Missouri cops said they have arrested the Wisconsin fugitive charged with murdering his pregnant girlfriend and stuffing her remains in a suitcase.
Officers in the Kansas City suburb of Gladstone said they’ve locked up Jose Eduardo Dominguez-Garcia at the Clayton County Detention Center. He is accused of murdering Rosaly Cindy Chavarria Rodriguez, who was last seen alive at age 25 on July 2, 2020, working at Sprecher’s restaurant in the village of Lake Delton, Wisconsin.
Jose Eduardo Dominguez-Garcia murdered Rosaly Cindy Chavarria Rodriguez, authorities said. (Mug shot of Dominguez-Garcia: Gladstone Police Department; image of Rodriguez: Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office. Both images via WMTV.)
The arrest happened early Thursday morning. Gladstone cops said their automated license plate readers spotted a vehicle with a stolen plate traveling through the city. Officers discovered the sedan, a red Ford Fusion, in a parking lot on the 400 block of NW Englewood Road, they said.
Police described speaking with a driver, but he had multiple IDs and gave several different names. They claim that they figured out the truth: He was Dominguez-Garcia, wanted out of Chippewa County, Wisconsin, for first-degree intentional homicide, and first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child, and hiding a corpse. They arrested him without incident, they said.
Chippewa County prosecutors formally charged with murder in December 2021, but his whereabouts was unknown.
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Dominguez-Garcia picked up the victim’s final paycheck from Sprecher’s on July 23, 2020, the day after his own last day working there, according to authorities in a Leader-Telegraph report. He allegedly told investigators at the time that he and Rodriguez had broken up on the 4th of July after he discovered she cheated on him; another man had apparently fathered the child she was carrying when she died.
Police reportedly found Rodriguez’s red 2003 Volkswagen Jetta on Aug. 26, 2020, in Wisconsin Dells. Investigators suggested they found fluids indicating that someone stuffed a newly decaying body in the trunk. Yet there was no sign of the victim until an informant in a drug case directed authorities toward a vacant farm in the city of Wheaton between 20th and 30th Avenue along the Highway T corridor. There, they found Rodriguez’s body, stuffed into a purple suitcase at the farmhouse.
A doctor’s appointment on June 18, 2020, had reportedly determined Rodriguez to be seven weeks and five days pregnant.
Surveillance footage recorded the victim’s Jetta on July 23, 2020, along Highway T, where the body was found, authorities said.
At the time of the discovery, police found no ID on the remains, but they believed it was Rodriguez, based on her Sprecher’s T-shirt and her long hair, the latter of which fit her missing person description.
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