Missing 6-year-old Avril Duenas-Juarez, left, and her father, Jose Duenas-Quinonez, right; Micaela Juarez Ocolt, killed last week, appears inset. (Wisconsin Department of Justice; GoFundMe)
A Wisconsin man is believed to have killed his wife and fled the country with the couple’s 6-year-old daughter, authorities allege.
Jose Duenas-Quinonez, 37, has a warrant out for his arrest over the murder of Micaela Juarez Ocolt, 43, who was found dead in her business on Monday, according to the Madison Police Department.
Officers responded to the residence on South Midvale Boulevard around 4 p.m. Initially, the husband was considered a person of interest in the case, and the police said they were working to contact him.
After getting the FBI involved, local law enforcement learned that the man was no longer stateside and, days later, identified him as a suspect in his wife’s slaying.
A GoFundMe has been started by one of Ocolt’s sons.
“I just wish she was still here to repay everything she has done for us as a mother and a best friend,” Alfredo Zamora wrote.
Police believe the suspect left the country with his daughter well over 24 hours before police were contacted about Ocolt’s death.
“Yesterday afternoon, MPD pursued issuing an Amber Alert for the child,” the MPD said in a separate statement released the day after the woman’s body was found. “We worked with the WI DOJ to issue the alert. A statewide Wisconsin Crime Alert Bulletin was issued as part of this process. When it was determined that Mr. Duenas-Quinonez left the country with his daughter, the Alert was cancelled due to the restricted broadcast geography of the Alert.”
In a separate Facebook video, the MPD addressed concerns about the abortive AMBER Alert in the case.
“Very early on, we heard that a child may have been missing,” a spokesperson for the department said in that video. “It took us quite a bit of time to narrow down, for certain, that the child wasn’t with another family member or with potential family friends that may have been watching the child. So, once we had narrowed that down, we did reach out to the Department of Justice, the Wisconsin Department of Justice to start the AMBER Alert process. That is a multi-faceted, many-step process – takes several hours to do.”
After issuing the statewide crime bulletin, part of the AMBER Alert process in the Badger State, authorities said the suspect’s presumed vehicle was spotted in Rockford, Illinois.
After that, “federal partners” got involved, the MPD spokesperson said, and just as the AMBER Alert was set to be broadcast across the state, law enforcement learned that the suspect and child were no longer in the country.
According to court records, the man has been charged with one count of intentional homicide in the first degree.
According to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office, Ocolt had been stabbed four times. Three of the wounds were to her neck, the autopsy determined, and one of those wounds was fatal.
In criminal complaints obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal and Madison-based ABC affiliate WKOW, the MPD began to piece together what they believe to be the reason for Ocolt’s death.
According to law enforcement, Ocolt may have started seeing another man in the weeks before she was killed – or, at least, Duenas-Quinonez seemed to think that his wife was cheating on him.
Ocolt died last Saturday night, the complaint reportedly says, and there was a confrontation between the couple that night. Ocolt allegedly contacted the man she was dating – after she left a bridal shower. Then the defendant made contact with both of them.
But there was allegedly substantial tension in the relationship since before that evening. According to the victim’s adult son, who found his mother dead, and “immediately identified” the presumed killer, Duenas-Quinonez was “demonstrating increased jealousy and controlling behavior” over his mother the past month or so.
According to the complaint, Duenas-Quinonez and his daughter, Avril Duenas-Juarez, were seen on surveillance footage in Illinois by 2 a.m. on Sunday. At 6:05 a.m., they boarded a Spirit Airlines flight to Cancun, Mexico. That flight arrived at 9:41 a.m.
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