The DNA of the man suspected of killing an American University professor in her Bethesda home last year was found on the slain woman and what police believe is the murder weapon, according to court records.
A warrant was issued in April charging Jorge Rueda Landeros with first-degree murder in the Oct. 25 killing of Sue Ann Marcum, an accounting professor who police say was bludgeoned and strangled to death.
Montgomery County police say Landeros is in Mexico but has not been apprehended.
Landeros was charged in federal court in Greenbelt last week with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. A criminal complaint filed in that case says El Paso police obtained a DNA sample from him when he traveled to Texas.
In April, Montgomery police matched that DNA swab to DNA found on Marcum and inside her home after the killing, including on the weapon police believe was used in the fatal beating, according to the complaint. The complaint doesn’t specify what that weapon is and Officer Janelle Smith, a Montgomery County police spokeswoman, declined to comment on the weapon.
Landeros and Marcum met in 2006, the complaint says, and “may have had an intimate relationship.”
They became “jointly involved” in an investment fund in 2008. But at some point, the complaint says, Marcum became “increasingly uncomfortable” with how Landeros was handling the funds.
Landeros was the sole beneficiary of Marcum’s $500,000 life insurance policy, State Farm Insurance confirmed to investigators. Smith declined to comment on whether police believed that was a motive in the slaying.
Police initially suspected a District teenager, Deandrew Hamlin, in Marcum’s death. Hamlin was arrested driving a Jeep that was stolen from her home. But police never linked him to the killing, and Hamlin’s lawyer has said he picked up the vehicle when it was abandoned in the District.
An Interpol wanted notice has been issued for Landeros, and Montgomery County police are working with Interpol and Mexican authorities to bring him into custody, Smith said.
Court records say he is working as a yoga instructor and has communicated with detectives through email.
“He declined the offer to turn himself into MCPD,” the complaint says.
