Utah Bureau of Prison Identification
A person accused of strangling two girls on the identical date however two years aside was extradited from Mexico and eventually faces homicide expenses in reference to the over decade-old slayings.
Juan Antonio Arreola-Murillo, 42, faces three counts of aggravated homicide, two counts of aggravated housebreaking, and one depend of aggravated theft for first murdering a younger mother after which later killing a girl in her fifties, the Salt Lake County District Lawyer’s Workplace stated.
“It is a 15-year-old case the place we had a number of victims, so the due diligence to maintain at it will be significant,” the county’s district legal professional Sim Gill informed KSL-TV.
On February 9, 2006, Arreola-Murillo strangled 29-year-old Sonia Mejia, a younger mother who was six months pregnant together with her second youngster, in accordance with a possible trigger assertion obtained by The Each day Beast. A neighbor informed police that he noticed a person chatting with Mejia simply exterior of her condo at roughly 11:30 a.m. that day earlier than he grabbed her by the throat and struck her within the head.
“Ms. Mejia fell to the ground inside the condo. The male entered the condo and kicked the door shut,” the paperwork state. Mejia was sexually assaulted and her automobile was stolen. The girl’s husband later found her physique of their bed room, in accordance with courtroom paperwork.
Arreola-Murillo struck once more on the identical date two years later, in accordance with authorities. On February 9, 2008, he allegedly sexually assaulted and strangled 57-year-old Damiana Castillo whose physique was found a day later simply inside her entrance door with ligature marks and proof of a battle with an overturned desk, authorities stated. She lived only a mile away from Arreola-Murillo’s first sufferer.
Police suspect that Arreola-Murillo additionally stole from his victims.
His spoils probably included three items of bijou from Mejia, together with a heart-shaped ruby ring, a diamond ring, and a pendant that went lacking after Mejia’s homicide, her husband informed officers. Arreola-Murillo additionally appeared to have rifled by way of Castillo’s purse, dumping her pockets on the sofa and messing together with her jewellery containers.
Days earlier than the one-year anniversary of Castillo’s homicide in 2009, then-West Valley Metropolis police Sgt. Mike Powell informed the Salt Lake Tribune the suspect within the murders was “not thought of a serial killer,” though he acknowledged that authorities had been “involved there are some similarities.”
For years, the suspect within the pair of circumstances was often known as the ‘February ninth killer’ and native police would station further officers within the space to thrust back a 3rd strangling within the neighborhood.
In 2010, prosecutors charged “John Doe” with two counts of aggravated homicide, two counts of aggravated theft, aggravated housebreaking, and aggravated sexual assault in third District Court docket, in accordance with Deseret Information.
In line with courtroom paperwork, Arreola-Murillo’s identification eluded investigators till 2016 when the Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI revealed a match between his fingerprints and people discovered at Mejia’s house. An arrest warrant request was filed in 2017 and the suspect’s charging paperwork had been amended on April 5, 2017.
However it wasn’t till November 2018 that county district legal professional Sim Gill informed KTVX, “We all know the place this particular person is, and we're working to convey that particular person into our jurisdiction.”
At that time, Arreola-Murillo had been deported to Mexico roughly 10 years earlier than.
In line with courtroom paperwork, investigators had recovered fingerprints on objects on the houses of each girls, together with on a Cheetos bag and a Coke bottle in Mejia’s condo, and on Castillo’s pockets in her house. The fingerprints linked the suspect to each crimes, however DNA from the Coke bottle and on gadgets used to strangle the victims didn’t seem to match any DNA samples in legislation enforcement databases.
“Connecting the dots to attach that profile and that particular person with an identifiable particular person was the following step that occurred,” Gill informed the Salt Lake Tribuneon Monday, including that a “paper path” left by the suspect ultimately enabled them to trace him down.
Roxeanne Vainuku, a spokesperson for the West Valley police who investigated the loss of life of Castillo, informed KSL-TV that fixing the case was “simply one other testomony to the ‘never-give-up’ perspective of our investigators,” including that for years detectives have “saved attempting, saved testing, and saved looking for solutions on this case.”
“It paid off and we're grateful. We hope that seeing the particular person chargeable for this crime held accountable will convey a minimum of some small measure of peace to Ms. Castillo’s household," she stated.