Suitcase gal ex charged
Got $1G with her ATM card: feds
A dozen tear-stained miles in Westchester County separated the uncoupled couple: Valeria Reyes, with a sad line of mourners alongside her jade green casket.
And spurned ex-boyfriend Javier da Silva, arrested in her gruesome death.
The 24-year-old victim’s crowded wake in her hometown of New Rochelle began just prior to da Silva’s brief Tuesday afternoon appearance in White Plains Federal Court. He was charged with kidnapping resulting in death, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
“I’m just trying not to feel hate,” said Reyes’ mother, Norma Sanchez, as she left the Lloyd Maxcy & Sons Funeral Home. “Because I’ve been feeling a lot of hate for the hands that did this to my daughter.
“I feel relieved because they found him. But no, wait — my daughter’s still not here. My daughter is gone.”
Da Silva, 24, arrived in Federal Court after his arrest one day earlier in the slaying of Reyes. Her body, with her legs and hands bound by white twine and tape, was stuffed inside a red suitcase and dumped in a wooded area of Greenwich, Conn. Cops said her mouth was covered with packing tape.
The suspect was busted at 9 p.m. Monday in Queens after investigators linked him with a $1,000 cash withdrawal from an ATM using a credit card stolen from Reyes, according to police. Da Silva, of Flushing, wore a quilted olive-colored jacket and a solemn expression in the courtroom.
Authorities charged him with kidnapping Reyes from her home about a year after the victim broke off her relationship with the manipulative and overpossessive da Silva, according to the victim’s mother.
Investigators were able to match an old pencil sketch left in Reyes’ apartment to a social media account photo of da Silva as they hunted her killer, the complaint said.
“It no longer exists, because I had it burned,” said the victim’s mother. “His look was just evil.”
Once in custody, da Silva waived his rights and confessed that he was at the victim’s residence on Jan. 29 when she “fell to the ground and hit her head” after the two had sex, a six-page federal complaint charged.
Da Silva, rather than seek help for Reyes, admitted to covering her mouth with packing tape, binding her limbs and jamming her body into the suitcase for disposal. Reyes’ parents and her current boyfriend reported her missing on Jan. 30, setting off a search that ended with the discovery of the suitcase on Feb. 5. Theaspiringtattoo artist — who predicted her slaying in a January phone conversation with her mother — was not identified until the day after her decomposing body was found roughly 10 miles from New Rochelle. Her father and brother made the ID after an autopsy determined she’d been murdered.
Anguished friends and relatives of the slain Reyes expressed their sorrow over the woman lost too young.
Jennifer Abarca, 24, recalled how she and Reyes were best of friends during their school days before drifting apart.
“She was a fighter,” said Abarca. “The world wasn’t always nice to her, but she fought through everything.”
Added the victim’s 12-year-old cousin Michelle Reyes, “We’re going to miss her so much.”
Cops from New Rochelle and Greenwich arrested da Silva based in part of video footage of the ATM withdrawal in New Rochelle at 5 a.m. on Jan. 29. He acknowledged smoking marijuana Monday in the hours before his arrest.
Da Silva, a dual citizen of Venezuela and Portugal, was represented by a federal defender because of his lack of funds.