IN v Rios - Victims: His wife & 4 children
Alejandra Gutierrez was reported missing on December 8, 2005 after not returning home from school that day. Her mother watched her walk down the street towards her school bus stop at approximately 9:50 a.m. and that is the last time anyone saw her alive except for her alleged murderers. Extensive searches of the area failed to locate Alejandra.
A seemingly unrelated crime was reported to police during the early morning hours of December 13, 2005. Simon Rios a thirty-three-year-old illegal Mexican National called 911 to report that he had murdered his wife and their three children.
When police arrived Rios told them that he and his wife had argued about him doing household chores so he struck her with a pipe on her head, strangled her and then strangled their three children. Police found the four bodies lying on the bed where Simon Rios had positioned them. Simon Rios was arrested and charged with the murder of his family.
While incarcerated in the County Jail, Simon Rios indicated to authorities that he knew where they could find the body of the then missing 10-year-old Alejandra Gutierrez. As it turns out Alejandra had been a classmate of Rios’ daughter the previous year and the bus stop was two houses from the Rios home.
Rios eventually told authorities that he and seventeen-year-old Juan Rosales dragged Alejandra into his van. Juan Rosales raped Alejandra, and then he raped her. They eventually dumped her body in a remote location in another county. Her body was located based on the information given to authorities by Rios. When authorities found the body it was frozen. The Coroner had to wait a few days for the body to thaw before an autopsy could be performed.
Allen County, Indiana prosecutors today filed papers that will allow Simon Rios to plead guilty to murdering his wife and children in exchange for life in prison.
Simon Rios already struck a plea deal with Delaware County prosecutors earlier this year sparing him the death penalty for the rape and murder of 10-year-old Alejandra Gutierrez in December 2005. Part of the reason Delaware County agreed to the plea deal was because the Gutierrez family did not want to have to go through the pain of the trial. The other reason was that Delaware County prosecutors were under the impression that Allen County was going to seek the death penalty.
Sentencing for Alejandra’s murder is set for November 8, 2007. No date was provided for a sentencing date for the case against Simon Rios for the slaughter of his family.
Simon Rios, being sentenced to five life terms in prison without the possibility of parole made a decision to take his own life on October 9, 2008. According to the coroner, Rios’ death was by asphyxiation from hanging. He was found hanging in his cell and was pronounced dead after forty minutes of rescue efforts failed to revive him.
His attorney claims Rios always expressed his remorse to her for the crimes he committed and he also had one final written request - to send his body back to his homeland of Mexico for burial.
Sitting here writing this post three ideas stuck out in my mind:
- Rios’ final act was to commit one more murder (take another life)
- His final request was all about him - to send his body to where he wants it to be buried.
- Simon Rios died selfish and remorseless
Rios to Plead Guilty in Return for Life Without Parole, The Star Press.
Coroner Rules Simon Rios Prison Death a Suicide, NBC24.com, November 7, 2008.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
The article has
no responses yet