Woman Charged In Connection With Homicide Of Fort Hood Soldier Vanessa Guillen
Cecily Ann Aguilar allegedly confessed to helping her boyfriend mutilate and burn the Army specialist’s body.
Investigators have positively identified the partial remains of a body recently found dismembered, burned and buried as belonging to Vanessa Guillen, the Army specialist who went missing from Fort Hood in Texas over two months ago.
A priest and Army chaplain formally broke the grim news to Guillen’s mother, Gloria Guillen, 42, on July 5, the Washington Post reported.
Mayra Guillen, the late soldier’s older sister, told The New York Times the grieving mom has had a hard time accepting her daughter is gone but “knows that heaven has an angel.”
Guillen, 20, was last seen on April 22 in a parking lot at her Regimental Engineer Squadron Headquarters at Fort Hood. According to a federal complaint filed July 2 and obtained by the Times, a witness said Guillen had gone to an arms room overseen by U.S. Army Specialist Aaron David Robinson.
There, prosecutors said, Robinson, 20, bludgeoned Guillen to death with a hammer and stuffed her body into a large plastic box.
According to the complaint, witnesses reported seeing Robinson wheel the box — which “appeared very heavy in weight” — from the arms building to his car and drive away.
After the murder, Robinson called his girlfriend, Cecily Ann Aguilar, who is also the estranged wife of a former Fort Hood soldier. During a June 30 interview with law enforcement, Aguilar, 22, confessed to going with Robinson to a remote site in Bell County to help him dismember, burn and bury Guillen’s body, the court documents state.
When police confronted Robinson on July 1 to question him about Guillen’s disappearance, he pulled out a pistol and fatally shot himself.
Authorities placed Aguilar under arrest the same day and charged her with one count of conspiracy to tamper with evidence. She faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted.
Shortly before her murder, Guillen told friends, family and other soldiers that she was being sexually harassed but was afraid to make an official report for fear of reprisal.
According to family attorney Natalie Khawam, the Guillens believe Robinson may have become enraged after the Army specialist told him she was going to file a complaint against him, CNN reported.
“When I first went up to that base, that subject, I met him, not knowing that he had something to do with it,” the victim’s older sister, Mayra, said at a recent news conference. “I felt something was telling me that he did something, and I wasn't wrong, apparently.”
