Montgomery County’s top prosecutor says his office will consider whether to pursue the death penalty against a man charged with killing a Germantown woman and suspected in the death of her son.
State’s Attorney John McCarthy said Wednesday that “it is far too early” to say whether capital punishment is warranted for Curtis M. Lopez. The 45-year-old is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of his wife, Jane McQuain.
But, McCarthy said, the death penalty is “something that I think has to be considered” in the case.
Lopez is also suspected of killing 11-year-old William McQuain — Jane McQuain’s son and Lopez’s stepson. The boy’s body was found in a wooded area in Clarksburg near Interstate 270 on Tuesday.
McCarthy said his office will determine whether the case has the aggravating factors that would make Lopez eligible for capital punishment under Maryland law. Those factors include: if the murder was committed during certain felonies, if the perpetrator tried to kill more than one person at once, if the victim was killed for financial gain, if the victim was a public safety official and if the victim was someone who was being held as a hostage.
Lopez is still in custody in North Carolina, where he was arrested last week. Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said Lopez would be extradited to Maryland within two weeks.
Jane McQuain was found beaten and stabbed to death in her apartment on the 13100 block of Briarcliff Terrace on Oct. 12.
Police are still determining exactly when and where William, a sixth-grader at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, was killed.
Surveillance video from the morning of Oct. 1 shows the boy and Lopez at a Germantown storage facility, and William is wearing clothing similar to the clothes on his body when it was found, according to police.
Manger said Wednesday that detectives gathered additional surveillance footage from a gas station about a tenth of a mile from where William’s body was found. That video, from the early afternoon of Oct. 1, shows William and Lopez at the station.
In both videos, police said, the child did not appear to be in distress.
“It certainly narrows the timeline for us,” Manger said of the second video.
Manger said police are still investigating whether William or her mother was killed first, but believe both were slain in a 24-hour span.
Police say McQuain had been dead for 10 to 12 days when her body was found last week. Officers went to the home after a friend called authorities, saying he hadn’t been able to contact her.
