A woman has admitted to playing a role in dismembering and getting rid of the body of Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen after she was sexually assaulted and killed at a military base in Texas in 2020.
Cecily Aguilar pled guilty to four charges – one count of accessory to murder after the fact as well as three counts of false statement or representation - on Tuesday, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas.
“According to court documents, from April 22, 2020 through July 1, 2020, Aguilar assisted Army Specialist Aaron Robinson in corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating and concealing evidence—that is, the body of Vanessa Guillen—in order to prevent Robinson from being charged with and prosecuted for any crime,” the office said in the press release. “Aguilar also altered and destroyed information contained in a Google account of Robinson. During the investigation into the disappearance of Vanessa Guillen, Aguilar made four materially false statements to federal investigators.”
Spc Robinson, identified as the main suspect, shot himself after investigators confronted him concerning Spc Guillen. Aguilar was said to be Spc Robinson’s girlfriend.
A date has yet to be set for Aguilar’s sentencing, where she faces a maximum of 30 years in prison plus three years of supervised release and a $1m fine.
Aguilar waived her rights to a trial, KWTX reported.
Natalie Khawam, a lawyer representing the Guillen family, told CNN that “Cecily Aguilar’s guilty plea today was another step on the long path toward justice for Vanessa, my client, and her courageous family. We knew she was guilty but her admission provides some closure for Vanessa’s family and friends, which they deserve”.
Spc Guillen was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas when she vanished in April 2020. On 30 June of that year, she was located in a shallow grave.
Her remains revealed that she had been beaten to death with a hammer in the armoury, her workplace, from where the killer had taken the body, a family attorney has said, pointing to information provided to the family by investigators.
A Netflix documentary about Spc Guillen, I am Vanessa Guillen, premiered earlier this month.
“It was tears nonstop,” sister Mayra Guillen told The Independent. “I was crying, and my sisters were in tears. It was just very, very emotional ... a rollercoaster of emotions.”
The sister said she spoke to her mother about the film.
“I really had to let my mom know that this wasn’t going to be focused on the way that my sister was murdered, because that’s something that she did not want to go forward with,” she said.
She added that she hoped that the documentary would show “how we went on the Hill and advocated in [Vanessa’s] name and thousands of victims’ names – and she just felt comfortable with the idea that it would show Vanessa’s legacy. So everyone just agreed, and we were able to talk to the people, the team, that [would] follow us and made us feel comfortable. They would not push us ... you wouldn’t even know that they were in the room”.
