Las Vegas woman charged in connection to missing persons case

Suspect allegedly helped dispose of remains of man who disappeared in 2017

New Mexico State Police arrested a Las Vegas, N.M., woman last week in connection to a 2017 missing persons case.

Sharise Herrera, 32, was charged with two counts each of tampering with evidence and conspiracy to commit tampering with evidence, among other charges, in connection to the disposal of the body of Henry Duran, who disappeared in March 2017, according to a criminal complaint filed last week in San Miguel County Magistrate Court.

Duran’s sister reported him missing to state police in March 2017.

According to the criminal complaint, Herrera said her boyfriend said he shot Duran outside their home in Las Vegas. The boyfriend and another man burned his body in a trash pit, the criminal complaint states.

While a state police news release stated the department anticipates filing charges against the boyfriend as the investigation continues, The New Mexican is not naming him because he has not been charged with a crime in the case.

He is currently in the Penitentiary of New Mexico on unrelated charges, including aggravated battery causing great bodily harm.

Once the burning was complete, the complaint says Herrera told police, the boyfriend asked her to help him remove Duran’s remains and put them into black plastic bags.

The two took the remains to San

Geronimo Cemetery, west of Las Vegas. According to the criminal complaint, Herrera and her boyfriend removed larger pieces of bone from the ashes, crushed them and disposed of them in the Gallinas River.

Herrera’s brother told police he went to her house after Duran disappeared and smelled what he described as burning flesh, the complaint states.

His sister contacted him to ask for help getting a truck started, the complaint says, and told him she and the boyfriend were going to go dump ashes at the cemetery.

Investigators recovered bags of ashes and bones from the cemetery, which included a piece of a jawbone with an intact tooth, according to a state police news release.

The state Office of the Medical Investigator used a postmortem dental comparison to identify the remains as belonging to Duran, the criminal complaint states. OMI was unable to test the remains for DNA because of the damage from burning.

Herrera is scheduled to appear in San Miguel County Magistrate Court on Tuesday for a conditions of release hearing.