Claudia Sanchez Reyes (left) with bruises amid a 2014 domestic violence case (KTLA/screengrab), (center) and Eddy Reyes (right) in a Santa Ana Police Department photo (via KCAL/screengrab)
A California man once employed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection admitted to recruiting his estranged half-brother, a gravedigger and former gang member in El Salvador, to kidnap his wife and strangle her to death in 2016 after suspecting that the victim was carrying on an affair.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said that Eddy Reyes, now 38, pleaded guilty to kidnapping resulting in death late last week several years after the murder of 21-year-old Claudia Sanchez Reyes, the mother of their young son.
According to the plea agreement, Reyes’ defense will not ask for a sentence under 25 years in prison and prosecutors won’t ask for more than 30 years. Even though the deal was a Rule 11 (c)(1)(C) agreement, which judges are sometimes inclined to reject for taking sentencing discretion out of their hands, U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton accepted the defendant’s plea last Friday and set sentencing for the morning of Aug. 2, the court docket reviewed by Law&Crime shows.
“At sentencing, should the Court determine that a sentence higher than 30 years is appropriate, defendant can withdraw his guilty plea and proceed to trial,” the agreement noted.
The agreed upon facts of that case are that the then CBP employee met the victim in El Salvador in 2014 — when she was 16 years old — got her pregnant, married her, and then “brought her and their son to the United States.” Just two years later, the defendant contacted his since deceased estranged brother, identified as P.O., with a deadly kidnapping plot in mind. The two met at a Los Angeles McDonald’s before the murder.
“By 2016, defendant suspected that Claudia S. was having an affair with another man. Defendant decided to kill Claudia S. Approximately one month before May 6, 2016” — the day of the kidnapping — “defendant met with his half-brother, P.O., at a McDonald’s restaurant in Los Angeles to plan the killing of Claudia S.,” the plea agreement detailed. “Defendant was previously estranged from his half-brother but contacted him because P.O. was a [sic] previously a gang member and gravedigger in El Salvador.”
Prosecutors said and the defendant admitted that Eddy Reyes then rented a Hyundai Santa Fe and lied to the victim about the vehicle being a “a gift for her,” documents said.
On the day of the kidnapping, Eddy Reyes picked Claudia up from work under the guise of going out to dinner together — all while P.O. was “hiding under a blanket in the cargo area” of the SUV.
Eddy Reyes drove to his mom’s house, pulled the SUV into a garage, and closed the garage door behind them before P.O. leapt into the back seat and strangled Claudia to death with a seat belt as she sat in the passenger’s seat, court documents said.
“P.O. pulled Claudia backwards with such force that the passenger seat collapse towards the back seat,” the plea agreement said.
On the day after the murder, P.O. tried to fool the victim’s co-workers, a “paralegal who worked for [the victim’s] divorce lawyer,” and the victim’s mother in a series of texts from Claudia’s phone. The texts said Claudia would not come in to work, that she no longer needed a divorce lawyer, and that she was leaving Eddy Reyes for a “white American man with blue eyes.”
The text wished Claudia’s mom a “Happy mothers day” even as those responsible knew she was dead.
“The truth Mom is that I met a white American man with blue eyes that’s going to take me to New York and because I don’t love eddy or the boy although the boy loves me very much I’m going to leave with this American man. And because eddy loves the boy I’m leaving the boy to him because he’ll be a better father than me,” the text to Claudia’s mother said. “And because we’re going to take the bus and there won’t be internet signal I’m going to disconnect this telephone so eddy won’t follow me I will contact you when I get there. I care for you and love you a lot Mom. Happy mothers day.”
The plea agreement was a major step forward in a case that has lingered since Eddy Reyes’ April 2021 arrest.
The U.S. Department of Justice said that Claudia Sanchez Reyes was the victim of domestic violence over a two-year span before her death, citing temporary restraining orders. KTLA previously shared images of a bruised Claudia in a 2014 domestic violence case.
“Court documents previously filed in this case allege a history of domestic abuse by Reyes against his wife, who obtained temporary restraining orders against him in 2014 and 2016,” the DOJ said. “On May 19, 2016, Reyes drove to a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport and threw in the trash a backpack containing a blanket and rags that P.O. used to wipe down the seatbelt and interior of the SUV where Claudia Reyes was killed.”
After Eddy Reyes reported his wife missing on May 11, 2016, four days after he claimed to have last heard from Claudia, witness testimony and forensic evidence from the SUV he rented only pointed right back to him, prosecutors added. Eddy Reyes’ claims that the victim had gone clubbing and never returned — as well as his defense lawyer’s claims that his client was “extremely distraught” by what transpired — have now been formally undermined by the guilty plea.
Read Reyes’ plea agreement here.
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