Chicago woman pleads guilty and gets 50 years for removing child from victim’s womb

CHICAGO (AP) — 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 on Tuesday and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. .

Clarisa Figueroa, 51, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit, did not testify but answered “Yes” when Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas asked her if she understood that she would need to serve the entire sentence and not would receive in advance. probation, media outlets reported.

Prosecutors said Figueroa was strangled Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, with a telegram on April 23, 2019, after luring the teen to her home with the promise 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, husband of the victim and father of the child, Yovanny Jadiel Lopez, described how the tragedy affected him and the couple’s eldest son, Joshua, who he said “lost his mother forever.”

“The memory of my son’s last breath in my arms is complete agony,” he said in a statement read in Spanish and English in court. “…the justice of God will be served upon you on the day you die.”

Authorities say that not long after Clarisa Figueroa’s adult son died of natural causes, she told her family she was pregnant. They say she planned for months to acquire a newborn, and that he posted an ultrasound and photos of a room decorated for a baby on his Facebook page. In March 2019, she and Ochoa-Lopez connected on a Facebook page for pregnant women

Detectives investigating Ochoa-Lopez’s disappearance discovered that she had gone to the defendant’s home. Two weeks after her disappearance, police found her car parked nearby and were informed by Desiree Figueroa, Clarisa’s daughter, that her mother had recently given birth.

DNA testing later determined that the child was not Clarisa Figueroa’s.

Ochoa-López 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 agreed to testify against her mother.