With Body In Car Trunk, He Bought A Shovel To Dig Grave: Warrant

EAST HAVEN, CT — In the summer of 2020, Jonnathan X. Jara-Aucapina strangled to death his longtime girlfriend Lizzbeth Aleman-Popoca, authorities say. He then went to work and, later on, hid the body in the trunk of her car, bought a shovel and hoe at a Home Depot and buried her body in a shallow grave behind a dumpster in the parking lot of the Branford restaurant where he worked, police said.

Those details are contained in an East Haven Police Department arrest warrant obtained by Patch through the Freedom of Information Act.

After five months of investigation, police charged the 27-year-old with murder in the death of Aleman-Popoca, mother of the couple’s now-8-year-old daughter. The arrest warrant suggests that Jara-Aucapina struck and then strangled to death his partner of a decade in the nighttime hours between June 30 and July 1, while their child slept in the East Haven apartment the couple shared.

Investigators dug up her body two weeks later.

What investigators discovered

For days, intent on creating plausible reasons for her disappearance, Jara-Aucapina invented a number of stories to explain why his young daughter woke up the morning of July 1 and discovered her mother gone, according to the warrant. But at every turn, his prevarications were exposed by her family and investigators, the warrant shows.

Still, it took almost six months for him to be ultimately charged with murder and jailed, held on a $2 million bail.

On that June 30, between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., the arrest warrant states, Jara-Aucapina and Aleman-Popoca exchanged “back-and-forth argumentative” text messages. In them, she told her longtime boyfriend that she wanted him gone and out of her and her daughter’s life. She said the “last 10 years” with him had “been a nightmare,” the warrant reads. She tells him to get his stuff out of the house and not return. The warrant reads that he sat in his car outside the apartment during the text exchange. Police said they know this because a surveillance camera at Overbrook School points toward their apartment, so his comings and goings were recorded in the days after she was reported missing, until he left the home for good.

Police alleged that between 11:41 p.m. June 30 and 3:18 a.m. July 1 — around the time he left for his shift at UPS in North Haven — Jara-Aucapina murdered Aleman-Popoca.

Around 9 a.m., his daughter called him to report that when she woke up, she discovered that her mother was not in the house. The child had slept in her mother’s room the night before and, when she awoke, she found the door to her own bedroom locked, the warrant reads.

Jara-Aucapina returned to the house around 10 a.m., police said. While there, he told his daughter to stay in her mother’s room "on her tablet while he cleaned the house," police said. In a forensic interview with investigators, the girl said that behavior was unusual because her father “never cleans.”

After around a quarter of an hour, when he was “done cleaning,” the child came out of her mother’s bedroom and noticed that the door to her room was now unlocked, police said.

According to the arrest warrant, and from Patch interviews with Aleman-Popoca’s family, here’s what happened on July 1 and over the course of the following few days:

Jara-Aucapina told Aleman-Popoca’s family — her sister Yaneth Aleman and father, Albino Aleman (both of whose names are redacted in the arrest warrant, but with whom Patch spoke on numerous occasions) — that Aleman-Popoca was missing, leaving her daughter and phone behind, according to both the family and the warrant.

On July 3, her sister got a text message from a number she did not know, purportedly from Aleman-Popoca saying she was safe, not to worry and that she was sorry she left her daughter. Yaneth Aleman called the number back several times with no answer, the warrant shows.

Yaneth Aleman told Patch in the days after her sister was reported missing that her sister would “never leave her daughter.”

Frantic, the family demanded that Jara-Aucapina report her as a missing person, something he was reluctant to do, the family told Patch last July and the warrant shows.

According to the warrant, when he did, on July 3, he said he came home on July 1 after getting the call from his daughter and found his “wife” — as he identified her to police — was gone, her phone still there and her white Lexus also gone. But surveillance camera footage shows that the car was still at the house on the morning of July 1 and shows him getting in the car, which was parked in the driveway, something the landlord would tell police was not routine, police documents show.

After obtaining a warrant to search his phone later, investigators found Jara-Aucapina had done 33 internet searches on “how to fold down the back seat of a Lexus,” with search images depicting a similar vehicle, the police affidavit reads. This is around 11 a.m. July 1. At around the same time, the 23-page arrest warrant reads, he’d called Aleman-Popoca’s sister to say the woman was missing and the car, too, was gone. Investigators found that that afternoon, Jara-Aucapina tried unsuccessfully to sell or trade the Lexus on Facebook Marketplace. Jara-Aucapina moved the Lexus to the nearby school parking lot and can be seen on camera standing near the open trunk and pointing a room spray canister toward the trunk, police said. Police would later find that can in the car.

Soon, he leaves with his daughter in his blue Chevrolet, police documents show. It’s now around 3 p.m.

At around 6 p.m., now driving the Lexus — with Aleman-Popoca’s body in the trunk, police allege — he goes to Home Depot and buys a shovel and a garden hoe. Investigators said they know this from phone records, GPS device tracking, surveillance camera footage and the receipt for the purchase. He then contacts a friend who investigators later learn runs a car garage.

Back at the East Haven apartment, Jara-Aucapina — having returned from buying the shovel — parks the car again in the school parking lot and goes inside the apartment, the warrant reads. It’s around 8:30 p.m.

At around 10 p.m., Jara-Aucapina leaves the apartment, gets into the Lexus and drives to LoMonaco’s restaurant in Branford, according to surveillance camera footage. The eatery is closed and had been for some days. The Lexus pulls in the parking lot around 10:20 and goes to the rear where the garbage bins are. Cell phone records place Jara-Aucapina at the location. The car pulls out at 11:52 p.m. and returns to their apartment, the affidavit reads.

Meanwhile, her family is frantic with worry, Yaneth Aleman told Patch last summer.

On the morning of July 3, they phone him repeatedly, with her father demanding Jara-Aucapina come to his home, the warrant reads. Minutes later, her sister gets a text message purportedly from Aleman-Popoca claiming she was in Mexico and was fine, investigators wrote.

It was learned during the investigation that the number from which the text messages came belongs to bandwith.com serviced by Pinger, Voice Over Internet Protocol communications that lets someone communicate using an assigned number different from the one of their cellular carrier, according to the arrests warrant.

Investigators found out that the name on the account created for the VOIP number was "Jonathan," the warrant reads. All the text messages purportedly from Aleman-Popoca to her family and Jara-Aucapina came from inside the apartment with the IP address of the home Wi-Fi, investigators learned.

That same day, Jara-Aucapina agrees to file a missing person report and speaks with East Haven police, the family told Patch. Police said he claimed that he came home and his “wife" and her car were gone.

But to her family, he says Aleman-Popoca was stuck at the U.S.-Mexico border and that the missing persons report needed to be “rescinded” so she would not be caught. He claimed Aleman-Popoca fled to Mexico to get married. This fact was told to Patch by Yaneth Aleman and is contained in the arrest warrant.

Yaneth Aleman spoke at length with Patch about the fact that her sister would never leave her child and that Jara-Aucapina had told “many lies” and made up “stories” that the family knew could not be true.

The then-presumed missing mom's family is shown camera footage by police of the car still at the house on July 1 — after Jara-Aucapina had told police it was gone along with his "wife," the warrant reads. According to the warrant, her family demands to know where the car is and finally, after being pressured, and claiming it was "near the beach under a tree," he provided its location in New Haven — and when the family went there, where the car had been parked for a few days, witnesses told police, they told him to open the car and he declined, saying: “You wanted to see it, not open it.”

At around the same time, using the VOIP, Jara-Aucapina created emails purported to be sent to Aleman-Popoca pleading with her to call her sister and fearing he’d be jailed and their daughter taken into child protective services custody, the warrant reads. Police say this was another ruse used to claim Aleman-Popoca was alive.

Jara-Aucapina was interviewed by East Haven police investigators three times: on July 7, 9 and 11. In the interviews, he admitted he’d lied about the car but said he was “embarrassed” and that he did not know how to tell her family that she’d left him and their daughter, the warrant shows. In every interview, he was advised of his rights and signed a statement to that effect, and agreed to voluntary consent to search his phone records. He claimed to not know anything about the text messages originating from his home. He denied any involvement in her disappearance.

Two weeks after Lizzbeth was last seen, her body was found

On July 15, with Patch at the site for hours watching, state and local investigators eventually uncovered the body of 27-year-old Lizzbeth Aleman-Popoca, buried in a shallow grave.

Her body, buried there for 15 days, was wrapped tightly in a blue blanket bound with clear tape, strands of long black hair seen at one end, the affidavit reads.

The medical examiner would conclude months later that she was strangled to death and ruled her death a homicide.

It would take many months for investigators to gather all the evidence and build a case against Jara-Aucapina.

On Dec. 27, almost five months after Lizzbeth Aleman-Popoca was last seen alive, Jara-Aucapina was arrested and charged with her murder.

Here is the full arrest warrant:

Jonnathan X. Jara-Aucapina ... by Ellyn Santiago

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