1-22-08 Breaking News. Cesar Laurean has been sighted in Mexico.
Updated 1-16-2008 11:25 p.m. – I have been watching some of the videos over at CNN and according to them, Laurean’s wife is not an ex-Marine, she is a current Marine and is still working on the base.
Also the Marine Corps is stating that they did indeed pass the information to Onslow County on December 19th, the day that she was reported missing.
Most of the news channels are now saying that the Marines dropped the ball, and should have been sharing information earlier. The thing is that they did stick with their normal policy. The girl was UA, as according to her note. As far as they knew she was AWOL and the guy involved in the rape case was still working and showing up for work when he should.
Here’s the timeline as far as I know it:
December 14th: Lauterbach speaks with her mother, who later revealed that she had a firm conversation with her daughter and told her she should put the baby up for adoption since she would not be able to care for it. This is also the day that she leaves a note for her roommate basically stating she is going UA. This is also the day that she purchased a bus ticket to El Paso.
December 19th: Lauterbach’s family reported her missing to Onslow County police. By this time she has most likely been dead for four days, since the 15th of December.
December 20th: Her cell phone was found on the side of the road near Camp LeJeune.
December 28th: Lauterbach (then dead for over a week) doesn’t show up for a scheduled prenatal. She was due to give birth on February 14th.
January 7th: Lauterbach’s car was found. Police say that it had been there since December 15th. That suprised me because as a manager for a restaurant, I would have had the damn thing towed after about three days, particularly during the busy Christmas season.
January 10th: Onslow County released documents suggesting that Lauterbach left willingly. Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown pleads for her to come home on national TV and the main stream media was still assuming she was a lying little girl. Their stance has changed from “this chick has snakes in her head” to “the marine corps had fucked up” in the manner of a week. Whatever gives good ratings, right? Assholes.
January 11th: Ed Brown announces that Lauterbach is dead and buried and names Corporal Cesar Armando Laurean as the main suspect and the guy that raped her, not a superior officer as the media had initially suggested.
Laurean booked from Camp LeJeune at 4 a.m., before he was announced as a suspect. He had four hours head start. His wife apprached the police with the note at 8 a.m. Later that day they search the Laurean property, finding the cavity where Lauterbach was buried.
January 12th: Police dig up the remains of Lauterbach and the baby. An arrest warrant for Cesar Laurean is issued.
January 15th: The autopsy results are released showing the Lauterbach died from blunt force trauma to the head.
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Updated 1-15-08 11:30 p.m. – According to the reporters at CNN Maria Lauterbach told victim’s advocates at Camp LeJeune that she didn’t feel threatened of unsafe being around Cesar Armando Laurean.
Gary Sokoloski, the Judge Advocate General Officer for the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force said that Corporal Laurean never violated the military protective order keeping him away from Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach. I don’t know if that is true or not, but since it expired four months ago the point is kind of moot, but the military needs to spin it so that they don’t look like assholes either way.
Laurean continued to show up for several weeks after Lauterbach’s disappearance and has denied having had any type of sexual contact with her. Considering that he bashed her head in and cut her throat I think it’s pretty safe to say that he lied to military investigators on that account.
Police received a tip earlier this afternoon in Morrisville, North Carolina that led them to a hotel located there. Cesar Laurean’s black Dodge pickup was found at the Microtel Inn which is located across the highway from the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, on Airport Boulevard. Sherrie Joyner, the lady who works the front desk, said that Laurean never checked in.
On December 14th, which is the day that Maria Lauterbach disappeared, her roommate, Sgt. Durham, found a handwritten note that said,
I could not take this Marine Corps life anymore so I’m going away. Sorry for the inconvenience. Maria
So far the handwriting appears to match Lauterbach’s. He noticed that her car and some of her personal items were gone. At that point he contacted her sister about the note and reported her absence to his superiors, believing that she had gone UA. The same day, an ATM camera caught her withdrawing $700 and she bought a one-way bus ticket to El Paso the next day. Perhaps she thought she was going to meet Laurean there?
According to Randi Kaye (Murdered Marine: You call this an investigation?) Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown announced earlier today that he won’t be talking to the media anymore, at least until Cesar Laurean is caught. That is probably a good thing considering some of the statements I have heard.
Randi asks this question:
Would it have saved Lauterbach’s life? Tough to say. But it certainly may have prevented this massive manhunt for the key suspect living just a few miles away from the Sheriff’s Department this whole time.
Considering that according to the autopsy results that say she died before her family ever even reported her missing, most likely it wouldn’t have helped them one iota.
I ran across this story at WRAL. Apparently Cesar Laurean was born in Mexico and is a naturalized American Citizen. Paul Ciccarelli, a special agent with NCIS is working with the Immigration Service, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the FBI to determine if Laurean is headed for Mexico.
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The Autopsy on the charred remains found behind Cesar Laurean is complete and as expected they are the remains of Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach, and she died from traumatic head injury due to blunt force trauma. Dr. Charles Garrett is the Onslow County medical examiner and made the announcement earlier today.
District Attorney Dewey Hudson announced the results of the autopsy but also said that some questions remain.
He did say that Lauterbach was eight months pregnant and that if her child had been born and then killed it would constitute another murder charge. I am not real sure what he means by that doublespeak. Either they aren’t charging Laurean with the second murder or they are conjecturing that the baby was born. Heck if I know. According to Yahoo! News detectives aren’t sure if she gave birth before her slaying or not. That pretty much puts the note about ‘suicide’ in the trash.
The FBI is ramping up their investigation and search for Cesar Armando Laurean and have pasted his face on electronic billboards all over the country.
A federal warrant was issued for his arrest last weekend and there is a $25,000 reward being offered for information that leads to his capture.
America’s Most Wanted is also helping out and you can pass tips about Laurean at their web site.
The results of the autopsy show that Lauterbach was most likely killed on or around December 15th, four days before her family reported her missing to the police, which I am sure lets Sheriff Brown and his office breathe a great sigh of relief in that there was nothing they could have done to prevent her death.
Apparently the military protective order that I mentioned in an earlier post prevented Laurean from coming within 1000 feet of Lauterbach but the order expire back on September 24th.
Like this:
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he was sleeping on a couch just inches away from an unlocked glass door (anyone looking inside would have seen her), a stuffed bear that her friend gave her to support the pillow is missing, she was due back in class today. 
