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'Every single day': Judge tells woman to remember destroying family of pregnant teen she killed, then hands down 50-year sentence

Madeline Buckley, Chicago Tribune on

Published in News & Features

“I had never heard a sound come out of a human being the way I heard it come out of him,” she said.

Figueroa’s daughter, Desiree, 29, previously agreed to testify against her mother in exchange for a sentence of 30 years in prison. She pleaded guilty to murder in January.

A third co-defendant, Piotr Bobak, the boyfriend of Clarisa Figueroa, last year pleaded guilty to a felony count of obstruction of justice and was sentenced to four years in prison.

The mother and daughter lured Ochoa-Lopez to their Southwest Side home with the promise of free baby clothes, prosecutors have said. Ochoa-Lopez was last seen leaving her high school in the Little Village neighborhood. Clarisa Figueroa planned to raise the baby herself, and tricked Bobak into believing the baby was his child, according to police and prosecutors.

After cutting out the baby, Clarisa Figueroa called 911 and announced that she had delivered a baby who was not breathing, prosecutors have said. As paramedics arrived, she was holding the baby with its placenta and umbilical cord attached.

Both were rushed to Advocate Christ Medical Center. The newborn had problems breathing and appeared blue.

About two weeks after Ochoa-Lopez was last seen, detectives investigating her disappearance learned the teen had gone to the Figueroa home the day she disappeared.

They went to the home and were told by Desiree Figueroa that her mother had recently had a baby, and found Ochoa-Lopez’s car parked nearby.

 

Detectives visited Clarisa Figueroa at the hospital, but she denied that the teen came to her home the day she disappeared. Police eventually used DNA to determine Clarisa Figueroa was not the baby’s mother.

When detectives arrived to search the Figueroa home, Bobak was outside cleaning a rug with bleach and a hose, prosecutors said during a bond hearing in 2019. When Bobak saw the officers, he dropped the bleach and hose, and walked away, they said.

Ochoa-Lopez’s decaying body was found in a garbage can outside the Figueroa home with the coaxial cables used to strangle her still around her neck, prosecutors have said.

After police discovered Ochoa-Lopez’s body and her hospitalized child, her husband, Yovanny Lopez, told the Tribune he prayed for the baby’s recovery, though family were told he had brain damage.

“It’s so hurtful losing a wife that you spent beautiful moments with,” he told the Tribune at the time.

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©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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