A 19 year old pregnant teenager who has been missing was found murdered and her baby cut out of her womb by a mother and her daughter after she went to their home.
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her 24-year old daughter Desiree face first-degree murder charges in the death of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, who had gone to the womenβs home in response to a Facebook offer of free baby clothes,Β Chicago PoliceSupt. Eddie Johnson said at a press conference.
Three people have been arrested and charged in connection with the death of a pregnant Chicago woman who was strangled before her baby was cut from her womb, authorities announced Thursday.
Marlen was nine months pregnant and already a mother to a 3-year-old. It all began after Marlen took to a Facebook page called Help A Sister Out to ask for help because she couldnβt afford things for her baby. She wrote at the time:
βHello ladies, Iβm due May 10 and I still need a ton of things for my son,βshe wrote on March 5. Due to the fact that Iβm in school and canβt work at the moment, I canβt afford to buy the rest of the things since Iβm short on cash right now.β
A woman reached out, offering baby things and she went to the womanβs home to collect the things. She never returned.
βWe believe that she was murdered and we believe that the baby [was] forcibly removed following that murder,β police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
The older womanβs boyfriend, 40-year-old Piotr Bobak is charged with concealing a death by homicide, police said.
Desiree Figueroa, who pretended Ochoa-Lopezβs baby was hers, admitted to helping her mother strangle the woman with a coaxial cable, Foxnews reports.
The baby boy is currently in critical condition at the hospital. Marlenβs body was recovered on Tuesday in a dustbin in the backyard where the woman who offered her free baby things lives. She had been strangled with a cable and her child had been cut out from her body. Investigators also found bleach and cleaning agents in the house, along with burned clothes and blood on the floors of the living room, bathroom and hallway.
This was more than three weeks after she was last seen leaving her high school on April 23. That same day, paramedics were called to the Figueroasβ home several miles away on the Southwest Side about a newborn with problems breathing.
A break in the investigation came after the woman who said she had given birth to the baby set up an online fundraising campaign, another spokeswoman for Ochoa-Lopezβs family said. The GoFundMe campaign said that the baby was about to die and money was needed for a funeral.
Police then conducted DNA tests and determined that Ochoa-Lopez and her husband, Yiovanni Lopez, were actually his parents, Walker said.
