A woman linked to drug cartels and accused of torturing and murdering her daughter in Arizona in 1997 has been captured in Mexico nearly 30 years after the crime, officials said Wednesday. Anna Marlene Somoza was connected to a "major transnational drug trafficking network" along the Arizona border through the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a news release.
She was arrested for selling and transporting marijuana in 1993, and agreed to act as a confidential informant for Arizona law enforcement. In November 1993, Somoza had a daughter, Crystal Reyes. The child was born in Nogales, Mexico.
Her father was Darren Stockwell, a law enforcement officer and U.S. citizen, the U.S. Somoza and Crystal then moved to Ahwatukee, Arizona, to live with her boyfriend, narcotics detective Avelino Tamala. Marshals Service said that Somoza and Tamala began an "improper romantic relationship" while she was a law enforcement source.
While living with Somoza and Tamala, Crystal was allegedly subject to "severe physical abuse," including being bound and gagged in a small dog kennel for weeks at a time, the U.S. The abuse "escalated fatally" on January 30, 1997, when Crystal suffocated inside a sealed cardboard box, the agency said. Nearly a year later, in November 1998, human bone fragments were found in Mobile, Arizona.
The bones could not be identified. In 1999, Somoza and Tamala were arrested on drug and weapon offenses. When compared to the bones, the analysis "could not eliminate Somoza as the maternal source," the U.S.
But without a paternal DNA source, an identification could not be made. In 2008, Somoza was released from prison. The case went cold until 2014, when Stockwell was located and interviewed by cold case detectives.
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