A Chicago woman accused of luring a pregnant teen to her home, then slicing her open with a butcher’s knife in a bid to steal her baby has been ordered to spend 50 years in prison.
Clarisa Figueroa was seated in a wheelchair and sporting a bright orange jumpsuit when she was sentenced in a Cook County courtroom on Tuesday.
Both she and her daughter, Desiree, initially pleaded not guilty to charges in connection with the slaying of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, but Figueroa reversed course after listening to devastating testimony from the victim’s family.
Ochoa-Lopez was last seen alive leaving Latino Youth High School in Chicago, where she’d been taking classes, on April 23, 2019. From there, she traveled to the Figueroas’ family home on the Southwest Side to pick up free baby clothes, an arrangement she made through a Facebook group called “Help a Sista Out.”
When Ochoa-Lopez arrived at the residence, prosecutors said Desiree distracted the expecting mother by showing her a photo album of her late brother as Figueroa approached her from behind with a cord, and then strangled her.
Once she stopped moving, Figueroa cut the baby from Ochoa-Lopez’s body, which she wrapped in a blanket and plastic bag, according to prosecutors. Figueroa and her daughter then dragged the remains outside and dumped them in the trash.
Ochoa-Lopez’s family reported her missing later that same night, when she failed to pick up her 3-year-old from daycare.
Around the same time, the Chicago Fire Department received a call from Figueroa, who told them she’d just given birth and that her baby boy was not breathing. She continued to pass the infant off as her own when they arrived at the Christ Medical Center, where he died two months later.
Yovanny Lopez, the victim’s husband and father of the child, detailed in court how the tragedy impacted 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. “God’s justice will be served upon you the day you die.”
Amid the investigation, detectives learned that Ochoa-Lopez had planned to travel to the Figueroa’s home prior to her disappearance. A DNA test performed on the baby confirmed he belonged to the missing mother, whose body was still stuffed in the trash when officers found it in May the same year.
Prosecutors argued Figueroa and her daughter had long planned out the sinister slaying, starting around the time her adult son died. She began convincing loved ones she was pregnant shortly thereafter, including her boyfriend at the time, Piotr Bobak.
Bobak pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice for helping cover up the murders and was sentenced to four years in prison. He has since been released.
Figueroa’s daughter, Desiree, meanwhile pleaded guilty to murder in January and agreed to testify against her mother in exchange for a 30-year sentence.
With News Wire Services
