* Reproducimos esta noticia en inglés para beneficio de los interesados en este caso cuyo primer idioma no es el español.

Christian Mercado can recall the exact words his late wife told him during their last phone call last Thursday morning. 

The couple had recently moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico.  A few days ago they celebrated a baby shower for their unborn son, but now Mercado is trying to cope with the brutal killing of his wife, Maritza Ramírez Cruz, 23, by another Puerto Rican woman that allegedly committed the murder to steal the fetus from her womb.

“She called me while she was handing in some documents at a food stamp office. I asked her: ‘My love, how do you feel?  And she said:  ‘I don’t feel well..I feel strange,’” said Christian as he explained the last conversation he had with his wife. “’Please, when you get home, call me to know that you’re alright,’” Christian said he told Maritza before she was abducted.

Christian, who works for a company that prints supermarket shoppers, said that he started feeling uneasy after he spoke to his wife. He called her repeatedly but she didn’t answer.  “I got home and she wasn’t there.  I was feeling anxious and desperate,” said Christian. The husband drove to several hospitals in the Milwaukee area to no avail. “I thought she could have gone into labor,” he said.

Mercado finally discovered what happened to his wife when police officers walked up to his door. “Sir, we have found a body that matches the description you gave us of your wife”, were the dreaded words he heard as he stood in the doorway.

Ramirez Cruz was allegedly abducted and killed by Annette Morales Rodríguez, 33, who faces one count of first-degree intentional homicide while armed and one count of first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child in the death of Ramírez Cruz and the baby boy that she was set to deliver next week and would be called Omar. The Associated Press reported that the alleged killer stood silent at her bail hearing, which was set at $1 million.

Morales Rodríguez told investigators that she had faked her pregnancy because her boyfriend wanted a baby she could not deliver after being sterilized. The criminal complaint alleged that the mother of three cruised in her vehicle last Wednesday to find a pregnant woman. She told investigators that she spotted Ramírez Cruz, the next day, near a nonprofit organization that provides health care and financial assistance services to the Hispanic community in Milwaukee.

Morales Rodríguez offered  Ramírez Cruz a ride but instead of driving her home, she took her to a house on Milwaukee’s south side. Ramírez Cruz was attacked with a baseball bat immediately after she had used a bathroom. The victim’s  feet and hands were tied with duct-tape and she was cut open with a knife. The complaint states that Morales Rodríguez tried to “imitate a procedure she had seen in the Discovery Channel” by extracting the fetus after cutting the woman with an Exacto knife.

“I would like to see Morales Rodríguez, to ask her why she had done this to us…She killed two people, my daughter in law and  my unborn grandson. This cannot be forgiven”, said Carlos Mercado, Christian’s father.

Old neighbors of the accused killer in the Puerto Rican municipality of Arroyo could not fathom how the “quiet and peaceful girl that they once knew could have committed such a horrible crime.” Luz Velázquez, mother of childhood friends of Morales Rodríguez, sobbed while she was being interviewed by Primera Hora.

“It hurts because I saw her grow up,” she said as she stared at the mug shot of Morales Rodríguez. “I would ask her:  ‘Why did  she do this if she had three wonderful children of her own,’” said Velázquez.

The Arroyo resident said that she sporadically communicated with Morales Rodríguez through text messaging, telephone calls and Facebook interactions. The woman said that her old neighbor had sent her religious images but she couldn’t recall the dates she received the e-mails.  “She had told me that she gave birth to a baby with a health condition, but later someone had told me that the infant had died.  God only knows why she committed the crime and what she was thinking”, said Velázquez.

The killing struck especially hard in the Puerto Rican municipality of Arecibo, the victim’s hometown. “She killed my daughter- in-law and my grandson. She destroyed my son’s life and she destroyed all of our lives,” said Felícita “Tita” Soto López, the victim’s mother-in-law.

The Arecibo resident said that Ramírez Cruz was very happy with her family. “Now she leaves three kids behind. This is not right and. if it were up to me, I would ask for the death penalty,” said Soto López.