Man charged with murdering wife in Carol Stream
A Carol Stream man has been accused of stabbing his wife to death in front of one of their children.
Baltazar Perez-Estrada, 32, of the 600 block of Gundersen Drive, was arrested Monday after he came to the Carol Stream Police Department, according to DuPage County Circuit Court records.
Perez-Estrada faces five counts of first-degree murder. DuPage County Judge Joshua Dieden ruled Thursday morning that Perez-Estrada should be detained pretrial.
According to the charges, he stabbed Maricela Simon-Franco, 26, around 10 p.m. Sunday in their home.
According to a petition for pretrial detention filed by Assistant State’s Attorney Lee Roupas, a man came to police Monday morning saying his brother had told him about a stabbing. He had been asked by his brother to pick up a man and his two daughters at the Glenside Library in Glendale Heights. They were wet, cold and covered in mud, so he took them to buy clothes and then to his brother’s house to shower. Perez-Estrada told the brother about the stabbing, and the brother told the man, according to the petition.
A little while later, Perez-Estrada entered the station and told a social services worker that he had learned his wife had a boyfriend, they argued, and he stabbed her, according to the petition.
The petition states that the defendant’s daughter was in a bedroom with her younger sister, heard her parents arguing, and saw her father “hitting” her mother with the knife. The girl told police her father then threw the knife in a nearby pond.
The couple had been married for about nine years. The victim’s uncle said the victim had been at his apartment earlier Sunday and had said she was going to leave Perez-Estrada, according to the petition.
A medical examiner determined Simon-Franco had been stabbed several dozen times in the face, head, neck, arms and chest, and was nearly decapitated, according to the petition.
The petition stated that Perez-Estrada had been living in Mexico for several months but returned on March 11. He was charged by federal authorities with illegal entry and released. On March 17, Carol Stream police were called to the apartment for a domestic incident, but no criminal charges were filed, according to the petition.
In a news release Thursday, State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said “The extremely violent end to a young mother’s life is something that should touch us all. Domestic violence continues to be a scourge on society, claiming more than 10 million victims a year in some form or fashion. In this case, the sad reality is, Maricela’s life has been reduced to a statistic of domestic violence due to the alleged actions of her husband, Baltazar Perez-Estrada. This brutal, senseless act of violence alleged against Mr. Perez-Estrada will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”