CHICAGO (AP) – A woman in the United States 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, did not provide a statement but answered ‘Yes’ when Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas asked her if she understood she would need to serve the entire sentence and would not receive early release on parole, news outlets reported.
Prosecutors have said Figueroa strangled 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez with a cable on April 23, 2019, after luring the teenager to her home with the promise of free clothing for her unborn child. Ochoa-Lopez was nine months pregnant.
Figueroa then called 911, saying she given birth and the child was not breathing. The child died about two months later.
The victim’s husband Yovanny Lopez and the father of the child Yovanny Jadiel Lopez described how the tragedy affected him and the couple’s older child, Joshua, who he said “has lost his mother forever”.
“The memory of my infant son’s last breath in my arms is complete agony,” he said in a statement read in Spanish and English in the courtroom. Authorities said not long after Clarisa Figueroa’s adult son died of natural causes, she told her family she was pregnant. They said she plotted for months to acquire a newborn.
