The Chicago woman known as the “womb raider,” who murdered a pregnant teenager and cut out her unborn baby from her womb, was sentenced to 50 years behind bars for her disturbing crimes.
Clarisa Figueroa, 51, received the sentence in a Cook County courtroom Tuesday after she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the 2019 killing of 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, according to ABC 7.
Before entering her plea agreement, Figueroa sat in court and listened to the heartbroken Ochoa-Lopez family, who said the “punishment will never be enough.”
“The loss of my daughter’s life is something I will never overcome,” Ochoa-Lopez’s mother, Raquel Uriostegui, wrote in her statement, the outlet reported.
Yovanny Lopez, Ochoa-Lopez’s husband and father of their older son and of the baby killed by the mother-daughter duo, wrote, “Your punishment will never be enough because my son will never be able to hug his mother ever!”
“I lost my family, and that will always stay with me,” the grieving father said in tears outside the courtroom following the sentencing.
Along with the help of her daughter, Desiree Figueroa, 29, the two murderous women lured the young mother to the Figueroa family’s home with the promise of free clothes for her unborn baby.
Ochoa-Lopez had been to the home on April 1, 2019, and left unharmed.
However, on April 23, the deadly pair carried out their sinister plot.
Desiree had been showing the nine-month-pregnant teen mom a photo album of her adult brother, who had recently died.
While viewing the album, Clarisa came up behind her and strangled her to death with a cable, according to prosecutors.
Clarisa then ordered her daughter to get a butcher’s knife, and she cut the baby from Ochoa-Lopez’s womb.
After they removed the child, the two wrapped the slain mother’s body in plastic and dumped it in a garbage can outside their home with the help of her daughter.
Clarisa then called 911, trying to pass off the baby as her own, and told the operator that her newborn was not breathing.
Ochoa-Lopez’s son died two months later after suffering severe brain damage.
Police uncovered the unsettling bed of lies after investigating Ochoa-Lopez’s husband reported her missing the day after she was killed.
Discovering the mother had gone missing after visiting Figueroas’ home, police began suspecting foul play was involved.
Two weeks later, police found Ochoa-Lopez’s car park near the mother and daughter’s Chicago home.
Detectives discovered her decomposing body inside the trash container.
A DNA test later confirmed the baby Clarisa was trying to pass off as her newborn was Ochoa-Lopez’s.
Authorities said not long after Clarisa’s adult son died of natural causes, she began lying to her family that she was pregnant despite having her fallopian tubes tied years earlier.
For months, she posted an ultrasound and photos of a nursery on her Facebook page while plotting to acquire a newborn by any means necessary.
Investigators found that Clarisa had been in connect with Ochoa-Lopez on a Facebook page for pregnant women since March 2019.
Desiree Figueroa was given a lighter sentence of 30 years for first-degree murder after she agreed to testify against her mother as part of the plea deal.
Clarisa’s boyfriend, Piotr Bobak, who helped clean up the crime scene, was sentenced to four years in prison last year after pleading guilty to concealing the murder.
