CHICAGO — Three people have been charged after a missing pregnant woman was found dead on Chicago’s Southwest Side, according to police.
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and police officials announced the charges Thursday afternoon while updating the investigation into the death of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Uriostegui, whose mutilated body was found just after midnight Tuesday in a trash bin behind a home on the 4100 block of West 77th Place.
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, 24, were charged with first-degree murder and felony aggravated battery to a child less than 13 years old causing permanent disability.
Figueroa’s boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, 40, was charged with concealing a homicide.
Police said Figueroa’s daughter confessed to helping her mother strangle the 19-year-old, who was nine months pregnant when she went missing. Police said a cable was used to strangle the teen.
On Wednesday, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the body found at the home on West 77th Place as that of the missing teen. The medical examiner, which identified her as Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, ruled her death a homicide.
Police said Ochoa-Lopez was strangled and that her baby boy was cut from her womb after the murder. Sources said the home had a hidden room in the basement.
Fire officials confirm responding to the home on West 77th Place on April 23, the day Ochoa-Lopez went missing. She went missing less than two weeks before her due date. The 19-year-old was likely dead when an emergency call was made by someone in the home.
Police said that on May 7 one of Ochoa-Lopez’s friends told detectives that she was on a “chat site” on Facebook. The teen’s family said it was a Facebook group called “Help a Sister Out.”
Ochoa-Lopez’s family said she went to the home on West 77th Place to swap items arranged through the group. The group has since been archived.
A 46-year-old woman, now identified as Figueroa, claimed to have a stroller and other baby items.
“She was giving clothes away, supposedly under the pretenses that her daughters had been given clothes and they had all these extra boy clothes. That’s the false pretenses that we believe led her to that house,” Cecelia Garcia, a spokeswoman for Ochoa-Uriostegui’s family, said.
Hours later that same day, neighbors said the 46-year-old woman came running out of the home claiming that she had just given birth to a baby boy and that he wasn’t breathing.
The baby was transported to Christ Hospital, Chicago fire officials confirmed. He remains hospitalized in intensive care.
Ochoa-Lopez’s family named the baby boy Yovani Yadiel Lopez. Police confirmed that DNA testing proved Yadiel belongs to Ochoa-Lopez, but they don’t expect him to survive.
Just before 11 a.m. Thursday, the 19-year-old’s family was spotted by WGN cameras, visibly emotional, entering the Cook County medical examiner’s office.