A couple accused of stabbing a Seattle woman to death while she was visiting a friend in Texas have ditched their ankle monitors and fled.
Nina Marano, 50, and her wife, 58-year-old Lisa Dykes, are facing murder charges in connection with the October 2020 fatal stabbing of Marisela Botello-Valadez but had been released in May after posting a hefty $500,000 bond. For roughly seven months, the women appeared to be dutifully donning their GPS monitors until the duo suddenly removed them within four minutes of each other on Christmas Day, according to court documents filed this week and obtained by KDFW.
Dallas authorities said the women have dodged calls, texts, and emails from electronic monitoring officers as they hunt for the pair.
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The women had already “shown a pattern of avoidance,” according to police documents, noting that both women had fled to Florida during an investigation into Botello-Valadez’s disappearance.
Botello-Valadez was reported missing in October 2020, after she flew to Dallas from Seattle to visit a friend, and was allegedly last seen by her friend when she climbed into a Lyft to meet friends at a nightclub on Oct. 4.
Botello-Valadez failed to return to her friend’s apartment that night and subsequently missed her flight home, authorities said. For months there was no sign of her whereabouts until her remains turned up in a wooded area 15 miles from Dallas in March 2021.
Marano and Dykes were arrested in Florida shortly after the discovery of the slain woman’s remains when an analysis of phone records led investigators to a home shared by the women in Mesquite. Authorities said a search of the residence revealed that in spite of efforts to clean the carpet, streaks of red and brown blood belonging to Botello-Valadez were found underneath the carpet.
While a third suspect in the murder case, Charles Beltran, 32—who was spotted with Botello-Valadez on the night of her disappearance—remained jailed on bond in Dallas County, Dykes and Marano were released after posting $500,000 bond in May last year on condition that they would remain under house arrest and wear GPS monitors.
But the women apparently violated that condition when the GPS signal to both Dykes and Marano's ankle monitors dropped on Christmas Day, according to court documents.
The slain 23-year-old’s aunt, Dennesly Castillo, told WFAA that she was frustrated that the couple had been released at all, adding that she figured they would try to escape.
“They got to spend the holidays together, I assume, in the comfort of their house instead of being locked away,” Castillo said. “We don’t have that option. We don’t have the option to ever be able to sit there with Marisela again and celebrate or be out and about.”
Two days after Christmas, authorities called and sent texts and emails to their listed numbers but failed to reach either of the women, the documents state.
It wasn’t until over a week later that Dallas County was notified that the pair had disappeared on Jan. 4, according to WFAA.
“I would really like some sort of explanation,” Castillo told the outlet. “If they had posted that they were missing sooner, they may have been able to find them.”
