Eduardo Arevalo, on the left, and Viridiana Arevalo, on the right. (The Colony Police Department)
A suburban Texas man will spend 40 years in prison for murdering his pregnant sister in an attempt to protect their family’s honor, according to court records obtained by Law&Crime.
On Dec. 16, 2019, Eduardo Arevalo, 23, strangled his sister, Viridiana Arevalo, 23, from behind while she was sitting on the couch in the living room of the family’s house in The Colony, a suburb of Dallas some 30 miles due north in nearby Denton County.
“I murdered her, I murdered her,” the killer would later tell detectives.
Well before his confession, however, the woman’s younger brother – who was 19 at the time – made sure she stayed dead by wrapping her head in black duct tape, The Dallas Morning News reported.
An affidavit obtained by the paper says the since-condemned man feared that his sister “might come back to life.”
Then, he picked her body up, put it in the trunk of his car, and dumped her in a field some 40 miles away near Whitewright in Fannin County.
The woman, eight months pregnant at the time, was reported missing by her boyfriend the next day. Relatives would later find a suicide note that the defendant would come to admit that he faked.
A few days after the slaying, Eduardo Arevalo would pick up his sister’s body from the field and then dump her again. This time within the city limits – because he wanted his family to find her – in an alleyway on Strickland Avenue. After that, he stopped at a nearby Whataburger, and then he went back home.
Neighbors found the pregnant woman’s body behind their own homes on Dec. 22, 2019, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW.
Officers reviewed surveillance footage covering the alley where Viridiana Arevalo, known to her friends and family as “Viri,” was found and her brother became the lone suspect in her murder.
“We really want to thank members of the community for sharing their home surveillance and doorbell cameras with us because that really assisted the investigation and helped piece together the timeline for this,” Colony Police Department Sgt. Aaron Woodard told KDFW at the time.
Eduardo Arevalo confessed the next day.
“As the week went on, Eduardo stated that he wanted his family to know where Viri was at so he went and picked up her body and brought her back Sunday morning in the early morning hours and dumped her body in the alleyway,” Woodard added.
“It would be better off that she wasn’t here,” the killer told investigators – saying she was an “embarrassment to their family.”
Police would go on to write in the affidavit that Eduardo Arevalo also said he wanted to protect the unborn child and his family from his sister – saying that she wouldn’t be a good mother.
“It takes a piece of me that I can’t get back, from my sister, my little brother as well,” older brother Diego Arevalo told KDFW after the arrest. “To see him like this, I would never imagine him being in a mugshot, in jail.”
The oldest of the siblings, Diego Arevalo would go on to express extended disbelief at the situation in comments reported by CBS News.
“I know my brother,” he said. “He wouldn’t do something like this. He’s very kind, a very positive kind of guy, very motivated. He helped my family out, he helped my brothers, he even helped my sister out.”
Eduardo Arevalo pleaded guilty in a Denton County District Court on June 9 to one charge of felony murder. In doing so, he avoided the death penalty on his prior charge of capital murder.
According to family members, the deceased woman was religious, loved to draw comics, and was looking forward to being a mother.
“She was excited,” Diego Arevalo recalled. “She always wanted a sister. She was the only sister in the family. She wanted a little sister but it never happened.”
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