Background: News footage from the scene in Texas City, Texas on May 11, 2022 when Angela Mitchell’s body was found (KPRC). Inset (left): Angela Mitchell (provided by family). Inset (right): Christopher Lee Maldonado (Galveston County Sheriff’s Office).
A Texas man was found guilty of tampering with evidence by concealing the corpse of a mother of four children, but her cause of death is still unknown.
Angela Mitchell, 24, was reported missing by her mother on May 6, 2022, when she didn’t arrive to pick up her baby. Days later, after her loved ones used the Find My Friends app to track down her phone, they discovered that her last ping was at the address of Christopher Lee Maldonado, now 49. Her car, according to a press release from the Galveston County District Attorney’s office, was found on May 11, surrounded by flies and giving off “an odor of death.” Inside the trunk was the decomposing body of the missing mom.
According to the release, authorities confirmed that Mitchell was a sex worker whose most recent — and final — client was Maldonado. She was reportedly at his home on May 5, 2022, and never heard from again, based on evidence from both Mitchell’s and Maldonado’s cell phones shown to the jury during the trial in February.
Also presented in court, according to the district attorney, was a line of communication between Maldonado and an acquaintance named Mike Medina. Medina testified that Maldonado had texted him on the night of May 5, 2022, to offer him $200 to move the car where Mitchell’s body had been stored. Medina stated that he did not known that Mitchell’s body was in the trunk. He also testified that he asked a couple of teenagers to move the car for him. One of those teenagers offered another friend “quick cash” to help move the car — and that friend came upon the corpse in the trunk.
Because of the state Mitchell’s body was found in, a cause of death could not be determined, and Maldonado was not charged in connection to her death. A jury found him guilty on March 3 of tampering with evidence by concealing a corpse, a felony. He was sentenced on Tuesday to 120 days in jail followed by 10 years probation.
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