A Guatemalan citizen was charged Thursday with first-degree murder more than a year after the gruesome killing and dismemberment of his wife in Texas.
Stephanie Hernandez, 43, was strangled to death in September 2021. Her body was mutilated and placed in trash bags scattered across southwest Houston, authorities said.
Police investigating the flies-covered bags noticed that the remains were bound with a landscaper cord. An autopsy showed that the victim had a hard-plastic red cord, a string trimmer cord, around her neck.
Hernandez’s common-law husband Fidel Baquin, who worked as a weed trimmer for a landscaping company, was immediately named a suspect.
A search of his home revealed trash bags similar to those used in the crime. DNA evidence also linked him to the slaying.
