UPDATE -- Triple-murder suspect prelim set for April 29

Triple-murder suspect Jorge Alberto Lopez-Orozco was returned from Mexico to Elmore County last week to face trial.

Lopez-Orozco is a former FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive who has been charged with the 2002 murder of his girlfriend and her two children. Their bodies were discovered in a burned-out vehicle near the Snake River in Elmore County.

Lopez-Orozco was arraigned Friday afternoon before Elmore County Magistrate Judge George Hicks on three counts of murder in the first degree and ordered held on $1 million bond.

Judge Hicks read Lopez-Orozco his rights and the information contained in the criminal complaints, which alleged Lopez-Orozco had shot Rebecca Ramirez, 29, in the head, causing her death, and fatally shot and then burned the bodies of her two children, Miguel, 2, and Ricardo, 4, some time between July 30 and Aug. 1 of 2002.

Sheriff Rick Layher said that the deaths of the two children made it emotionally one of his most difficult cases in all his years of law enforcement. He had vowed not to rest until Lopez-Orozco was arrested and expressed relief that the suspect was now behind bars in Elmore County. "It's been a long time coming," he said.

Lopez-Orozco was escorted by FBI Special Agents from Mexico to Salt Lake City, Utah, by plane on Thursday evening, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Salt Lake City Field office, James S. McTighe, said in making the announcement.

After arriving at Salt Lake City International Airport, FBI Special Agents, Sheriff Rick Layer and several of his deputies, and Idaho State Police detectives transported Lopez-Orozco by vehicle to the Elmore County Jail. He was booked into the jail shortly after midnight Friday morning.

His release by Mexican authorities on a U.S. Department of Justice extradition warrant was kept under wraps for security reasons.

Lopez-Orozco was placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list in March 2005. He was apprehended in Zihuantanejo, Mexico, by the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Mexican Federal Ministerial Police in October 2009.

It took nearly a year and a half for the extradition process to make its way through the Mexican courts, but Justice Department officials have said it is not unusual for an extradition proceeding to take that long in a case involving penalties as severe as those Lopez-Orozco is facing.

"The FBI extends its gratitude to the government in Mexico for its attention to this matter," McTighe said in a prepared statement.

"By assisting in the arrest and extradition of Jorge Lopez-Orozco, authorities in Mexico have allowed the judicial process to continue here in the United States, specifically in Elmore County, Idaho, where Lopez-Orozco is accused of murdering three people."

The FBI Salt Lake City Field Office also thanked the FBI's Legal Attaché office in Mexico City, the U.S. Justice Department's Office of International Affairs in the Criminal Division, the U.S. Department of State, the Elmore County Sheriffs Office, the Elmore County Prosecutor's Office and the Idaho State Police for their assistance with the extradition.

Because Mexico will not extradite anyone facing the death penalty, Aaron Bazzoli, who was the county prosecuting attorney at the time of the murders, had agreed to not seek the death penalty if Lopez-Orazco was arrested in Mexico. The current county prosecutor, Kristina Schindele, also agreed to that stipulation when Lopez-Orozco finally was arrested in Mexico.

If convicted, he could face life in prison, however.

During his video arraignment Friday, judge Hicks appointed the Elmore County Public Defender's Office to serve as Lopez-Orozco's attorneys.

Following an attorney appearance before Judge Hicks Tuesday, a preliminary hearing was set for 10 a.m. on April 29. Lopez-Orozco's attorneys waived his right to a speedy trial.

During the preliminary hearing Hicks will determine if there is sufficient evidence to bind Lopez-Orozco over for trial in district court. If the magistrate rules adequate evidence exists to justify a trial, he would then be arraigned in district court, the first point at which he would formally enter a plea to the charges, and a trial date would be set. The process could move slightly faster if defense attorneys waive any of the steps, or slow down based on decisions made as a result of pre-trial conferences and motions.

If the case goes to trial, it could be expensive for the county. Typically, murder cases in Elmore County have cost between $300,000 and $500,000. Because so many of the potential witnesses in the case are scattered throughout the country and would have to be transported here and housed, plus the need for the defense to conduct its own investigation and hire its own expert witnesses, the upper figure is a likely estimate for the costs, county officials have privately conceded.

In a murder case it is not unusual for a trial to begin a year or more after arraignment, unless a defendant pleads guilty at some point in the pre-trial process.

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Lopez-Orozco had been sought for the murder of Rebecca and two of her seven children, Miguel, and Ricardo.

Their bodies had been found by two Mountain Home AFB airmen on Aug. 11, 2002, in a car that had been set on fire on Nielsen Road, also known as Gravel Pit Road, just off the Bruneau Highway near the Snake River Bridge in southern Elmore County. They had last been seen with Lopez-Orozco on July 30 and authorities believe they were killed some time on Aug. 1, 2002.

Identification of the bodies had tentatively been made based on jewelry found on Ramirez at the crime scene. The bodies were so badly burned in the fire, where temperatures were believed to have reached 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, that only DNA testing was able to confirm their IDs.

There had been a report called in Aug. 1 of smoke in the general area where the car was found, but no investigation had been made of the vague report.

Both Ramirez and the 4-year-old were found to have died from gunshot wounds, the autopsy reports indicated. So little remained of the younger child that forensic pathologists could not say if he also had been shot or not.

Lopez-Orozco was not the father of either of the children. Authorities believe the murder was committed because Ramirez, described at the time as Lopez-Orozco's girlfriend, had threatened to expose their affair to his wife.

Within 24 hours of the murder, allegedly with the help of his brother, Simon, Lopez-Orozco fled the area by car.

On Aug. 8, 2002, he called from San Jose, Calif., to his home in Meadows Trailer Park, to ask his wife and three children, including the couple's newborn infant at the time, to join him in San Jose.

According to a federal fugitive warrant criminal complaint filed in United States District Court in 2002, Lopez-Orozco allegedly confessed his crime to family members after he fled to California. Authorities believe he stayed briefly with his relatives in San Jose, then crossed the border and took up refuge in Mexico.

Lopez-Orozco was placed on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list on March 17, 2005, with a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Layher said the FBI had received a tip meriting investigation concerning Lopez-Orozco's whereabouts almost every week since the murders and on several occasions contacted the Elmore County Sheriff's Office for investigative assistance.

On Oct. 7, 2009, acting on a tip from an unidentified private citizen, the U.S. Marshal's Service and the FBI Legal Attaché, both in Mexico City, in cooperation with the Mexican Federal Ministerial Police, arrested Lopez-Orozco without incident while he was hauling a load of metal into a scrap yard in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

Elmore County Prosecuting Attorney Kristina Schindele, along with the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice's International Affairs Division, immediately filed for extradition.

Ramirez was last seen with Lopez-Orozco in Nyssa, Ore., on July 30, 2002, when she dropped two of her children off at her father's house, apparently indicating at that time that she expected to return shortly.

But she took Miguel and Ricardo with her when she drove off with Lopez-Orozco in the Pontiac that later was found in Elmore County.

The mother of seven children in all, her other children were staying with other relatives at the time of her death. Several different men were the fathers of her children. Miguel was the only one of her children fathered by Martin Hernandez, of Caldwell, her former common-law husband, from whom she had been divorced.

After the killings he stepped up and took responsibility for raising all five of Rameriz's surviving children, several of whom have now grown to adulthood.

Rameriz's mother in Glenns Ferry had talked to Elmore County deputies, a few days after she was last seen, about her concerns that she hadn't been able to reach her daughter in several days, but did not follow up by filing a formal missing person's report. Nor had her father filed a missing person's report in Nyssa when she had failed to return to pick up the children she'd left there.

Lopez-Orozco had lived in the Mountain Home area for six or seven years prior to the alleged murder, although he may have been an illegal alien.

He had been arrested at least twice before in Elmore County on minor offenses, giving authorities different ages and names each time. He had gone by several other aliases, including Raul Solario, Raul Solorio, Jorge Orozco-Lopez, Jorge Alberto Orozco-Lopez and "Pepe," according to FBI wanted posters that had been displayed around the country.

Sheriff Layher said that persons who knew of the relationship between Rameriz and Lopez-Orozco did not indicate during investigative interviews that the couple had any serious problems, however, some of those interviewed said the couple did argue on occasion.

The initial investigation into the triple homicide, led by Chief Deputy Nick Schilz and Detective Capt. Mike Barclay, was not easy.

It began with the license plates from the car, which was found to have half a dozen bullet holes in it.

It took nearly 24 hours to physically find the person to whom the plates were registered. But that person, who lived in Wendell, had sold the car to someone else. The second person was eventually tracked down, but he also had sold the car -- to Lopez-Orozco.

In each case, the car had been re-registered under the original plates and original owner's name.

About that same time investigators also discovered Lopez-Orozco's relationship with Ramirez, which gave them their first break in helping tentatively identify the victims. Investigators also learned about that same time of the phone call Lopez-Orozco had made from San Jose, asking his family to join him.

San Jose law enforcement authorities served a search warrant on the home there but Lopez-Orozco was not present when they did. At the time, authorities believed he had fled to Mexico.

Over the years local authorities received a number of conflicting reports that he was in Mexico, in the United States, and even briefly in Elmore County, according to some reports. However, none of those reports had been made in a timely manner and investigators were never able to confirm them.

Ramirez had lived in the Mountain Home and Glenns Ferry area for several years, but was living in Caldwell at the time of her death. Her mother lived in Glenns Ferry and her father in Nyssa, Ore.

Lopez-Orozco's wife and children were last reported to have moved from Mountain Home to San Jose, Calif., then moved on to Tijuana where authorities lost track of them. They were not with Lopez-Orozco at the time of his arrest and are not considered material witnesses in the case.

Lopez-Orozco's brother, Simon, is still being sought by the FBI on accessory to murder charges.

Two of his other relatives, a brother and sister, were charged in 2002 with being accessories after the fact and harboring a fugitive. Both entered plea agreements to cooperate with the investigation and face lesser charges, for which they were convicted in 2003.

Leo Bardo Lopez-Orozco eventually was sentenced to six months to three years in prison on a forgery charge related to writing a check with Jorge Alberto Lopez-Orozco's name on it and Maria E. Lopez-Orozco was sentenced to one year in jail and one year probation for resisting/interfering with a police officer. They have since been released after serving their sentences.