Figueroapleadsguiltytomurder
Plea deal includes a 48-year sentence
On June 3, 2021, Jessica Reyes stood in front of the Boulder Justice Center and said her sister Rita Gutierrez-garcia would get justice.
“She’s going to be victorious,” Reyes said that day. “She will not be a victim. We’re going to win.”
One year later, Reyes stood with her family in the same spot after just having watched Gutierrez-garcia’s killer, Juan
Jose Figueroa Jr., plead guilty.
“Today his actions are exposed, he is exposed,” Reyes said. “We always knew we would be here, to bring her home. To bring her justice.”
Figueroa, 33, pleaded guilty Friday in Boulder District Court to second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping as part of a plea agreement that included taping a confession to the murder and revealing to authorities where to find Gutierrez-garcia’s body.
Figueroa was initially indicted by a grand jury on counts of first-degree murder after deliberation, felony murder and second-degree kidnapping in the death of Gutierrez-garcia, who went missing in
Longmont in 2018.
He is already serving a 93-year to life sentence in Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City on an unrelated sex assault conviction.
As part of the plea agreement Figueroa will serve 48 years on the second-degree murder count, the maximum sentence on the charge, consecutive to the sex assault sentence.
He will also not be able to appeal the case or ask for a sentence consideration.
Boulder County First Assistant District Attorney Katharina Booth, who prosecuted the case along with Deputy District Attorney Michelle Sudano, said the priori
ty for law enforcement, with Figueroa already likely behind bars for the rest of his life, was to be able to locate Gutierrez-garcia’s remains.
“Does he deserve this plea deal? He doesn’t,” Booth told Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill. “What he deserves is to spend his last day behind bars. But today is not about everything that Juan Figueroa deserves. It was about Rita. Rita deserved to be brought home to her family.”
‘Team Rita’
Gutierrez-garcia went missing on March 18, 2018, when she was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with friends and family at bars in downtown Longmont. She was last seen in a city parking lot behind 3’s Bar.
Figueroa was named as the primary suspect early on in the case, but with no body, prosecutors were only able to present the case to a grand jury in April 2021 as a “no body homicide.”
But following cooperation that was a condition of the plea agreement, Figueroa led investigators to search an area in Weld County, where GutierrezGarcia’s remains were recovered April 28.
In addition to leading police to the body, the plea agreement also required Figueroa to write a confession and tape a video confession.
Prosecutors said Figueroa admitted to knocking Gutierrez-garcia unconscious, dragging her to his truck and strangling her.
“That was always my prayer, that he would confess,” Gutierrez-garcia’s mother Dianne Romero said. “There were some days I wasn’t quite sure it would happen.”
Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty credited investigators with coming up with “overwhelming” evidence that prosecutors were able to use to leverage Figueroa into confessing.
“It is my true hope today we provided some answers to her family,” Dougherty said.
Prosecutors also thanked the survivor of the sex assault case that came forward and testified against Figueroa in the first case, as well as the grand jury that later indicted him.
Lastly, Dougherty thanked Gutierrez-garcia’s family for their patience and trust in the investigation.
“We’re here today because of them,” Dougherty said. “They’re heroes.”
But Romero said the team of investigators who worked the case were her heroes.
“Team Rita,” she said turning back toward them.
‘He will never be able to hurt anyone again’
Even with the sentence agreed upon, it was an emotional one-hour hearing, with several members of Gutierrez-garcia’s family speaking.
Figueroa, who appeared in custody at the hearing, also spoke at the hearing and confessed to the murder in court.
“I’m sorry that I took Rita from you, I really am,” Figueroa said.
Figueroa said he “was crazy. I was insane, I couldn’t handle my emotions. When she called me ‘weirdo’, yeah, I snapped.”
Figueroa said a cop saw him and should have arrested him before the incident, though Longmont police say that did not happen.
Regardless, Mulvhaill said Figueroa had nobody to blame but himself.
“You changed your life when you killed Rita Gutierrez-garcia,” Mulvahill said. “You killed a woman; a beautiful, innocent woman who had the bad luck of running into you.”
Mulvahill also disputed Figueroa when Figueroa said he was not a monster and that he did not prey on women.
“You cannot say you are not that person, this is now a second conviction,” Mulvahill said.
Upon considering whether the plea deal was justice, Mulvahill shrugged and acknowledged it was a carefully constructed plea deal designed to give the family some closure.
When Romero was asked the same question, she noted nothing could ever bring back GutierrezGarcia but said she did find some justice in the outcome.
“We have Rita,” she said. “And Juan will be where he should be, where he will never be able to hurt anyone again.”