Man kills wife then starts family in El Salvador, officials say. Now he faces 40 years
A man accused of killing his estranged wife started a new family in El Salvador and was on the run for 30 years before he was caught, Virginia officials said.
Jose Lazaro Cruz, 60, has now pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and faces up to 40 years in prison in connection with the death of 24-year-old Ana Jurado, the Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Aug. 9.
Jurado had a 4-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl and a 7-month-old girl, police said in a news conference back in January.
McClatchy News reached out to the public defender’s office and did not immediately receive a response Aug. 12.
“This has been a moment that has been 30-plus years in the making,” Fairfax Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano said when Cruz was arrested in January.
The couple was in the process of separating when Cruz went to Jurado’s house on April 30, 1991, to confront her because he believed she was having an affair, officials said during the news conference.
The pair argued, then Cruz slashed Jurado’s neck with a knife and left her in the street, where she was found dead, prosecutors said.
Investigators quickly identified him as a suspect, but he fled the country before he could be arrested, according to Eli Cory, the Fairfax County Police Department’s deputy chief of investigations.
First, Cruz was denied entry at the Canadian border due to fraudulent identification, so he took a bus to Houston and crossed the southern border with the help of a smuggler and eventually made his way to El Salvador, Cory said.
Police said he started working as a truck driver, remarried and had several kids.
El Salvador didn’t have an extradition agreement, so even though Virginia detectives suspected he was there, they couldn’t arrest him, according to police.
He evaded capture until 2022, when he tried to enter Costa Rica, likely to see family, police said.
After negotiating with the Costa Rican government for over a year, in January 2024, investigators announced Cruz would be extradited back to the U.S. to face prosecution, McClatchy News previously reported.
He pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge and is expected to be sentenced Nov. 7.
Fairfax County is part of the Washington, D.C., suburban area.
This story was originally published August 12, 2024 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Man kills wife then starts family in El Salvador, officials say. Now he faces 40 years."