A husband and wife who married in Mexico in 2007 have been charged with murdering another woman who the man married in California so the man could get legal permission to stay in the U.S., authorities said Wednesday.
Francisco Valdivia, 37, and Rosalina Lopez, 39, were arrested Tuesday in connection with the June 9 disappearance of Cecelia Bravo. The suspects lived in the small central California city of Visalia, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office said.
The body of Bravo has not been found but sheriff’s spokeswoman Teresa Douglass said authorities have evidence Valdivia and Lopez threatened Bravo and that detectives have “significant digital forensic evidence” she would not describe implicating the couple.
Valdivia and Lopez are both from Mexico and they married there before coming to the United States, the sheriff said.
Valdivia later married the California-born Bravo in an attempt to gain legal residence, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux told the Sacramento Bee.
“He used Cecilia in a business relationship to gain himself legal residence,” Boudreaux said.
