Sue Marcum and her brother, Alan Marcum, with their dog, Duchess, in a family photo shown during the trial of Jorge Landeros. Photo / The Washington Post
The case prosecutors outlined against Jorge Landeros portrayed a terrifying scene.
Landeros, 40 on that night a decade and a half ago, was welcomed by Sue Marcum into her Maryland home in the United States.
The two were close – he a dashing yoga instructor, poet and stock day trader, she a 52-year-old, well-liked accounting professor at American University.
They shared a drink in Marcum’s kitchen. After they started fighting, prosecutors said, Marcum fled downstairs, and Landeros caught her and slammed a bottle of mezcal liquor into her head.
He beat and strangled her, they said, and then fled to Mexico, where he was finally captured 12 years later living under an alias and teaching yoga in Guadalajara.
“This was an especially heinous and violent crime,” Montgomery County Circuit Judge Rachel McGuckian said last week as she sentenced Landeros for Marcum’s murder.
It was the final hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court of a twisting, deeply contested case. The proceeding marked the first time the judge was free to offer her conclusions about the killing.
“Ms Marcum, by all accounts, was a successful, independent, well-travelled, smart woman,” McGuckian said.
“Her Achilles’ heel was her blind, unbending, deep and completely one-sided affection and devotion to Mr Landeros.”
Landeros’ lawyers offered the same defence they had put forth from the start of the case: Marcum’s homicide, while tragic, was committed by someone else.
“Mr Landeros is an educated, compassionate, kind, funny, respectable man, and he has always maintained those traits,” Meghan Brennan told the judge.
Landeros’ trial, which finished in October and turned on DNA evidence, ended with jurors finding him guilty of second-degree murder, punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
They rejected a higher charge – premeditated first-degree murder – that carried punishment of up to life in prison.
But a sentence of any length would be significant to Landeros, now 56, who recently suffered a heart attack in jail and remains in poor health, his lawyers said. He walked in and out of court using a cane, as he did during his trial.
Born in Syracuse, New York, Marcum moved to Washington DC, earned degrees at American University and went on to lead the tax department at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
She returned to American as a professor, sometimes donning a red clown nose to weave circus taxation concepts such as the intricacies of elephant depreciation into her lectures. Students who had signed up for just one accounting class suddenly made it their major.
At around 2006, Marcum met Landeros after enrolling in a Spanish class he taught in Dupont Circle. They began practising yoga and meditation, read books, and became close.
The pair took out US$500,000 life insurance policies, naming each other as sole beneficiaries. And they opened two investment accounts, according to prosecutors, funded with US$400,000 of Marcum’s money.
Landeros pulled out funds for his own use, forcing Marcum to tap into retirement funds and borrow money from her father, prosecutors said.
“None of her friends were really aware of the extent to which he was involved with her, and it seems to me that she hid it from them because she was embarrassed,” McCuckian said.
“She trusted him; she cared for him; she harboured a romantic interest in him that was not reciprocated. And Mr Landeros exploited those feelings and took her money.”
After killing Marcum, Landeros tried to stage a burglary inside the Bethesda home, according to trial evidence.
He busted out a window screen, ransacked the house, took several items and drove off in her 1999 Jeep Cherokee. Landeros, prosecutors said, abandoned the Jeep in DC – a move that the judge noted could have pinned someone else to the murder.
“He left it there for some kid, probably, to pick up in a high-crime neighbourhood. And he left the keys inside of her car,” McGuckian said.
An 18-year-old who was later caught driving the Jeep became a suspect in the murder, but detectives could not connect him to Marcum’s home.
In the years that followed, Marcum’s father and mother died – both not knowing if her killer would ever be found. Her only sibling, Alan Marcum, and his wife, Barbara, struggled through horrid thoughts of her death.
“Mr Landeros lived freely for over a decade,” the judge said, “while Ms Marcum’s family and friends were left to grieve.”
As Landeros’ trial approached, prosecutors built their case around his financial entanglements with Marcum and the forensic evidence collected at the crime scene.
Testing showed Landeros’ DNA on two shot glasses, the bottle of mezcal, Marcum’s neck and Marcum’s fingernails, according to court records.
Defence lawyers geared up to cast doubt on the DNA testing, according to court filings, and present alternative suspects who had been linked to burglaries near Marcum’s home.
In pretrial hearings, though, McGuckian ruled against the latter strategy, saying the burglary links were tenuous, potentially confusing to a jury and would not “negate the guilt or promote the innocence of Mr Landeros”. The issue came up again at the sentencing, yielding a response from the judge.
“There was DNA evidence that connected him to the crime scene,” she said. “The bottom line is that a jury of 12 people found beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Landeros murdered Ms Marcum.”
Their specific verdict governed how much prison time she could hand out. At the time of the crime, second-degree murder in Maryland carried a maximum penalty of 30 years.
State sentencing guidelines in the case, while not binding, suggested a term of 12 to 20 years because Landeros had no previous record.
His lawyers, who are appealing the conviction, urged McGuckian to impose a 12-year sentence. “He is much more than the act that he is convicted of doing,” Brennan told the judge.
Landeros’ mother and brother, in letters to the judge, attested to his character. “I do not know how many more years I have to share with him on this earth,” Estela Landeros wrote. “Jorge poses no danger to this world, and he is innocent of this awful crime.”
Prosecutors requested 30 years. “We can talk all we want about the defendant having this history of being compassionate. He wasn’t compassionate towards Ms Marcum,” Assistant State’s Attorney Debbie Feinstein said. “He is the one who brutally killed Ms Marcum.”
McGuckian weighed Landeros’ recent conduct in the Montgomery County jail, where he has helped other detainees with translation, taught yoga and, according to his lawyers, created “Trauma Talks” group discussions.
In all of the jail institutional reports she had read, McGuckian said, she had never seen one so favourable. It established good reason, according to the judge, that Landeros would not reoffend.
“The murder of Sue Marcum appears to the court to be a singular event based on singular circumstances,” she said.
McGuckian heard from seven of Marcum’s wide circle of friends and relatives, including her sister-in-law, Barbara Marcum.
“Fifteen years ago, the world lost a beautiful person because of selfishness and cruelty,” she said, describing how many people have since struggled over that loss.
“One of the most horrific parts of this for me has been the sleepless nights imagining how Sue died.”
Reading from the notes on her phone, Barbara Marcum came to the part she had written for Landeros, including what her sister-in-law’s final thoughts must have been. She asked the judge if she could address Landeros directly.
“You may not address the defendant,” McGuckian said politely, in accordance with protocols for such hearings.
But moments later in describing the murder, the judge covered that final point.
“She must have been terrified,” McGuckian said.
She imposed 25 years.
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