‘Womb raider’ killer is jailed for 50 years for murdering heavily-pregnant Chicago teen, 19, by luring her into home with free clothes then CUTTING baby from her abdomen – before dumping mom’s bloodied body in trash

A killer, dubbed the ‘Womb Raider’ after she brutally murdered a Chicago teenager and cut her baby from her abdomen, has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. 

Clarisa Figueroa, 51, was handed the jail time on Tuesday over the 2019 murder of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, a 19-year-old pregnant woman who was lured to Figueroa’s home by the promise of free baby clothes. 

The 46-year-old enlisted her daughter Desiree – who pleaded guilty to murder in January and has been sentenced to 30 years – to help carry out a sick plot to kill the expectant mother and steal her baby to raise it as her own. 

Marlen had visited their home under the guise of free baby clothes, with Desiree distracting her by showing pictures of her dead brother before Clarisa strangled her with an electrical cord and sliced open her womb. 

During the trial, it was revealed that Figueroa had lost a child herself – and in the weeks leading up to the horrific slaying, she told her family she was pregnant again.

Following the sentencing, Marlen’s grieving mother Raquel Uriostegui said in a statement: ‘The loss of my daughter’s life is something I will never overcome.’ 

In October 2018, months before Marlen was strangled to death in April 2019, Figueroa had told her daughter Desiree that she ‘needed help killing a pregnant woman and taking a baby.’ 

Despite having her fallopian tubes tied years earlier, Clarisa had been lying to other family members and telling them she was pregnant with a baby she planned to call Xander, and her social media posts from the time show she had shared bizarre images preparing for her fake baby. 

At the time, Marlen had been asking around on social media for free baby clothes and strollers as she couldn’t afford them, and Clarisa invited her over promising to provide free items. 

Initially the teenager visited their home on April 1, 2019, where Figueroa told her daughter – who offered morbid details of the death in a confession – that she had found her target to kill and steal her baby.

The only reason Marlen escaped with her life that day was that Desiree’s boyfriend, who was also there, reportedly refused to help them.

Clarisa passed off her murderous intentions as an ‘April Fool’s joke’, but just weeks later, on April 23, Marlen returned to the house for more goods. 

This time, the boyfriend was not there.

While she was in the living room, Desiree – who was four months pregnant herself at the time – and her mother turned up the music inside the home, and distracted her by giving her a photo album of Clarisa’s dead adult son. 

Police previously said his name was Xavier and that he had died aged 26. However, it was later found that he was actually 20, named Xander, and that he had died only the year prior. 

While Marlen was distracted, Figueroa crept up behind her with an electrical cable, and ambushed her as she wrapped the cable round her neck. 

The 19-year-old was able to slip her fingers between her neck and the cable, but as she struggled to free herself, Figueroa yelled to her daughter: ‘You’re not doing your f****** job!’ 

At that, Desiree ‘stepped up’ and started ‘peeling’ Marlen’s fingers away from her neck.

Clarisa then climbed on top of her and continued to strangle her for ‘four to five minutes’, until she urinated.

It was then that she realized she had died, she told her daughter, because she’d read that ‘a person will urinate on themselves when they die.’

Once she was dead, Desiree brought her mother a butcher’s knife, blanket and bucket.

Clarisa then cut the pregnant teen’s belly open ‘from side to side’ and retrieved the baby, the placenta and the umbilical cord.

She placed the baby in a bucket with the placenta, before wrapping Marlen’s body in a blanket and leaving her in an outdoor trash can – with the electrical cable still tied around her neck. 

To finish her sickening scheme, Clarisa then called 911 claiming to have just given birth. When paramedics arrived, she was found covered in blood, and said the infant was not breathing. 

However, hospital staff discovered that she showed ‘no signs consistent with a woman who had just given birth.’ 

She was not arrested, and with the ‘newborn’ in the ICU, Figueroa and her boyfriend Piotr Bobak took horrifying images cradling the child in hospital, pretending it was theirs. 

The child remained in intensive care for several months before passing away.  

Bobak spent the next three weeks helping the mother and daughter clean the home, and they even set up a GoFundMe asking for funds to help them with their new baby.

He later pleaded guilty to helping conceal the murder, and was released on parole last year. 

The horrific crime went undetected for several weeks, as Marlen was missing but her husband was allegedly not receiving any help from authorities to find her. 

Their plot was discovered after police received a tip about the Facebook interaction Marlen had been having with her, showing that she lured the pregnant to her home over social media.

When authorities went to the home for the first time on May 7, they encountered Desiree who told them that her mother had just given birth.

They then located the victim’s car a block away – Desiree had put it there – and ordered a DNA test of the baby who was and is still in a neonatal intensive care unit with zero brain activity.

That is when they discovered the plot and arrested all three suspects, and Marlen’s body was found in the back yard. 

Following their arrest, an official noted: ‘These defendants were not that wise. The body’s in a garbage can on the premises with the murder weapon.’ 

Following Figueroa’s sentencing of 50 years in prison this week, Marlen’s distraught husband Yovanny Lopez – who also shared a son with the teen – broke down in tears at the courthouse. 

He said in a heartbreaking victim impact statement: ‘Your punishment will never be enough because my son will never be able to hug his mother ever.’

‘I lost my family and that will always stay with me,’ he said.