Woman sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing pregnant teenager, ripping her unborn baby from her womb

CHICAGO (CBS)– A woman who admitted to helping her mother kill a pregnant teenager and cut off her baby in 2019 was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in prison.

Désirée Figueroa, 29 years old, pleaded guilty in January to one count of first-degree murder in the killing of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, 19, and agreed to testify against her mother, Clarisa Figueroa, in exchange for a 30-year sentence. Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas formally accepted the sentence Thursday. Desiree Figueroa will be recognized for the more than five years she has already spent in custody.

Clarisa Figueroa pleaded guilty for his role in last month's gruesome murder and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

The Figueroas had been accused of kidnapping and killing Ochoa-Lopez, dismembering her body and covering up her death and that of her baby, Yovanny Lopez, whom they tried to pass off as Clarisa's. He died two months after his mother's murder.

Police and prosecutors said that shortly after her own adult son died of natural causes, Clarisa Figueroa told her family she was pregnant. She is said to have plotted for months to acquire a newborn and posted an ultrasound and photos of a room decorated for a baby on her Facebook page. In March 2019, she and Ochoa-Lopez connected on a Facebook page aimed at pregnant women.

The two men first met in person around April 1, 2019, when Ochoa-Lopez went to the Figueroas' home and left unharmed, prosecutors alleged. The teenager returned three weeks later to accept Clarisa Figueroa's offer of free baby clothes, and while Desiree Figueroa showed Ochoa-Lopez a photo album of her late brother to distract her, Clarisa Figueroa snuck out behind her and strangled her with a rope.

Once Ochoa-Lopez stopped showing signs of life, Clarisa Figueroa cut the baby from her womb with a butcher knife and she and her daughter wrapped the teen's body in a blanket, put him in a plastic bag and dragged him out of her home in the southwest. a trash can, according to prosecutors.

Later that day, Clarisa Figueroa called 911, saying her newborn wasn't breathing. When first aid arrived, the child was blue. Clairsa, a former certified nursing assistant, passed the baby off as her own when she took him to Christ Medical Center, where he died two months later.

The baby's true identity was not revealed for three weeks after Ochoa-Lopez's murder, after police investigating Ochoa-Lopez's disappearance conducted a DNA test on the baby and confirmed that he belonged to Ochoa-Lopez. Detectives later found Ochoa's body stuffed in a trash can at the Figueroas' home.

Last year, Clarisa Figueroa's boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, pleaded guilty to one count of obstructing justice for helping to cover up the murders. He was sentenced to four years in prison, and the three years and eight months he had already spent in prison were recognized and he was therefore already released.