Lauterbach’s rape accusation never was corroborated, but a Marine buddy testified Laurean told him the sex was consensual. A DNA test would prove later that Laurean was not the father of Lauterbach’s child. She was seven months pregnant when she died. Even if the rape accusation was false, the married father of a young child faced having his career derailed for committing adultery with a subordinate, District Attorney Dewey Hudson said. Laurean had already faced an order to stay away from Lauterbach, and his Marine superiors said a hearing on the rape allegation was approaching. “He was a married man. He was her boss. He had sex with her,” Hudson told jurors in his closing argument. “He’s damned if he does or damned if he don’t.” Laurean, who was born in Mexico, fled his home and was on the run until police arrested him in April 2009 in the Mexican municipality of Tacambaro. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty so Mexican authorities would return Laurean, who was born in Guadalajara, to the U.S. Laurean was kicked out of the Marines after fleeing as investigators closed in. Testimony showed that hours before Lauterbach was last seen alive, she withdrew $700, left a note for her roommate saying she was quitting the Marines, and bought a bus ticket to El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. Lauterbach told the ticket agent that her child was fathered by a fellow Marine she was barred from seeing, but that she expected him to join her soon. The same Marine buddy, Lance Cpl. Blake Costa, testified that Laurean told him he wanted to tell Lauterbach she could stay with his relatives in Mexico, where he would send her money and join her later. Laurean knew that once Lauterbach was declared a deserter, her already shaky credibility within their unit would be destroyed. He hoped he would be cleared to continue his career, Hudson said. Lauterbach’s charred corpse was discovered nearly a month later in a hole under the firepit Laurean built over the grave, prosecutors said. “It almost worked. She bought the ticket,” Hudson said. “But something happened at his home that day. And then he used a second plan, and that was smashing in her head with a crowbar.
