A woman tied to drug cartels and accused of torturing and killing her daughter in Arizona in 1997 has been captured in Mexico nearly 30 years after the crime, officials said Wednesday.
Anna Marlene Somoza was connected to a “major transnational drug trafficking network” along the Arizona border through the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a news release. Authorities arrested her in 1993 for selling and transporting marijuana, and she agreed to act as a confidential informant for Arizona law enforcement.
Somoza gave birth to a daughter, Crystal Reyes, in Nogales, Mexico, in November 1993. The child’s father was Darren Stockwell, a law enforcement officer and U.S. citizen, the U.S. Marshals said.
Somoza and Crystal later moved to Ahwatukee, Arizona, where they lived with her boyfriend, narcotics detective Avelino Tamala. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, Somoza and Tamala began an “improper romantic relationship” while she was working as a law enforcement source.
While Crystal lived with the couple, she was allegedly subjected to “severe physical abuse,” including being bound and gagged in a small dog kennel for weeks at a time, the U.S. Marshals said. The abuse “escalated fatally” on January 30, 1997, when Crystal suffocated inside a sealed cardboard box, the agency said.
Almost a year later, in November 1998, someone found human bone fragments in Mobile, Arizona, but investigators could not identify them. Authorities arrested Somoza and Tamala on drug and weapon offenses in 1999 and collected DNA. When investigators compared it to the bones, the analysis “could not eliminate Somoza as the maternal source,” the U.S. Marshals said. Without a paternal DNA source, however, they could not make an identification. Somoza walked out of prison in 2008.
The case went cold until 2014, when cold case detectives located and interviewed Stockwell. They collected and analyzed a sample of his DNA, which allowed investigators to identify the bone fragments as Crystal’s.
Anna Marlene Somoza was detained in Mexico on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Crystal Reyes. Courtney Johns reports on the new details.KPHO-TV
A grand jury indicted Somoza and Tamala on first-degree murder charges on December 12, 2014, and arrest warrants followed. The U.S. Marshals and Arizona’s WANTED Violent Offender Task Force arrested Tamala that same day. The task force quickly determined that Somoza had fled to Mexico. It began working with the U.S. Marshal Service Mexico Foreign Field Office, but the team could not find her. A court sentenced Tamala to life in prison in 2016.
Federal, state and local officials kept investigating the case for the next 12 years, the U.S. Marshals said. Investigators made “extensive investigative efforts” to locate Somoza, but they found that she “had taken deliberate and extensive measures to evade detection by law enforcement.” Her “close connections with cartels” also affected the long search, officials said.
In September 2026, members of a U.S. Marshals task force learned that Somoza was in Cernavaca, Mexico. On Sunday, Mexican police and Interpol officers arrested her in Xochitepec, Mexico.
Officials are working to extradite Somoza, and she will face charges in Arizona, the U.S. Marshals said.
Attorney Juan Rocha, who teaches at Arizona State University, told CBS affiliate KPHO-TV that Mexico often seeks assurance the death penalty will not be pursued. Prosecutors have not publicly said whether they will seek the death penalty against Somoza.
“No one can hide from American justice forever,” said Timothy Courchaine, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, in the news release. “The United States Attorney’s office stands in partnership with both our federal and critically our state partners to ensure defendants have their day in court. We look forward to now working alongside our Mexican partners to bring this fugitive back to Arizona.”
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