Mother, daughter plotted killing of pregnant woman to steal her baby for nearly a month, prosecutors say

A mother and daughter plotted for weeks to kill a pregnant woman and cut the baby from her womb before actually carrying out the horrific crime in the living room of their Scottsdale home, Cook County prosecutors said Friday.

On April 23, the two allegedly lured 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez to their brick ranch-style home in the 4100 block of West 77th Place with the promise of free baby clothes. Clarisa Figueroa, 46, then strangled the young mother with a coaxial cable, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said.

After the teen was killed, Figueroa’s daughter, Desiree Figueroa, then brought her mother a butcher’s knife from the kitchen, which was used to cut Ochoa-Lopez’s baby from her womb, Murphy said.

Desiree Figueroa — who is 24 and four months pregnant — allegedly assisted in planning and carrying out the killing.

Family Photo

While Clarisa Figueroa was choking Ochoa-Lopez with the cable, she yelled at her daughter “you’re not doing your f——— job,” because Ochoa-Lopez was able to get her fingers between the cable and her throat, Murphy said.

Desiree Figueroa then peeled Ochoa-Lopez’s fingers off the cable “one-by-one,” and after four or five minutes, the 19-year-old stopped struggling, and wet herself, Murphy said. The older Figueroa told her daughter Ochoa-Lopez “must be dead because [Figueroa] researched it, and it takes four to five minutes to strangle someone with a cord, and that person will urinate on themselves when they die,” Murphy said.

It wasn’t the first time that Ochoa-Lopez had been at the Figueroa home, officials said.

Sometime before April 1, Clarisa Figueroa had asked her daughter to help her murder a pregnant woman in order to steal a baby, according to Murphy. Desiree Figueroa had initially said no and told her boyfriend about what her mother had said.

Clarisa Figueroa, Desiree Figueroa and her boyfriend were all at the home on April 1 when Ochoa-Lopez was invited over and brought down to the basement, Murphy said.

Desiree Figueroa’s boyfriend noticed the mother and daughter “kept acting strange” and went off together on several occasions. The man also noted that the younger Figueroa was “shaking at times” and he warned her that if she and her mother were planning to kill Ochoa-Lopez that he would call the police, Murphy said.

Ochoa-Lopez eventually left and Clarisa Figueroa told her daughter’s boyfriend that it was just an April Fool’s joke, Murphy said.

When Ochoa-Lopez returned to the home again on April 23, she was told to have a seat on the couch. The mother and daughter duo then turned up the music and went into the kitchen to discuss their plan to kill Ochoa-Lopez, Murphy said.

As Ochoa-Lopez sat on a couch and paged through an album of photos of Clarisa Figueroa’s deceased son, who had died from natural causes recently, the middle-aged woman came up behind and wrapped the cable around her neck, Murphy said.

Clarisa Figueroa then used the butcher’s knife to cut the baby out of Ochoa-Lopez and put the baby in a bucket before wrapping him in a blanket, Murphy said. The mother and daughter allegedly stuffed Ochoa-Lopez’s body into a large, plastic bag and tied it shut, before hiding the body in a trash container against their garage.

Clarisa Figueroa then called 911 and said she had just delivered her own baby and that he wasn’t breathing, Murphy said. She and the baby were brought to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where the baby remains in “grave condition” with “zero brain activity.” Staff at the hospital helped clean blood from Clarisa Figueroa’s arms, hands and face and noted she showed no signs she had just given birth.

Chicago police would later discover messages exchanged between Clarisa Figueroa and Ochoa-Lopez on Facebook, after the two were connected through a page for young mothers and Clarisa Figueroa offered to give her baby clothing and other supplies, the Sun-Times reported.

Chicago police

When Chicago police officers arrived at the home on Tuesday with a search warrant, they found Clarisa Figueroa’s boyfriend, 40-year-old Piotr Bobak, washing a rug with bleach and a hose, Murphy said. He was charged with concealing a homicide.

Prosecutors said investigators found Ochoa-Lopez’s body in the trash can at that time, the cable used to kill her still wrapped around her neck.

Investigators also found the presence of blood in the home’s living room and said Desiree Figueroa had given a full confession during a video-taped interview with detectives, according to prosecutors.

Neither the mother nor the daughter showed emotion as prosecutors outlined the case against them Friday. Both were reprimanded early in the hearing by a sheriff’s deputy who told them to “stop making faces.”

Judge Susana Ortiz ordered all three held without bail during a hearing Friday at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, saying “that there was significant premeditation and planning” to commit the murder.

Attorneys for all three said they have medical conditions and asked that they receive treatment at the jail’s hospital.

Illinois Dept. of Corrections

Dozens of Ochoa-Lopez’s family members, friends and their supporters attended the hearing, filling three rows of the courtroom gallery. Some family members traveled from Raleigh, North Carolina, to attend the hearing, according to Rigoberto Uriostegui, cousin of the victim’s father.

“We came to be close to our family,” he said in Spanish.

In the gallery, family members were visibly shaken and disturbed when the charges against the defendants were read. They let out audible sighs of relief when Ortiz denied bond.

All three defendants are scheduled to return to court June 3.