A woman wanted for allegedly torturing her 4-year-old daughter and leaving her to die inside a cardboard box in Arizona in 1997 has been detained in Mexico, where she spent more than a decade as a fugitive, according to federal authorities.
The U.S. Marshals Service confirmed Anna Marlene Somoza, who allegedly has ties to the cartel, was apprehended in Xochitepec, Mexico, on Sunday, October 18, in connection with the death of her daughter, Crystal Reyes.
Somoza, now 60, and her former boyfriend Avelino Tamala were indicted in 2014 on first-degree murder charges in connection with Crystal’s death, according to authorities.
Their indictment came shortly after human bone fragments were positively identified as belonging to Crystal in August 2014. A hunter discovered her remains in 1998 in a deserted area of Mobile, Arizona.
After arrest warrants were issued in Maricopa County for Somoza and Tamala, investigators learned Somoza was in Mexico.
“It would take investigators another 12 years to locate and apprehend Somoza, which was affected by her close connections with cartels,” the U.S. Marshals Service said in their news release.
Before Somoza allegedly killed Crystal, the agency said she had a lengthy criminal history “connected to a major transnational drug trafficking network active along the southern Arizona border throughout the 1980s and 1990s.”
Somoza was arrested in 1993 for alleged marijuana sales, later becoming a confidential informant for an Arizona law enforcement agency, per authorities. She then started dating Tamala, a narcotics detective.
She gave birth to Crystal in Nogales, Mexico, in November 1993 before moving to Ahwatukee, Arizona, to live with Tamala, who wasn’t Crystal’s father.
Somoza and Tamala are accused of torturing, starving and abusing Crystal throughout her short life, beginning when she was an infant.
“Behind closed doors, the young child was subjected to severe physical abuse, ultimately being confined to a small dog kennel,” the U.S. Marshals Service said.
Somoza and Tamala are accused of binding the girl’s hands and feet and keeping her “gagged in a small dog crate for weeks at a time,” according to the agency.
Crystal died on January 30, 1997, after she was “bound, suffocated with a taped towel, and left to die inside a sealed cardboard box.”
After Somoza and Tamala were arrested in 1999 on unrelated drug and weapons charges, their DNA was collected “and later forensic analysis of the bone fragments found in the Arizona desert could not eliminate Somoza as the maternal source,” per the U.S. Marshals.
Crystal’s remains weren’t officially identified until after cold case detectives interviewed and collected a DNA sample of her biological father, Darren Stockwell, in 2014.
His DNA helped identify his daughter’s bone fragments, leading prosecutors to charge Somoza and Tamala in connection with Crystal’s death.
Tamala was convicted in Crystal’s murder in November 2016 and ultimately sentenced to life in prison, according to the U.S. Marshal’s Service.
Somoza had been in Mexico since 2008, after she was deported from the U.S. following an eight-year federal prison sentence stemming from her 1998 arrest. She allegedly took “deliberate and extensive measures” to hide in Mexico as authorities sought her in relation to Crystal’s death.
“This disturbing case can finally move forward with justice for Crystal,” U.S. Marshal Van Bayless, of the District of Arizona, said in a statement. “Phoenix Police Department and Maricopa County Attorney’s Office showed their unrelenting desire to get Somoza into court and prison for her atrocities to an innocent beautiful little girl. This case became our priority with our partners, both north and south of the border who we are grateful for, and now she will be coming back and held accountable.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Somoza has retained legal counsel. She’s expected to be returned to Arizona to face charges in Crystal’s death.
