Nearly two months after a Kearns woman was violently abducted from her home in “broad daylight” and later fatally shot, investigators have found her body and have put together a case against six people they say conspired to kill her.
New charges filed Friday against four people paint 38-year-old Carolina Marquez as the director of the Feb. 6 abduction scheme, alleging she told Orlando Tobar, 29, and Jorge Medina-Reyes, 21, to kidnap Conzuelo “Nicole” Solorio-Romero because she owed Marquez money.
Investigators believe Medina-Reyes shot Solorio-Romero first at close range, and that Tobar shot her again a few moments later because she wasn’t dead. Both were charged last month.
Friday’s new documents also accuse 22-year-old Fernando Marquez, Solorio-Romero’s landlord and Carolina Marquez’s son, of helping with the kidnapping and threatening her with a knife. The documents also implicate two other people, Ivan Acosta and Cristian Morales.
Acosta, 27, is accused of helping to clean the crime scene, and Morales, 26, who is sometimes referred to as “the mechanic,” allegedly helped dispose of Solorio-Romero’s body.
Police found her body, wrapped in black garbage bags, on March 26. Charging documents don’t say where her body was found.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera held a news conference about the case early on in Solorio-Romero’s disappearance, vowing that “we are not going to give up; we are going to continue to look for Nicole.”
She noted the kidnapping happened in “broad daylight,” and called it “heartbreaking” and “very tragic.” She said, “Our hearts are breaking along with [her family members].”
Court documents allege the abduction devolved into homicide after the kidnappers brought Solorio-Romero to a West Valley City apartment — Carolina Marquez’s home — and questioned her.
The documents allege that the men interrogated her about the arrest of a “close associate,” someone investigators later learned was related to Carolina Marquez. Solorio-Romero told the men she hadn’t spoken with police.
Solorio-Romero also told someone else in the room that a family member of hers hadn’t died by suicide, like people thought, but that Tobar and Medina-Reyes had killed him.
That’s when Tobar decided she “knew too much” and “she was not going to leave that apartment,” according to court documents.
The two men shot her, the documents say, and then everyone involved left to Carolina Marquez’s restaurant, Tacos Mi Caramelo, to discuss next steps.
Carolina Marquez, Fernando Marquez, Tobar, Medina-Reyes and Acosta allegedly stayed at the apartment to clean up the blood. Then, Tobar and Morales left in a truck to get rid of Solorio-Romero’s body, according to the documents.
