Police today named a man already charged in a violent Longmont rape case as the suspect in the disappearance of Rita Gutierrez-Garcia, the mother of three who vanished in March and is presumed dead.

Juan Jose Figueroa Jr., 29, was arrested on a warrant in the 2017 case while attempting to cross the border into Mexico nine days after Gutierrez-Garcia disappeared.

Figueroa has not been charged in the Gutierrez-Garcia case, according to Longmont police Deputy Chief Jeff Satur. But he already is in custody on a $1 million bond for a case in which he’s accused of strangling and raping a woman he met in a bar in downtown Longmont last November.

Gutierrez-Garcia, 34, has been missing since March 18. She was celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with friends and family at bars in downtown Longmont and was last seen in a city parking lot located behind 3’s Bar.

Figueroa was the last person with whom Gutierrez-Garcia was seen the night she disappeared, Satur said in a phone interview. Satur said he is not aware of any personal relationship between the two.

$10,000 reward Longmont police are offering a $10,000 reward for any information that leads to Rita Gutierrez-Garcia or the arrest of a suspect in her disappearance. Anyone with information is asked to call 303-774-3700 or email policetipline@longmontcolorado.gov.

Diane Romero, Gutierrez-Garcia’s mother, said she doesn’t know Figueroa and she doesn’t believe her daughter knew him either.

“I do know that that night other people said that he had been trying to talk to her,” Romero said.

While the announcement of a suspect moves the case forward, Romero said she and her family will keep waiting until the case ends for closure.

“Again, he’s still a suspect and until we have everything from the police who are really working their butts off … I’ll just keep waiting,” she said. “We’ll just keep waiting.”

‘Too early to say’ on charges

The announcement today comes as both Longmont police and the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office are “still trying to generate leads from the community as to” the location of the crime scene or Gutierrez-Garcia’s body, said District Attorney Michael Dougherty.

In general, Dougherty said, recovering the body is “extremely important” to a case.

“Prosecuting a murder without a body certainly presents a difficult challenge, but those are not insurmountable,” he said.

Dougherty said it’s too early to say whether he’ll pursue murder charges if the body isn’t recovered in this case.

Satur couldn’t say when charges may be filed against Figueroa.

“Fortunately for us, he’s in jail on some very serious charges. So we want to put together a quality investigation,” Satur said.

Figueroa is scheduled for a December trial in the sexual assault case.

















According to an arrest affidavit, the victim in that case told police she met Figueroa at a bar downtown. Later, they went to his apartment, where she said he dragged her to his room, strangled her until she fell unconscious and raped her, according the affidavit.

The emergency room doctor who treated the victim that night said she was at a “substantial risk of death,” the affidavit says. She suffered facial swelling and small blood vessel injury due to the strangulation, he told police, and there was a risk of death in the early phase due to the facial swelling.

Public defender Sam Dunn, Figueroa’s defense attorney in the rape case, did not immediately return a phone call requesting comment on the Gutierrez-Garcia investigation.

Police previously had declined to say whether Figueroa was a suspect in the Gutierrez-Garcia case as they awaited results from evidence submitted to both the Colorado Bureau of Information and another forensic laboratory they are not disclosing at this time.

Based on the results of that testing, police have confirmed that Figueroa is a suspect, Satur said. He would not say what evidence was tested, but Dougherty previously said that evidence was analyzed using “all sorts” of forensic analytical tools, including DNA.

The Times-Call previously had spoken with family members of Figueroa via Facebook, but was unable to reach them on that platform today.

The search continues

Longmont police are still offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can provide information that will help them locate Gutierrez-Garcia’s body.

“We have our theories, but there’s a lot of land and territory out here,” Satur said. He is asking people to search dirt and mountain roads if they have time, especially around rural areas like Rabbit Mountain, the Peak to Peak Highway and Jamestown.

Satur said they have information that the body may be east of Rollins Pass, or in the area around Rabbit Mountain or Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

They believe Figueroa was driving a 2005 two-wheel, white Chevrolet Silverado when he was looking to dump the body. This is the same truck that he was driving when he was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Police searched many of these areas early on in the case, Satur said, but did not find the body.

Omar Holguin, Gutierrez-Garcia’s half-brother, is organizing searches around Boulder County for his sister. The next search is planned for Saturday. Volunteers should meet at 7:30 a.m. at BaseMar Shopping Center in Boulder for a map and instructions on where they will be searching in the mountain areas.

Holguin said he plans to search for his sister every weekend that he can.

He said that naming a suspect in the case is helpful, “but still knowing that she’s not around or even found, it’s still difficult.”

“I’m kinda speechless. I’m trying to process everything,” he said.

Figueroa is being held at the Jefferson County Jail following a number of fights he was involved in and suffered injuries from at the Boulder County Jail.

The Times-Call obtained a copy of the reports, but the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office blacked out the statements another inmate made to Figueroa during the fights because they concerned “an unrelated open investigation.” At one point, an officer wrote that the other inmate told Figueroa something like, “I know what you did.”

Arrested at the border

According to an arrest affidavit, Longmont police couldn’t locate Figueroa on March 8 after filing a warrant for his cell phone in the 2017 sexual assault case. His last listed address is his mother’s home in Longmont.

On March 20, two days after Gutierrez-Garcia disappeared, police went to a number of possible locations looking for Figueroa, but still couldn’t find him. They filed a warrant for his arrest in the sex-assault case on March 24.

Based on that warrant, Figueroa was detained by a U.S. Customs & Border Protection Agent at the Mexican border in Maverick County, Texas, on March 27, just over a week after Gutierrez-Garcia went missing.

According to a police report, Figueroa was born in the United States.

Satur said it’s possible that Gutierrez-Garcia’s body is in another state, but their investigation showed it’s very unlikely that she is at the border. He also said it’s unlikely that Figueroa would travel that far with her body in his car, which was seized as evidence at the border.

“It’s a really tragic case,” Dougherty said. “Rita’s very loved by her family, she’s a mother of young kids, she’s part of our community. So we’re not gonna rest until we do everything we possibly can to bring justice to Rita and answers to her family and friends in the community.”

Madeline St. Amour: 303-684-5212, mstamour@prairiemountainmedia.com