Clarisa Figueroa pleads guilty to strangling Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, cutting baby from womb

One of the city’s most shocking murder cases in years will avoid a lengthy and likely gruesome trial after the woman accused of luring Marlen Ochoa-Lopez to her Southwest Side home to kill her and cut her baby from her womb decided to plead guilty.

Clarisa Figueroa, 51, appeared in a bright yellow jumpsuit, her dark hair tightly braided behind her head, and was seated in a wheelchair Tuesday afternoon as she agreed to plead guilty to a single count of murder in the case.

Judge Peggy Chiampas sentenced her to 50 years in prison, as suggested in the agreement.

Chiampas asked if Figueroa understood that she would have to serve 100% of that time and would not get early release on parole.

"Yes," Figueroa answered.

More than half a dozen family members and supporters of Ochoa-Lopez attended the hearing, including her husband, Yovanny Lopez. He's the father of the child, Yovanny Jadiel Lopez.

Many wore T-shirts with an image of a sunflower field on them. Sunflowers were his wife's favorite, Lopez said.

In a statement read by an advocate during the hearing, Lopez described how the tragedy affected him and the couple's older child, Joshua, who he said "lost his mother forever."

"The memory of my infant son's last breath in my arms is complete agony," Lopez said. "God is the judge of all judges, and today Jesus is Marlen and Jadiel's attorney, and God's justice will be served upon you the day you die."

In another statement, Ochoa-Lopez's mother, who was not present, said she "would not wish this pain and sorrow on anyone."

Figueroa declined to make a statement.

Figueroa’s decision to plead guilty comes a little more than four months after prosecutors announced that her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, 29, had agreed to plead guilty and testify against her mother in a deal that would see the younger Figueroa sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The mother and daughter planned the killing for weeks before luring Ochoa-Lopez, 19, to Clarisa Figueroa's home in the 4100 block of West 77th Place with an offer of free baby clothes, including an earlier meeting when their scheme was abandoned.

Clarisa Figueroa had asked for her daughter’s help “killing a pregnant woman and taking her baby,” a request prosecutors said Desiree told her boyfriend about before the meeting.

On April 1, 2019, Clarisa Figueroa invited Ochoa-Lopez to their house while Desiree’s boyfriend was present, but he told Desiree he would call the police if she and her mother planned on killing Ochoa-Lopez, prosecutors said.

Ochoa-Lopez left unharmed, and the pair claimed the plot was an April Fool’s joke, prosecutors said.

But three weeks later, on April 23, Ochoa-Lopez returned. At the time she went to the home, she was experiencing contractions, prosecutors said Tuesday.

As she leafed through a photo album of Clarisa Figueroa’s son, who had died recently of natural causes, Clarisa wrapped a coaxial cable around her neck and pulled it tight.

At an initial hearing, prosecutors said that as Clarisa Figueroa was choking Ochoa-Lopez, she yelled at her daughter “You’re not doing your f——— job,” because Ochoa-Lopez was able to get her fingers between the cable and her throat.

Desiree Figueroa then peeled Ochoa-Lopez’s fingers off the cable “one by one,” and after four or five minutes, Ochoa-Lopez stopped struggling, a prosecutor said.

After cutting open Ochoa-Lopez’s abdomen with a butcher’s knife, Clarisa Figueroa took the baby and placed him in a bucket, later wrapping the child in a blanket.

She put Ochoa-Lopez’s body in a plastic bag and then placed it in a trash can on the side of the house before calling 911 to claim she had just given birth at home and the child wasn’t breathing.

The baby was taken to Christ Medical Center and placed on life support, with a GoFundMe page set up saying the baby was expected to die and seeking $9,000 for his funeral.

Desiree Figueroa took Ochoa-Lopez’s phone and car, parking it a few doors from her own house.

When police visited Clarisa Figueroa’s house, her then-boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, was washing off a bleach-soaked rug. He was later sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to concealing the murder and was deported after his release.

Medical staff at the hospital were suspicious early on, telling police that Clarisa Figueroa showed no signs of having given birth. The baby was eventually identified through DNA, but died after several weeks without ever leaving the hospital.

Desiree Figueroa, who was pregnant at the time of the murder, gave birth while in custody in November 2019.