Inset: Maribel Loera (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The house where Ana Loera’s skeletal remains were recovered in Phoenix, Ariz. (Google Maps).
A woman in Arizona will spend decades behind bars for killing her 9-year-old adopted daughter, hiding the child’s body in the attic of her home for several years, and then setting the house on fire.
On Sept. 22, Maribel Loera, 57, accepted a plea deal on one count each of murder in the second degree and concealment of a body, as well as multiple counts of child abuse over the death of Ana Loera.
The child was originally and widely reported to be 13 years old, based on estimates of her age at the time her remains were discovered in January 2020. Subsequent estimates revised the girl’s age down.
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Under the terms of her negotiated plea agreement, the defendant will serve up to 32 years in state prison — including 22 years of so-called “flat time” that cannot be lessened by any kind of credit or parole — and remain on lifetime supervision upon her release, according to a courtroom report by Phoenix-based Fox affiliate KSAZ.
The investigation began on Jan. 20, 2020, when police were called to check on an 11-year-old girl who was left alone at the Loera home, Law&Crime previously reported. When the girl told officers she had been neglected and abused by her parents, authorities with the Department of Child Safety removed the girl from the home.
That day, the girl called 911 herself to report being hungry and abandoned for days, according to the Arizona Republic. The 11-year-old also told police Loera “struck her on multiple occasions with knotted extension cords and slammed her head into walls,” among other forms of abuse suffered, the Associated Press reported.
The case snowballed from there after child welfare authorities, in quick succession, removed two younger children from the residence.
On Jan. 28, 2020, the Loera house burst into flames. Firefighters who battled the blaze discovered Ana’s body — in the form of skeletal remains hidden in the attic — on Jan. 29, 2020.
The defendant’s husband, Rafael Loera, 62, was forthcoming about the death and ensuing efforts to conceal the body, authorities say.
“On August 3, 2020, the Maricopa County Superior Court found that the father, Rafael Loera, admitted to knowing Anna was being abused by her mother, Maribel Loera, and that the child died while he was taking her to the hospital, however, he returned to the home and hid the child in the attic,” a state-issued fatality report reads.
Rafael Loera admitted to siphoning gasoline from his car to set the house on fire, according to court records obtained by Phoenix-based NBC affiliate KPNX. He also allegedly confessed that he wrapped Ana’s dead body “in a blanket and stashed it in the attic of the home.”
Rafael Loera (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office).
The man said Ana fell ill in the summer of 2017 but he “waited several days before trying to seek medical attention,” authorities claim. On the way to a doctor, the girl began convulsing and vomiting and died before they reached the hospital, Rafael Loera allegedly told police.
Rafael Loera allegedly claimed he did not want to report her death because he didn’t want his other children to be taken away, so he stored the body in the attic. Two of those other children were Ana’s siblings. Despite the man’s claims that Ana died in July 2017, investigators said witnesses had last seen Ana alive in 2016.
In court this week, Ana’s siblings relayed some of the abuse they suffered in the Loera house, KSAZ reported.
“There’s this day that happened where she tried to murder me with a knife, and I still have the scars on me, and I have to deal with all of that every day,” one sibling told the judge in reference to Maribel Loera. “I don’t think it should be fair that she’ll [be] let out, and I can’t even have my sister.”
The defendant is slated to be formally sentenced on Oct. 19.
The case against Rafael Loera is ongoing.
The post Woman pleads guilty after killing her 9-year-old daughter, storing the girl’s skeletal remains in the family’s attic, and then burning their house down to cover it up first appeared on Law & Crime.
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