A Salvadoran woman is charged with murder after prosecutors say she poisoned her husband with an overdose of sleeping pills. Alicia Marichu, 52, is accused of killing her husband Carlos Mota in 2011 by strangling him with a green-plastic cord beneath his bed as he slept at home. Police found the body wrapped in plastic on the floor in the garage. They also found three sleeping pills beside Mota’s head, according to the arrest report. Investigators believe the killer used an industrial-size sewing machine to spreadchnewing gas on Mota’s neck from below — and they are still trying to figure out how she did it. She allegedly had two reasons for it: To kill her husband and avoid being charged over another murder investigation that would have raised questions about whether she was a suspect in his death. Wrong answer? Wrong person, wrong time or just plain unlucky? Here’s what we know so far about this case — and why we think it’s unfair to blame Alicia Marichu for her own tragic demise.
The Mota case has particular resonance in the United States because it’s the first of its kind to involve a woman killing her own husband.
The case will also remind us that sometimes it’s the women who suffer while being bluffed, deceived, or killed by strangers. We’ve heard the complaints about how often strangers are gamely helping people cheat on their taxes, mortgage payments, and health-insurance policies — and especially after the person doing the alibi has already been found out.
The suspect is white, and she’s also married to another white man.
Last but not least, we have the fact that Alicia Marichu’s husband is also white. Yes, that’s her first husband — and her first husband’s first husband — to be charged with the murders.
The victim was ambushed while he was asleep.
On the surface, the Mota case doesn’t seem like it’s particularly out of the ordinary. After all, there are plenty of cases where a woman wakes up with a bad shoulder, noled to the intensive self-soothing techniques taught to her by her own bed-side narcissist, and comes home to find her husband dead in the garage.
There’s just one problem.
Mota didn’t die from natural causes like natural gas leaking or a fight gone wrong. He died of an aneurysm, a painful, sometimes life-threatening condition caused by excessive pressure inside your own body.
An aneurysm is sometimes a result of an over-the-top, overdriven, or under control person getting too close to the edge. The sufferer May Or May Not Be You, and the problem is often that people become too eager to help when they’re too late to save.
The victim was stabbed multiple times.
It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first time Alicia Marichu has been charged with slashed-personality disorder. In fact, the first time she was charged with the crime was in 2011 after her husband was murdered.
That charge was later dropped when she was found not guilty by reason of insanity. While a mentally ill woman can’t understand or take responsibility for her actions, she can’t also be known to have been insane at the time of the crime either.
The killer left behind a note imploring police to “send her away so she doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
The note left behind by the killer, which police secured from her husband, asks for the public’s help in finding her. In it, Alicia Marichu claims that her husband was an “idiot” who “needed to die” and that he “attacked me because I was weak” and “needed to be put down” because he “belonged to a race that oppressed him” and “my child was stolen.”
The killer left behind two more notes — one addressed to Puerto Rico, where her husband had worked for years, and the other addressed to Los Angeles, where she worked at a fast-food restaurant.
So far, no suspects have been identified in the Mota case.
A reward of up to $20,000 is being offered by authorities for any information leading towards an arrest in this case.
Final words
Is Alicia Marichu culpable for her husband’s death? Find out below.