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A former U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent will spend decades in prison after admitting to orchestrating the murder of his wife.
Eddie Reyes, 38, of Covina, was sentenced Friday to 40 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He pleaded guilty in April to one count of kidnapping resulting in death.
Reyes, who has been in federal custody since his arrest in April 2021, met Claudia Sanchez Reyes in El Salvador in 2014. The two eventually married, had a son, and he immigrated them to the United States.
Claudia filed for temporary restraining orders against Eddie twice, accusing him of abusing her.
Claudia Rises Sanchez Reyes in an image provided by the Santa Ana Police Department.
In 2016, suspecting that his wife was cheating on him, Eddie contacted the brother of a now-deceased former gang member, identified by prosecutors only as “PO,” to help him kill her.
On May 6, 2016, Eddie called Claudia at work and told her he was going to pick her up and take her to dinner that night. He then arrived in a rented Hyundai Santa Fe and lied to her that the car was a gift.
He then drove to his mother’s house in Orange. After pulling the car into the garage and closing the door, the PO jumped into the back seat of the SUV.
Prosecutors said the man punched Claudia in the face, grabbed her passenger seat belt and strangled her to death. She died at the age of 21.
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The next day, Eddie and PO drive to the couple’s Santa Ana apartment and, pretending to be Claudia, use their cell phones to call her to quit her job and fire her divorce lawyer.
PO also texted Claudia’s mother to let her know that she was leaving Eddie and her son and to celebrate Mother’s Day.
A few days later, Eddie drove to Los Angeles International Airport to dispose of a backpack containing blankets and rags used to clean the SUV in which Claudia died.
He filed a missing person report several days later, but did not initially cooperate with police investigations, officials said.
Investigators spoke with Claudia’s co-workers who said they heard the couple arguing on the phone on the day of her disappearance, just before Eddie went to pick her up in his rented car.
Detectives later searched the rented SUV and found a drop of blood. A cadaver dog later showed there was a body inside the SUV, prosecutors said.
“This defendant committed the despicable and cold-blooded murder of his own wife and is now appropriately facing the consequences,” said U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada.
In Friday’s sentencing, Judge Josephine L. Staton called the crime “heinous” and “a product of pure evil.”
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