Husband of pregnant teenager who was murdered by 'womb raiders' reveals he was made to take a lie detector test by Chicago cops after he reported her missing
- Yovany Lopez wept as he described being suspected of killing his wife Marlen
- She vanished on April 23 but her body was not found until May 15
- Her baby boy had been cut from her womb after she was strangled to death
- She had gone to her killers' home to collect free baby clothes
- Yovany said he was treated by police and by his in-laws like he had killed her
- Police will not confirm if they interviewed him or what they did to try to find her
- The young mother's body was only found after her friends alerted police to her Facebook contact with one of her killers
- The family says he was ignored and told to wait 72 hours after reporting her missing on April 24
- They also complained about having to hire a private investigator to find information
- The League of United Latin American Citizens plans to file a formal complaint
- They say the family was not taken seriously because they are Hispanic
The husband of the murdered pregnant teenager killed by a family of womb-raiders revealed on Thursday that Chicago cops made him take a lie detector test after he reported her missing and says they did not do enough to find her and his unborn son.
Yovany Lopez, 20, sobbed as he recalled being forced to do a polygraph after reporting his wife Marlen missing on April 23.
She vanished after going to collect clothes from Clarisa Figueroa's home in Chicago.
Prosecutors say Clarisa strangled her when she arrived then cut her baby boy out of her womb, took him to a hospital and pretended he was hers for two weeks until she was caught.
Yovany, who works in construction, reported Marlen missing on April 24 but says he was told he had to wait 72 hours before it would be investigated properly.
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Yovany Lopez, 20, sobbed as he recalled being forced to do a polygraph after reporting his wife Marlen missing on April 23.
Marlen Ochoa-Lopez was murdered on April 23
He did but claims Chicago PD did not take his case seriously enough. He resorted to hiring a private investigator and it was only when their efforts combined with those of Marlen's friends led police to Clarisa that the truth emerged.
Speaking to Univision, Lopez said that even his in-laws thought he had killed his wife.
'I cried. I'm not a bad person... my in-laws, they have always been against me. They were all against me.
'I knew that I had not done anything with my wife, it was terrible. Really terrible.
'I felt overwhelmed because my in-laws, all these people,said that I looked like a bad person.
'I felt defeated and heartbroken because I could not find my wife. I could not find her. I waited for her, I went out with the detectives and I looked for her.'
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Yovany, who has another son with his late wife, said his in-laws owe him an apology.
'They asked me what I had done with her, if I owed drugs to anyone, if I was into gangs.
Clarisa Figueroa, 46, was the mastermind of the plot. She pretended she was pregnant for months and lured Marlen to her home after meeting her on Facebook, according to police
Clarisa's 24-year-old daughter Desiree, left, is four months pregnant. She made a full confession to police including how she pulled Marlen's fingers away from her neck to stop her from fighting her mother as she strangled her with an electric cable. Piotr Bobak, 40, right, is Clarisa's boyfriend who is accused of helping them cover up the murder
Marlen's father, Arnulfo Ochoa, hired a private investigator because he was so frustrated with the Chicago Police Department's lack of action. He is shown on May 16, the day after his daughter's body was found in a trash can
'It wasn't the case,' he said.
Chicago Police Department told DailyMail.com on Thursday that it would not confirm the test but said that 'in all investigations, includes interviewing involved parties of an incident, whether or not they consider those parties suspects or not.'
The League of United Latin American Citizens has said it plans to file a formal complaint against the department for how it handled Marlen's disappearance.
Her father has already criticized the department for not doing more.
'There were plenty of clues, and in my view this all took way too long. They kept saying how a judge had to OK every request — to check her phone, to check Facebook.
Advocate Christ Medical Center (shown) did not alert police on April 23, when she came in, or ever. It only called child services after police subpoenaed medical records
'I hired a private investigator and he found all of that information, where my daughter was murdered, and he shared that information with police,' Arnulfo Ochoa, Ochoa-Lopez’s father, told The Chicago Sun Times.
The police said it was a friend of Marlen's who alerted them to the Facebook pages.
The hospital where the baby was taken is also now under investigation.
The Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn is now being investigated by the Department of Health for its role in disturbing case of the murder of Marlen Ochoa-Lopez and the theft of her unborn baby boy by Clarisa Figueroa and her daughter.
The hospital has not commented for failing to raise suspicions. A spokesman told DailyMail.com that it was cooperating with authorities but refused to say more, citing privacy policies.
The baby is still being treated there in the NICU.
The hospital is yet to answer who examined Clarisa, whether they realized she had not given birth, why the physical signs were ignored and why they did not raise the alarm.
On the day of the murder, Clarisa Figueroa, the 46-year-old ringleader charged with Marlen's murder, called 911 claiming she had given birth to the boy.
Paramedics and firefighters went to her home, where Marlen's body was stuffed in a trash can in the yard, and took her and the baby to the hospital where she was examined by an OB technician in the Labor and Delivery Section of the hospital, according to prosecutors.
Despite having blood on her 'arms, hands and across her face' which belonged to Marlen, and despite not showing any physical signs that she had given birth, neither the police nor the Department of Children and Families was alerted.
In their bond proffer, prosecutors described what happened when she got to the hospital on April 23.
'While at the Labor and Delivery Section at Christ Hospital Defendant Clarisa was examined but showed no signs consistent with a woman who had just delivered a baby.
'Defendant Clarisa did have blood on her arms, hands and across her face which was from the murder of victim and the removal of the V’s baby.
'The blood was cleaned off by an OB Technician who treated Defendant Clarisa at the hospital,' it read.
For the next several weeks, she pretended the baby was hers and even set up a GoFundMe account to pay for his care.
It was only on May 7, when Marlen's friends, who were still looking for her, alerted police to her Facebook contact with the Figueroa family that the truth emerged.
Officers went to the home where Clarisa lived, found Marlen's car nearby, learned that Clarisa was in the hospital caring for a baby and ordered a DNA test for him. It is unclear when the Figueroas were stopped from seeing the boy.
On May 7, his father, Yovany Lopez, met him for the first time. Clarisa, her daughter Desiree and her boyfriend Piotr Bobak were not arrested until May 15.
Between the 8th and the 13th May, the police subpoenaed the hospital records and DNA.
On May 9, Advocate Christ contacted the Department of Children and Family Services, after being subpoenaed by police.
On May 16, Clarisa was charged with her daughter, 24, and Piotr Bobak, her 40-year-old boyfriend. The hospital is not alone in its failings.
Friends and family of Marlen have criticized the police department for not doing more to find her when she was missing.
It is not clear why they did not discover the Facebook contact she had had with the Figueroas themselves when it was on a public chat group.
She had also received three parking tickets on the car which was parked near their home that police knew she had been driving when she went missing.
It had also been seen on surveillance cameras, being moved around by Desiree, but nothing was done.
The baby is now being cared for by his father, Yovany. His health is improving, friends of the family told DailyMail.com
