Following Marisela Botello Valadez’s disappearance, police said the suspects had left their jobs and their homes and refused to talk to authorities, showing a “pattern of avoidance and attempted concealment of evidence."
Three people have been arrested in the murder of a 23-year-old Seattle woman who traveled to Dallas to visit a friend and was last seen alive leaving a nightclub with one of the suspects, officials said. Marisela Botello Valadez was last seen October 5, 2020. Her remains were found last month in a wooded area in Wilmer, Texas, according to police
Charles Beltran, 31, was taken into custody without incident in Utah on a capital murder charge on Friday in connection with Botello Valadez's death. Nina Tamar Marano, 50, and 57-year-old Lisa Jo Dykes were also arrested in Florida last month, according to a statement by the Dallas Police Department.
On Oct. 2, 2020, Botello Valadez went to Dallas from Seattle, Washington, to visit a friend identified as Ortiz. Ortiz told detectives that Botello Valadez had taken a Lyft ride from his apartment to an unknown location late in the evening on October 4, 2020, and that was the last time he saw her, according to the arrest affidavit.
Surveillance footage showed Botello Valadez leaving Select Start, a bar in the 2800 block of Elm Street, with a man. Initially, police listed Botello Valadez as a “want to locate” case. When there were signs of no activity on her cellphone, social media, and bank accounts, police upgraded it to a missing person’s case, the police statement said.
In November during a news conference, police said that Charles Beltran was the last person to be seen with Botello Valdez. In December, Beltran’s vehicle, an Audi A6, was recovered in New York and a strand of hair was found inside the trunk, which is being tested to determine if it belonged to Botello Valadez, according to police.
On the day of Botello Valadez’s disappearance, cellphone records placed her, Beltran, Marano, and Dykes at a home located in Mesquite shared by Beltran and Dykes, according to authorities. The phone records showed that Dykes and Marano left the home the same day and headed to a wooded area near Hutchins, and then returned to the home, according to the arrest affidavit Dallas police said.
When police searched the home, they say they discovered that blood was cleaned from the carpet. Red and brown stains were found underneath the carpet that were later determined to be a DNA match for Valadez, police said.
Following Botello Valadez’s disappearance, police said the suspects had left their jobs and their homes and refused to talk to authorities, showing a “pattern of avoidance and attempted concealment of evidence."
On March 24, 2021, human remains were found in a wooded area near E. Belt Line Road and Post Oak Road in Wilmer, Texas, according to police.
The following day, those remains were positively identified by the Dallas County Medical Examiner as belonging to Marisela Botello Valadez.
Beltran was allegedly on the lam and Dykes and Marano were in Florida before they were arrested.
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