New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Man gets 25 years for murder of girlfriend in East Haven
NEW HAVEN — A city man was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday for the 2020 East Haven murder of his longtime girlfriend, who was found buried in a shallow grave behind a restaurant.
Jonnathan Jara-Aucapina was charged in December 2020 with the disappearance and murder of Lizzbeth Aleman-Popoca, who also was the mother of his child, after he reported her missing to East Haven police on July 3 of that year. Her body was found in a shallow grave behind the Branford restaurant where Jara-Aucapina worked about two weeks after the murder, an arrest warrant said.
He pleaded guilty to murder on Feb. 6 and was sentenced Tuesday in state Superior Court in New Haven.
Police believe Jara-Aucapina killed Aleman-Popoca inside their East Haven home between 11:41 p.m. June 30 and 3:18 a.m. July 1, 2020.
He then buried her body behind LoMonaco’s Ristorante Italiano on West Main Street in Branford, where he worked, between 10:19 and 11:53 p.m. July 1, the warrant said.
The Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner ruled the death a homicide by homicidal asphyxia.
Jara-Aucapina was seen purchasing a hoe and shovel at the Home Depot in East Haven before driving out to the restaurant in the victim’s vehicle, police said.
Her body was found in a grave behind the dumpsters of the restaurant on July 15 after a state police cadaver dog alerted to the scent of a body in AlemanPopoca’s Lexus and near the dumpsters, the warrant
said.
Jara-Aucapina’s phone location information placed him near LoMonaco’s as late as 11:52 p.m. and in the vicinity of his home at 12:01 a.m. July 2, where he remained until 2:29 a.m., according to the warrant.
According to the warrant, Jara-Aucapina, a native of Ecuador, told his
girlfriend’s relatives that that she went to Mexico to marry someone to “fix her papers,” but was stuck at the border because of the missing person report.
Police said they received a missing person complaint from AlemanPopoca’s sister, Yaneth Aleman;, father, Albino Aleman Sedeño; and JaraAucapina on July 3. While they were not formally married, Jara-Aucapina referred to her as his wife throughout the investigation, police said.
Jara-Aucapina told police that his “wife” had not been seen or heard from since early morning July 1, but claimed that when he left for work at UPS, at 456 Sackett Point Road in North Haven, at 3:15 a.m., she was still in bed. according to police.
He told police he received a phone call later that morning from his then-7-year-old daughter saying that her mother was not in their apartment, the warrant said.
He said he returned home about 10 a.m. to find that Aleman-Popoca and her white 2007 Lexus were missing — but surveillance footage later obtained by police, including from nearby Overbrook School, showed him driving the car well after he
said it was gone, according to the warrant.
The warrant also states that at one point after the time he had told police that Aleman-Popoca and the Lexus were gone, he conducted 33 searches on his phone of how to lower the back seats of a Lexus and that he was trying to trade her Lexus for a pickup truck within hours of her disappearance.