Jordy Husein Suljanovic, on the left, was convicted and sentenced for the 2018 murder of his wife, Adriana Perez, center, and her boyfriend, Omar Santamaria-Ruiz, on the right, on March 14, 2023. (Harris County District Attorney’s Office)
A Texas man will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering his wife and her boyfriend back in 2018, a judge ruled this week.
Jordy Husein Suljanovic, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after an eight-day trial and automatically sentenced, according to Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.
On Oct. 2, 2018, Suljanovic shot and killed his wife, Adriana Perez, 41, and her boyfriend, Omar Santamaria-Ruiz, 33, in the closet of the married couple’s master bedroom at their residence in southwest Houston, the DA’s office said in a Wednesday press release.
The defendant caught his two victims in the act, by way of a “secret” security camera he had installed in their house, the DA said.
Suljanovic is a refugee from Bosnia who worked as a long-haul truck driver. During a trip, he monitored the camera feed – while driving.
“When he saw his 41-year-old wife and her 33-year-old lover at the house, he returned home and killed both of them, waking their children in the middle of the night with the gunshots,” the press release says.
After the slayings, Suljanovic enlisted his adult son, who is also named Jordy Suljanovic, 22, to help dispose of the evidence.
The pair took both of the bodies and dumped them in Louisiana.
The younger Suljanovic pleaded guilty to one charge of tampering with evidence in exchange for a five-year sentence last year, the DA said. He was previously charged with one count of kidnapping that was dismissed, Harris County court records show.
Santamaria-Ruiz’s body was dumped in the woods outside of Natchitoches, Louisiana; the son dumped his mother’s body near the Atchafalaya River outside Baton Rouge, the DA’s office said.
After the murders, the older Suljanovic sold the property in Houston and fled to Mexico City with his two younger daughters, his son, and his son’s then-16-year-old girlfriend, the DA explained.
The trajectory of the investigation was not clear from court records or the DA’s news release, but eventually, law enforcement caught up with the family. The older defendant was indicted by a Harris County grand jury on capital murder charges in January 2019, court records show.
Then the killer tried to move his entire family to Bosnia, the DA’s office noted. They made it onto a plane. They even made the first leg of the trip – but Suljanovic was detained in London and flown back to Houston where he was arrested by local law enforcement and the FBI.
Harris County Assistant District Attorney Lauren Bard co-prosecuted the case with ADA Kim Nwabeke.
Bard noted that the older Suljanovic had a history of abusive behavior toward his immigrant wife.
“She had been verbally and physically abused by him,” the ADA said. “And since she was born and raised in Mexico, she didn’t have citizenship of her own and probably didn’t feel like she could leave, she couldn’t go anywhere. I’m sure she felt trapped, and she also had two younger daughters and probably stayed in part because of the kids.”
Jurors in the case asked for and received all of the exhibits shown during the trial, a jury note obtained by Law&Crime shows. Late Tuesday, March 14, Suljanovic was convicted and quickly sentenced.
Perez’s brother and Santamaria-Ruiz’s sister gave victim impact statements, according to Ogg’s office. Those statements were not uploaded to the public case docket as of this writing.
“This man killed two people, including the mother of his children, and tried to flee the country to escape responsibility,” Ogg said. “We know that domestic violence can escalate to murder, and that is why it is so important to seek justice for the victims in cases like this.”
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