NEW WINDSOR, N.Y. (AP) - A year after a Hudson Valley woman disappeared, her sometime boyfriend has been charged with killing her.
Matthew Mercado, 37, was being held on $3 million bond after pleading not guilty Friday to murder, grand larceny and other charges in the case of Jessica Lopez, court records show.
The 36-year-old Lopez had been a substitute teacher in Newburgh schools.
She was last seen early on Nov. 3, 2019, at a motel with Mercado in nearby New Windsor. Her car was later found, abandoned, in a Newburgh movie theater parking lot.
“While recovering her remains will continue to be a high priority for us, we are fully prepared to litigate this case even without her body being recovered,” Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler said in a press release.
Authorities have eyed Mercado since early in the case. Shortly after Lopez’s disappearance, he was charged with breaking into a neighboring room during their stay at the motel, and he has been jailed since that arrest.
Prosecutors now say he killed Lopez when she tried to leave the motel early on Nov. 3, took her debit card, withdrew $1,500 from her bank account and tried to cover his tracks by hiding her body somewhere and deleting text messages they had exchanged.
A message seeking comment was sent Saturday to Mercado’s lawyer.
Authorities conducted “dozens of large-scale searches” for Lopez last fall, deploying cadaver-recovery dogs and following up more than 440 leads, New Windsor Police Chief Robert Doss said at a news conference Friday. Hoovler said searches extended as far as a northeastern Pennsylvania landfill that takes much of Orange County’s household waste.
Lopez’s disappearance extended a series of losses and hardships for her family. One of her brothers had died in 2018, and she had quit working to care for her ailing father.
“We just want to find a body, have some closure for our family and have justice for Jessica,” her brother Ernesto told WCBS-TV by phone Friday.
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