Mother and daughter charged with strangling teen mom, cutting baby from her womb
CHICAGO — A mother and her daughter have been charged in the killing of a 19year-old pregnant woman who was strangled before her baby boy was cut from her womb.
At a news conference Thursday, Chicago police officials said detectives found coaxial cable used to strangle Marlen Ochoa-Lopez in the same garbage can in which her body was found in the family’s backyard.
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree, 24, were both charged with first-degree murder.
The older Figueroa’s boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, 40, was charged with concealment of a homicide.
Police said the younger Figueroa confessed to assisting her mother in strangling Ochoa-Lopez.
Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the elder Figueroa had lost a son in his 20s in 2017 when he died of natural causes.
Ochoa-Lopez went missing on April 23 after leaving Latino Youth High School in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. Nine months pregnant, she drove to a home on the Southwest Side where the elder Figueroa, whom she met on Facebook, was offering a double stroller and baby clothes. Once inside the home in the 4100 block of West 77th Place, police said Ochoa-Lopez was killed and the baby removed.
The newborn had problems breathing and Figueroa, who police say lured Ochoa-Lopez into the home, made a frantic 911 call saying the baby was “pale and blue,” officials said. The baby was rushed to a hospital, where the teen’s family said the boy was brain-dead but still hooked up to life support.
Ochoa-Lopez’s body was dumped in a garbage can behind the home, where it was discovered early Wednesday, hours after the suspects were taken into custody, police said.
Cook County court records show Bobak has had several run-ins with law enforcement. He has no felony convictions but has two for misdemeanors: One of them is on a sex act-related public indecency charge in which he was sentenced in 2009 to six months of court supervision, the records show. He was also convicted of battery in 2012 and sentenced to two years of court supervision and community service in the Cook County Sheriff’s Department’s Sheriff ’s Work Alternative Program.
Figueroa was once charged with two misdemeanors, one for battery in 1998 and another for marijuana possession in 2008, records show. Both cases were dropped.
Ochoa-Lopez’s 20-year-old husband vowed justice as he stood outside the Cook County medical examiner’s office, where his wife’s body was taken. “Why did these people, why did these bad people do this? She did nothing to them,” said Yovani Lopez, stretching his arm in back of him, toward the morgue Wednesday night. “She was a good person.
“We’re going to have justice with those responsible,” he added. “We’re going to go hard after them. We won’t let it go.”
In the days before she disappeared, Ochoa-Lopez visited an online Facebook group for mothers, looking for a stroller and baby clothes for her son, due to be born in less than a month. She came into contact with a woman, allegedly Figueroa, who told her “my girl has all brand new boy clothes her son never wore,” according to a screenshot provided by Ochoa-Lopez’s family.
“Yes girl thats fine thank you so much,” Ochoa-Lopez responded.
“No problem girl,” the woman replied. “I know how it is she was lucky to have two baby showers so she just loves to spread the wealth I’m fine with the help inbox me for more info ok.”