Crime & Safety

Former Aurora Man Sentenced in 1990 Murder of Wife

Aurelio Montano, 58, was sentenced Monday to his second life term in prison for the 1990 murder of his wife, Maria Guadalupe “Lupe” Montano,  who was 35 years old at the time of her death, according to the Daily Herald. 

During a 2013 trial, prosecutors said Aurelio Montano killed his wife because he thought she was cheating on him. According to prosecutors, he strangled her and then rolled her body up in a carpet and buried it at a Naperville horse farm. 

Montano was convicted on Oct. 30, 2013, by a Kane County jury of first-degree murder, according to a Kane County State's Attorney press release. 

The Chicago Tribune reports the case was one of the first in Illinois to use "cadaver dogs" to help obtain key evidence.

In 2008, 18 years after Maria Guadalupe Montano's presumed death, police used the dogs to act on a tip and dug up a piece of rug at a horse farm on Hobson Road near Naperville and the dogs "indicated that the rug showed the presence of human decomposition," according to the Chicago Tribune. 

Police believe Aurelio Montano later moved the body, which has never been recovered, according to the Daily Herald. 

The Chicago Tribune reports the Montano's only daughter, Maribel Barajas, who was 10 years old at the time of the murder, said she remembered the rug in her childhood home, and Montano’s sister said she saw Maria Guadalupe Montano's body wrapped in the rug.

Montano has been serving a life sentence in the Illinois Department of Corrections for the June 1996 murders of Juan Medina and Claudia Ramos in Aurora. Montano was convicted in 1998 by a Kane County jury of two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of concealment of a homicide, according to a Kane County State's Attorney press release. 

“Mr. Montano is an example of the worst of the worst. He is headed to where he belongs – behind bars for the rest of his life to never again walk among free men," Kane County State’s Attorney Joe McMahon said in the news release. "With this sentence, our thoughts remain with Lupe’s family, who we hope believe that justice finally has been served." 

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