CHICAGO _ A mother and daughter have been formally indicted on charges they lured a pregnant teenage mother to their home on Chicago's Southwest Side with promises of free baby clothes, then strangled her and cut her baby from the womb in a desperate bid to raise the child as their own.
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, and her daughter, Desiree, 24, were indicted by a Cook County grand jury in the killing of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez. The bizarre scheme left Ochoa-Lopez's baby boy with severe brain injuries.
The elder Figueroa's boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, 40, also was indicted, on at least one count of concealing a homicidal death.
About half a dozen sheriff's deputies surrounded the three defendants in court Wednesday as prosecutors announced the indictment. The exact charges were not immediately made public.
All three are scheduled to return to the Leighton Criminal Court Building later this month to enter pleas of not guilty.
Family advocates said they were eager to see what charges would be filed in connection with Ochoa-Lopez's baby, who remains in intensive care.
"He suffered irrevocable brain damage," Julie Contreras, an activist working with the family, told reporters after court. "There's no medicine, no pill that can fix that. Only a miracle."
The gruesome details of the case stunned the city and garnered national media attention.
Prosecutors said the elder Figueroa had announced in October that she was pregnant _ a surprise to family who knew she had her fallopian tubes tied. Over the next several months, she posted photos on Facebook of an ultrasound and a decorated nursery, complete with a crib. She said she would name the baby Xander after a 20-year-old son who died last year, according to prosecutors.
As her phony due date drew near, prosecutors said, she and her daughter plotted to kill a pregnant woman to steal her baby.
Prosecutors have alleged that Ochoa-Lopez, a mother of a young child who was nine months pregnant, reached out and touched the nose of the family dog as Figueroa, sitting atop her, took an agonizing four to five minutes to strangle her with a cable.
After killing Ochoa-Lopez and cutting her baby from her womb, prosecutors said, Figueroa continued to claim the infant as her own, even seeking money on a crowdfunding site for the critically injured boy.
The three defendants were first charged last month and were ordered held without bond while awaiting trial.
Ochoa-Lopez's decaying body was found in a garbage can outside the Figueroa home on May 14 with the coaxial cable used to strangle her still around her neck.
Police and prosecutors said the younger Figueroa gave "a full video-recorded confession" to assisting her mother in strangling Ochoa-Lopez.
Prosecutors said Bobak helped clean the scene after Ochoa-Lopez's killing and later shared the crowdfunding site on his Facebook page.
After court Wednesday, Bobak's attorney, Hal Garfinkel, said he expects Bobak will be acquitted.
"Mr. Bobak had absolutely no knowledge at all of the fact that the Figueroas were involved or planning a murder," Garfinkel told reporters. ... Absolutely no knowledge there was a victim of a homicide on the premises."
