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3 Indicted For Murder Of Seattle Woman Who Vanished While Visiting A Friend In Texas
Police found blood matched to Marisela Botello-Valadez in the home shared by Charles Anthony Beltran and Lisa Jo Dykes, along with cell phone data that linked them and Nina Tamar Marano to the crime.
Three suspects were indicted this week for the murder of a Seattle woman who vanished in October during a vacation to visit a friend in Texas last year.
Dallas County Criminal District Attorney John Creuzot announced the murder indictment of Charles Anthony Beltran, 32; Nina Tamar Marano, 49; and Lisa Jo Dykes, 58, in a statement Wednesday, months after the body of Marisela Botello-Valadez was discovered abandoned in a wooded area.
Botello-Valadez had traveled to Texas from her home in Seattle in October to visit a friend, according to The Dallas Morning News. The friend told police she left the home on October 5 to go out alone and never returned. Her family said the 23-year-old was last captured on surveillance footage leaving a Deep Ellum bar in the early hours of October 5, local station KXAS-TV reports.
Botello-Valadez's body was discovered on March 24 in a densely wooded area near E. Belt Line Road and Post Oak Road in Wilmer, Texas, according to a statement from the Dallas Police. Within days, authorities had arrested Marano and Dykes in Florida in connection with the slaying.
Beltran was apprehended in April in Utah by the U.S. Marshals North Texas Violent Fugitive Task Force.
Authorities have not revealed what relationship the suspects may have had to Botello-Valadez.
Investigators said cell phone records placed Botello-Valadez at the same Mesquite home as all three suspects on the day she was last “known to be alive,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Records also showed that Dykes and Marano cell phones were also in the area where Botello-Valadez’s body was discovered on the night of October 5.
Police also found Botello-Valadez's blood on a carpet in the home where both Beltran and Dykes were living at the time, authorities said.
Oxygen.com reached out to the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office regarding the case but did not receive an immediate response.
