Man charged in presumed death of wife
Mother of six last was seen leaving bar with estranged husband
A missing mother of six children is presumed dead after leaving a north Houston bar more than a week ago with her estranged husband, who has since been charged in her death.
Authorities have been unable to find the body of 39-year-old Jennifer Sanchez, who was last seen alive the morning of Sept. 7. On the day of her disappearance, she went to the Catty Corner Ice House on Wakefield Drive in Oak Forest with her husband and accused killer, Joey Sanchez, according to court records.
Sanchez, 44, is slated to appear in court Monday after he was arrested on Sept. 12 and charged with capital murder in what the Harris County District Attorney’s Office described as “retaliation against Jennifer Sanchez.”
Court records show Sanchez repeatedly abused his slain wife of two years — even though her aunt, Yvonne Wiemann, never saw the tell-tale signs of abuse, she knew it was happening.
“A lot of the abuse we didn’t know about because she would hide it. If she had bruises she couldn’t cover, she wouldn’t come over,” Wiemann told the Houston Chronicle Sunday night.
She said her niece is believed to have spent the night out with a friend before coming home. At around 1 a.m., she slipped out of her home in the 800 block of Martin Street to see her estranged spouse at the nearby bar, according to family members and police.
“I don’t know if he made her go with him,” Wiemann said.
She later learned that Sanchez’ husband had been harassing her niece by waiting for her in the parking lot at her meat cutting job and posing as one of her six sons to get her on the phone at work.
Jennifer Sanchez did not have any children with the man believed to have killed her, Wiemann said.
He allegedly attacked Jennifer in June and November 2017 and was prohibited from having contact with her later that year. He violated the court order the same day of his wife’s disappearance when a Houston police sergeant identified a couple seen on surveillance footage at the Oak Forest bar as Jennifer and Joey Sanchez. The video shows the two walking into the bar, hugging and then leaving the bar together.
As a result of the violated court order, Sanchez’s bail in both felony assault cases was revoked.
He is now accused of killing his wife “by unknown manner and means with unknown object,” prosecutors wrote.
On Friday, Assistant District Attorney Amanda Petroff cited both of Sanchez’s 2017 arrests for assault of a family member for demanding that he be denied bail. During the November assault case, Sanchez was accusing of hitting his wife and knocking her to the ground outside Vara’s Sports Bar on the North Freeway Service Road.
After the November attack, Wiemann said her sister — Sanchez’ mother — called her in tears because the attack left her daughter with a scar.
The criminal complaint states Sanchez pleaded guilty in March of that year to a 2016 assault charge in which Sanchez was also the victim. He threw a glass at her and grabbed her, records show.
He was convicted of aggravated sex assault and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in June 1996. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.