A man and a woman are behind bars.
Jesus Dominguez, 35, and Corena Rose Minjarez, 36, are suspected of having killed, probably in 2018, two of Jesus Dominguez's children, then aged 3 and 5.
They were arrested Friday by police in Pueblo (Colorado, mid-west United States) and indicted for first-degree murder and concealment of corpses, lending credence to the accusations of another daughter of Jesus Dominguez.
In 2018, she tried to alert the police, several times according to her statements.
Jesus junior, 5, and Yesenia, 3, appeared to have disappeared, but there was no telling where they had gone.
In mid-January of this year, a woman alerted Pueblo police after discovering a suspicious-looking metal drum containing concrete in a rental storage space.
The space was being emptied, with rent no longer being paid.
Police officers went to the scene to discover small human remains in the container.
The same day, the Pueblo police launched an appeal on Facebook, to locate the "location" and confirm the "safety" of two children aged "probably" 10 and 9 years old, Jesus junior and Yesenia, who were no longer been seen since the summer of 2018, when they were 5 and 3 years old.
Jesus Dominguez and his partner Corena Rose Minjarez were questioned a few days later as “persons of interest”, presumably because of their connection to the storage space.
They had told police that the children might be in Phoenix, Arizona, a lead that turned out to be inaccurate.
“We looked everywhere”
Last week, about three weeks after the first chance discovery, authorities not only said that DNA testing showed that the body found in the barrel was Yesenia's, but they also announced that the rest of her brother's body had been found. in a suitcase, stored in the trunk of a car belonging to Corena Rose Minjarez, abandoned at the scrapyard.
And that the DNA was still formal.
The arrest warrants against the father and his partner were issued on February 15, and the couple arrested the same day.
Each is being held on $2 million bail, according to jail records.
It was unclear whether they had obtained an attorney.
HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION UPDATE
For Details: https://t.co/8Jxw2IJG8R#Ppdnews #Pueblonews pic.twitter.com/zRM80mxYLX
— Pueblo Police Department (@PuebloPolice1) February 17, 2024
No missing reports were ever filed for the children, but police had previously been asked to conduct welfare checks on the children and never found them, Sergeant Franklyn Ortega said.
The sister of the two children claimed in the Colorado press, without revealing her identity, to have contacted the police “several times”, to no avail.
“We looked everywhere but there was nothing we could do.
And it is now that the police are taking the matter seriously,” she lamented.
Jesus Dominguez is also being prosecuted for “theft of government benefits”, according to the Pueblo police press release, suggesting that he continued to receive social benefits benefiting his children.