Las Vegas Sun

April 25, 2024

Fugitive in brutal 2008 Las Vegas slaying captured in Mexico

Updated Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018 | 4:17 p.m.

A fugitive on the FBI's 10 most wanted list has been arrested in Mexico and returned to the United States to face charges in the 2008 killing of his wife in Las Vegas, the FBI said today.

Jesus Roberto Munguia, 41, was apprehended Wednesday night on an arrest warrant charging him with first-degree murder and kidnapping in the strangulation and bludgeoning of Sherryl Saceuza, said Aaron Rouse, FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office.

Munguia, a former member of a Los Angeles-area street gang, was being held in the Los Angeles County Jail on Thursday without bail, according to jail records.

It's not clear if he has a lawyer or when he might be extradited to Las Vegas to stand trial. No public court documents had been filed as of Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Saceuza, who was 29, died from asphyxiation. Her badly beaten body with a fractured skull was found with jumper cables wrapped around her neck in the backseat of her blood-spattered SUV in Las Vegas on July 2, 2008. It was parked behind the house she had shared with Munguia and their four children.

Authorities named Munguia as a suspect within a week and issued a federal warrant for his arrest. But extensive searches failed to locate him in Nevada, Southern California — where he was born in Torrance — or Bakersfield, where he had family.

The FBI said that at the time of the slaying that Munguia was a member of a Los Angeles-area street gang, Tepa 13, with ties to the Jalisco area of Mexico.