San Diego Woman’s Body Identified, Suspect in Jail
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ABC News(SAN DIEGO) — A body found late Tuesday near Lake Skinner in Riverside County, Calif., has been identified as a missing California woman, Brittany Killgore.
The San Diego County Medical Examiner confirmed the body’s identity Wednesday evening, a day after it was discovered about 20 miles from Killgore’s home.
Earlier, a suspect in Killgore’s murder was released from a San Diego hospital and taken to jail, officials said.
Jessica Lynn Lopez, 25, was being held on suspicion of first-degree murder, Steve Walker, spokesman for the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, told ABC News, though charges had not been filed.
Lopez was found with self-inflicted lacerations in a Ramada Inn hotel room in San Diego Tuesday morning.
Officers found an apparent suicide note in Lopez’s room, which allegedly explained what happened to Killgore, 22, and where her body was.
Investigators recovered the body after they followed the clues in the suicide note.
An officer described the scene at the hotel over a police scanner: “Lacerations at the Ramada limited….The female is conscious and breathing. Medics are en route.”
The San Diego Sheriff’s Office and the San Diego County District Attorney declined to comment on the relationship between Killgore and Lopez.
The developments came after Killgore’s estranged husband said he would return home from Afghanistan, where he is an active-duty Marine, to help in the search for his wife.
Killgore, of Fallbrook, Calif., filed for divorce from her husband, Cory Killgore, also 22, just days before she disappeared Friday evening.
Police said they believe 45-year-old Marine Louis Ray Perez may have been the last person to see Killgore alive. Perez was arrested Sunday on an unrelated charge of possession of an AR-15 assault rifle and is being held in San Diego Central Jail on $500,000 bail.
“Mr. Perez was not cooperative or what we felt was fully forthcoming in his interview,” said Lt. Larry Nesbit of the San Diego Sheriff’s Office.
“He’s being actively investigated for this murder,” Nesbit told ABC News station KABC-TV in Los Angeles.
Killgore told friends she was going to spend Friday evening in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. However, authorities believe she never made it. Her cellphone was recovered in the area by San Diego trolley security.
Police declined to say whom Killgore planned to spend the evening with or the nature of her relationship with Perez.
Court records obtained by ABC News show Killgore filed for divorce last week from her husband, and a neighbor says he believes she was cheating on her husband.
“She has been unfaithful to him,” the neighbor said. “She has just been doing her own thing and telling everyone that she is getting a divorce.”
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