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Man convicted in 2010 murder of Montgomery County woman
Prosecutors and the brother of an American University professor murdered in her home are speaking out after the suspect was convicted.
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. - Prosecutors and the brother of an American University professor murdered in her home are speaking out after the suspect was convicted.
The killer was a lover turned con man in a case that made headlines here more than a decade ago. FOX 5's Bob Barnard is live in Bethesda with the story.
The backstory:
This is a crime that's haunted many here in Bethesda for 15 years — a woman murdered while alone in her home back on Oct. 25, 2010.
Sue Marcum, 52, was found beaten with a liquor bottle and strangled inside her home along Massachusettes Avenue in the Glen Echo section of Bethesda.
Her killer, now 55-year-old Jorge Landeros, was convicted of second-degree murder after an eight-day jury trial in Rockville.
Prosecutors say he was her yoga and Spanish teacher. They became romantic and then he invested her money — with disastrous results.
"During the course of the time that he, Mr. Landeros, was handling Sue's finances, she lost a total of $312,000. We believe that the financial records show and this was presented to the jury that the defendant actually directly took $252,000 from her…that he stole," Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said.
Dig deeper:
According to prosecutors, DNA at the crime scene on her neck and under her fingernails ultimately tied him to the crime.
They say Marcum and Landeros were drinking from shot glasses right before the murder but what exactly sparked the violence that night, they're not sure.
"Maybe there was some sort of confrontation. Maybe he asked her for more money and she literally had nothing left to give or maybe she stood up for herself really for the first time," prosecutor Debbie Feinstein said.
"All we know is at some point he attacked her and you can see the trail of her blood and hair leading down the stairs to her ultimate lying place at the bottom of the steps with that broken glass under her. He clearly hit her, the glass shattering under her and then she went down and he strangled and continued to beat her," she added.
Prosecutors say Landeros then staged the crime scene to look like a break-in and burglary gone bad.
Suspect captured:
He was ultimately arrested in Mexico and brought back to Montgomery County in 2023, after hiding out there for 11 years.
As for Sue Marcum, she was a longtime accounting professor at American University.
"Person after person after person has told me that taking her class changed the course of their careers and turned them into accountants. Now, I took an accounting class in college and look, to me it's boring. Sue managed to make it interesting," the victim’s brother, Alan Marcum said.
Sentencing is in February. Landeros faces up to 30 years in prison.