A Chicago woman known as the “womb raider” who murdered a pregnant teenager and cut the fetus from her womb has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for the disturbing crime.
Clarissa Figueroa, 51, was sentenced Tuesday in Cook County court after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2019 killing of 19-year-old Maren Ochoa Lopez. ABC7.
Before entering into a plea deal, Figueroa sat in court and listened to the heartbroken family of Ochoa-Lopez, who said, “Punishment will never be enough.”
“The loss of my daughter’s life is something I will never get over,” Ochoa López’s mother, Raquel Uriostegui, said in a statement, according to the newspaper.
Yovany López, Ochoa López’s husband and the father of her eldest son and the baby killed by the mother-daughter duo, said: “Your punishment will never be enough, because my son can’t hold his mother.” Body!”
“I lost my family, and that will always stay with me,” the grieving father said tearfully outside court after the verdict.
With the help of their daughter Desiree Figueroa, 29, the two violent women lured the young mother into the Figueroa home with the promise of free clothing for her unborn child.
Ochoa-Lopez visited the home on April 1, 2019, and returned unharmed.
But on April 23, this deadly duo carried out a sinister plot.
Desiree was showing her teenage mother, who was nine months pregnant, a photo album of her recently deceased adult brother.
According to prosecutors, as Clarissa was looking at the album, he approached her from behind and strangled her with a cable, killing her.
Clarisa then ordered her daughter to get a butcher knife and cut the baby out of Ochoa-Lopez’s womb.
After abducting the child, the couple, with the help of their daughter, wrapped the murdered mother’s body in plastic and threw it in a trash can outside the house.
Clarisa then called 911, pretending the baby was hers, and told the operator the newborn was not breathing.
Ochoa-Lopez’s son suffered severe brain damage and died two months later.
Police uncovered a disturbing lie after investigating a missing person report filed by Ochoa-Lopez’s husband the day after she was murdered.
Police began to suspect foul play was involved when the mother was found missing after visiting Mr. Figueroas’ home.
Two weeks later, police found Ochoa-Lopez parked near the mother and daughter’s home in Chicago.
Detectives found her decomposed body in a trash can.
Subsequent DNA tests confirmed that the baby Clarissa had tried to pass off as a newborn was Ochoa-Lopez’s baby.
Authorities say that shortly after Clarissa’s adult son died of natural causes, she began lying to her family that she was pregnant, even though she had her fallopian tubes tied several years earlier.
For months, she posted photos of ultrasounds and daycares on her Facebook page, planning to acquire a newborn by any means necessary.
Investigators discovered that Clarisa had been communicating with Ochoa-Lopez on a Facebook page for pregnant women since March 2019.
Desiree Figueroa was sentenced to a lighter 30-year sentence for first-degree murder after she agreed to testify against her mother as part of a plea deal.
Clarisa’s boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, helped clean up the crime scene and was sentenced last year to four years in prison after pleading guilty to concealing the murder.
