Fugitive mom arrested in Mexico nearly 30 years after allegedly murdering daughter
Nearly 30 years after the death of her 3-year-old daughter, a mother has been arrested in Mexico by US law enforcement officers on first-degree murder charges.Anna Marlene Somoza, 60, was arrested by the US Marshals Service after more than 12 years as a fugitive in Mexico.Her close connections to cartels allowed her to avoid apprehension, authorities said.Somoza will be extradited to the United States to face charges for allegedly murdering her daughter, Crystal Reyes, according to the US Marshals Service.Before her death, Reyes was subjected to severe abuse, torture and starvation, the agency said.Confined to a small dog kennel, Reyes was bound by her hands and feet, gagged and left for weeks at a time.
On Jan.30, 1997, Reyes was bound, suffocated with a towel taped to her face, and left to die inside a sealed cardboard box, the agency said.Authorities began investigating after human bone fragments were found in a deserted area of Arizona by a hunter in November 1998.
Almost two decades passed.Then in August 2014, forensic DNA analysis identified the fragments of bone as remains of Reyes.Detectives interviewed the child’s biological father and confirmed her identity using his DNA.Then, they said, they had sufficient grounds to charge Somoza and Avelino Tamala, her boyfriend at the time of Reyes’ death, with first-degree murder in December 2014.Tamala was found guilty of Crystal’s murder in 2016.
He was sentenced to life in prison.But Somoza had been deported years earlier.Somoza had an extensive criminal history before being charged in her daughter’s death.She had been connected to a major transnational drug trafficking network active along the southern Arizona border throughout the 1980s and 1990s.After her 1993 arrest for the sale and transportation of marijuana, she agreed to act as a confidential informant for an Arizona law enforcement agency.Through that, she met Tamala, a narcotics detective, and began “an improper romantic relationship,” acc...