A woman is sexually assaulted and strangled to death Sonia Mejia, a 29-year-old Hispanic woman, was tragically killed in her Taylorsville, Utah, apartment on February 9, 2006. At the time of her death, she was six months pregnant with her second child and lived with her common-law husband and their 8-year-old son. On that Thursday morning, a neighbor witnessed a Hispanic male speaking with Mejia at her front door around 11:30 a.m. The witness then saw the man assault her, force his way into the apartment, and shut the door.
When Mejia's husband returned home from work at approximately 6:00 p.m., he discovered her body. An investigation revealed she had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.
For years, the case remained cold, leaving her family without answers. Investigators were, however, able to connect her murder to the killing of another woman, 57-year-old Damiana Castillo, who was murdered in her West Valley City apartment exactly two years later, on February 9, 2008. DNA evidence linked the two homicides, leading authorities to believe a single perpetrator was responsible. Despite having a DNA profile of the suspect, who they referred to as "John Doe," his identity remained a mystery. In 2010, in a novel legal move for Salt Lake County, the District Attorney's Office filed murder charges against the unknown DNA profile to prevent the statute of limitations from expiring.
The breakthrough in the case came in 2016 when the Automated Fingerprint Identification System matched fingerprints from both crime scenes to Juan Antonio Arreola-Murillo. By this time, Arreola-Murillo had been deported to Mexico and was serving a prison sentence there for aggravated robberies. After completing his sentence in Mexico, he was extradited back to Utah in January 2022 to face charges for the murders. In June 2023, Juan Antonio Arreola-Murillo pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder for the deaths of Sonia Mejia, her unborn child, and Damiana Castillo. As part of a plea deal, he admitted to strangling both women after unlawfully entering their homes. He was sentenced to consecutive prison terms of 20 years to life for each count.
