On December 14, 2020, authorities in Columbia, Missouri, began investigating the death of 25-year-old Marqukis Lamont Hayes. A resident of Jefferson City, Hayes had been in Columbia when the fatal incident occurred. He was known to his family as a quiet young man with an interest in electronics and chess, harboring dreams of creating a documentary about his life.
His sudden and tragic passing left his family, including his children and parents, grieving a profound loss just weeks before the holidays.
The investigation by Columbia Police Department detectives quickly identified a suspect in connection with Hayes’s homicide. Three days after the incident, on December 17, 2020, officers arrested 29-year-old Angelica Nicole Benitez, who was also linked to the Jefferson City and Moberly areas. The inquiry revealed that Benitez had not only been involved in the killing but had also taken steps to conceal the crime. She was subsequently charged with second-degree murder, as well as abandonment of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence, suggesting that she had attempted to dispose of or hide Hayes's body and other incriminating materials following his death.
In August 2022, the legal proceedings against Benitez concluded when she entered a guilty plea to the charges brought against her. A judge sentenced her to a total of twenty-eight years in the Missouri Department of Corrections. The sentence was structured as twenty years for the second-degree murder charge, with additional consecutive four-year terms handed down for the abandonment of a corpse and tampering with evidence counts, holding her accountable for both the violence of the act and the subsequent efforts to evade justice.
