mother.
NBC Chicago
