FoxNews.com

August 24, 2010

GOLDSBORO, N.C. -- A former Marine has been sentenced to life in prison after a jury convicted him of murder in the death of a pregnant colleague who had accused him of rape, an allegation that threatened to derail a military career that had earned him promotions and praise.

Cesar Laurean, 23, of Las Vegas, was found guilty Monday of killing Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, 20, of Vandalia, Ohio, in December 2007. The two were assigned to the same logistics unit at Camp Lejeune, the base in Jacksonville, N.C., that is home to about 50,000 Marines. The trial was moved because of extensive pretrial publicity.

The former Marine corporal was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder. Defense lawyer Dick McNeil told the court Laurean would appeal his conviction.

Before the judge imposed the sentence, the victim's mother, Mary Lauterbach, read a tearful statement. She told Laurean to remember the pain in his mother's face, and to think of the daughter who will have to live with the shame of a father who is a killer.

"Now you will have time to think about your shame, time to think about your failures," Mary Lauterbach said. "There are many people out there who will die today, people who would love to have the time that God has given you."

One juror said the panel didn't believe the theory McNeil presented that someone else, perhaps Laurean's enraged wife, could have killed Lauterbach with a single swing of a crowbar that fractured her skull. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for three hours Monday before convicting Laurean.

"The thought entered out minds, but everything pointed to the fact that he is the one who did this crime," juror Brenda Peters said. "We went back over every speck of evidence that there was, piece by piece. That's how we reached our verdict."

Neither Laurean nor his wife testified during the trial.

Laurean's father, Salvador, and sister Blanca said they wished more of the testimony would have explained the problems the ex-Marine had with Lauterbach, whom the higher-ranking Laurean was ordered by superiors to help shape up.

"He's a nice, nice guy," Blanca Laurean said. "He doesn't deserve everyone thinking he's the worst man in the world. He's not."

Laurean also faced three other charges of robbing Lauterbach of her bank ATM card, and of theft and attempted fraud for allegedly trying to use it to withdraw cash. He was found not guilty of the robbery charge, but Laurean was convicted on the fraud and theft charges.

Lauterbach's rape accusation never was corroborated, but a Marine buddy testified Laurean told him the sex was consensual. A DNA test would prove later that Laurean was not the father of Lauterbach's child. She was seven months pregnant when she died.

Even if the rape accusation was false, the married father of a young child faced having his career derailed for committing adultery with a subordinate, District Attorney Dewey Hudson said. Laurean had already faced an order to stay away from Lauterbach, and his Marine superiors said a hearing on the rape allegation was approaching.

"He was a married man. He was her boss. He had sex with her," Hudson told jurors in his closing argument. "He's damned if he does or damned if he don't."

Laurean, who was born in Mexico, fled his home and was on the run until police arrested him in April 2009 in the Mexican municipality of Tacambaro. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty so Mexican authorities would return Laurean, who was born in Guadalajara, to the U.S. Laurean was kicked out of the Marines after fleeing as investigators closed in.

Testimony showed that hours before Lauterbach was last seen alive, she withdrew $700, left a note for her roommate saying she was quitting the Marines, and bought a bus ticket to El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. Lauterbach told the ticket agent that her child was fathered by a fellow Marine she was barred from seeing, but she expected him to join her soon.

The same Marine buddy, Lance Cpl. Blake Costa, testified that Laurean told him he wanted to tell Lauterbach she could stay with his relatives in Mexico, where he would send her money and join her later.

Laurean knew that once Lauterbach was declared a deserter, her already shaky credibility within their unit would be destroyed. He hoped he would be cleared to continue his career, Hudson said.

Lauterbach's charred corpse was discovered nearly a month later in a hole under the firepit Laurean built over the grave, prosecutors said.

"It almost worked. She bought the ticket," Hudson said. "But something happened at his home that day. And then he used a second plan, and that was smashing in her head with a crowbar."

Lance Corporal Maria Frances Lauterbach (November 17, 1987(1987-11-17) – December 2007) of Vandalia, Ohio, was a United States Marine who went missing from Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina on December 14, 2007. At the time of her disappearance, Lauterbach was eight months pregnant.

Lauterbach grew up in Dayton, where she attended Butler High School (Vandalia, Ohio). Lauterbach joined the Marines on June 6, 2006. She was a personnel clerk assigned to Combat Logistics Regiment 27, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Background and death

According to her adoptive mother, Mrs. Mary Lauterbach, LCpl. Lauterbach was preparing to testify that she was raped by a fellow Marine. Mrs. Lauterbach told police that her daughter "claimed she had been raped by a senior Marine at her command, and that the investigation had gone sour." According to an Associated Press report, her adoptive mother also told police "that her daughter was bipolar and had a history of compulsive lying". Tony Harris of CNN reported on January 12, 2008, that Lauterbach never felt that her adoptive parents treated her as well as their natural children. Her adoptive mother reported her missing on December 19, five days after their last conversation. Her cellphone was found on December 20, near the main gate at Camp Lejeune.

Authorities found the burned remains of Maria Lauterbach and her unborn child in a fire pit in Corporal Cesar Armando Laurean's backyard. They also found a large quantity of her blood in Laurean's house in Jacksonville, N.C. Laurean has been reported as having tried to clean up the scene.

During a press conference on January 11, 2008, Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown reported the death of Lauterbach. Brown stated that authorities "had gotten physical evidence of the woman's death that also linked Laurean to the death." Laurean claims in a note found by his wife that Maria Lauterbach committed suicide by cutting her own throat during an argument at the Laurean home. However, authorities found evidence that points to murder in the initial investigation. This is further supported by the autopsy results released in March 2008, which classified the neck wound as post-mortem and insufficient to causing death. The official cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

Cesar Laurean

Marine Corporal Cesar Laurean (SEH'-sahr LOHR'-ee-uhn), the 21 year old prime suspect in the case, was the man whom Lauterbach accused of sexually assaulting her. A federal warrant for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution was issued for his arrest on January 12, 2008. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service issued a wanted flier on him. There was also a $25,000 reward offered by the FBI and $5,000 from the state of North Carolina for information leading to his capture. Onslow County has primary jurisdiction, but the Judge Advocate General's office may bring charges as well, to include but not limited to charges stemming from Laurean's deserter status.

Shortly after the murder, the press reported that Laurean fled to Mexico, his country of birth. Mexican officials issued an arrest warrant for Laurean as a suspect of killing his pregnant colleague, a U.S. Embassy official said on January 29, in Mexico City. Interpol also issued an international wanted notice for Laurean.  A cousin of the Corporal informed reporters that the Marine visited family in the area of Guadalajara, Mexico in late January 2008, but left without saying where he was headed.America's Most Wanted featured this story on their April 5, 2008 episode.

On April 10, 2008, the FBI announced that Cesar Laurean had been apprehended in Tacambaro, Michoacan, Mexico.  The popular press indicated that his extradition might involve at least two years of legal proceedings, considering the relationship between the United States and Mexico. In September 2008, Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson agreed not to seek the death penalty, and a Mexican judge agreed to extradite Laurean.

However, in October 2008, Laurean launched another appeal to the Mexican courts to prevent his extradition, arguing that North Carolina's life-without-parole sentence for first-degree murder is not only barred under the countries' extradition treaty but is considered cruel and unusual punishment. (In North Carolina, a person convicted of first-degree murder can only be sentenced to death or life without parole.)

On April 17, 2009, the FBI announced that Laurean had been extradited to the United States and was being held in the Onslow County jail. In December, an Onslow County judge agreed that the trial should be moved to a different county due to the extensive media coverage on the case, and scheduled it to begin on June 28, 2010. In January 2010, Wayne County was selected.

In 2009, Mary Lauterbach filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Caesar and his wife Christina, accusing them of conspiring to conceal the murder.

On August 24, 2010, Laurean was convicted of murder, as well as theft and fraud charges relating to using Lauterbach's ATM card while on the lam, and sentenced to life in prison. The jurors dismissed the defense's theory that Christina was in fact the real murderer, favoring the prosecution's argument that Laurean's desperation to save his career led to the incident. He initially conspired with her to run to Mexico, supposedly with the intent of destroying her credibility with the desertion and continue his career in the Corps, but reverted to killing her with a crowbar when that failed.

Wikipedia.org