A stepmother accused of murdering her boyfriend’s two young children was motivated by her biological mother’s jealousy, according to an attorney in the case.
Corena Rose Minjarez, 36, and her boyfriend Jesus Dominguez, 35, of Pueblo, Colorado, appeared in court Friday accused of murdering the children.
They were arrested in February after other relatives expressed concern about Dominguez’s children, Jesús Jr., 5, and Yesenia, 3, and police officers discovered their bodies. The reports were made about six years after the last confirmed sighting of the children.
Yesenia was found encased in concrete inside the Kings Storage Unit, where the family had been living in Pueblo, while her brother’s remains were found inside a suitcase in the trunk of a car at a nearby junkyard.
Defense attorney Becky Briggs, who represents Dominguez, said Minjarez was jealous of the children’s biological mother because she believed he was cheating on her with his ex, according to the village chief.
The couple were arrested in February of this year after police discovered the bodies of Dominguez’s children, Jesus Jr. (right), five, and Yesenia (left), three, in January of this year.
Judge Allison Ernst ruled Friday during a preliminary hearing that the defendants would face trial.
Minjarez and Dominguez are each charged with first-degree murder of a victim under the age of 12 by a person in a position of trust and abuse of a corpse.
Minjarez’s relatives told investigators they were concerned about the harsh disciplinary methods she used with young children, including locking the girl in a room until she finished eating a carrot.
The defendant’s own teenage son even confronted her about the “excessive physical punishment” she allegedly used against Jesus Jr, such as slapping him and locking both boys in their rooms for long periods.
He told detectives that he believed his mother was venting her anger about her strained relationship with Dominguez on her children.
Other family members also claimed she told detectives she wished she never had children because “life would be so much easier.”
A Colorado man and woman, Jesús Dominguez, 35 (pictured right) and Corena Rose Minjarez, 36 (pictured left), were arrested after police discovered two young children dead after They had not been seen in almost six years.
The first remains were found on January 20 when the Kings storage unit was being cleaned out.
Minjarez and Dominguez lived with the children on Sundance Drive in Pueblo until March 2018, when they were evicted from their home, detectives said.
At that point they began living in their car until sometime in 2019, when they moved to Bonnymede Road. At the time of this move, the children were no longer with them, detectives said. The timing of the suspected murder is unclear.
It was Minjarez’s mother who alerted police about the missing children and told them she had not seen them since June 2018.
He said there was a suspicious trash can filled with concrete in the storage unit where the couple lived. Police cut through the concrete and found Yesenia’s decomposed remains wrapped in layers of garbage bags.
Sergeant. Steven Jesik said cops believe the defendants mixed the concrete in the unit, after finding two open 80-pound bags of concrete mix, a shovel and a water spray tool.
The warehouse owners told police the unit had been rented in March 2018, and in July, they noticed a strange odor coming from the complex. They called Minjarez, who attributed the smell to hamburger meat he said he left inside.
Despite this missing poster posted on Facebook, the police admitted that they did not know the children were missing until the remains were found.
Jesús Jr’s remains were found inside Minjarez’s vehicle at a Pueblo junkyard on February 6 of this year, inside a suitcase in the trunk.
The children’s remains were so decomposed that the cause of their death could not be determined.