America Pacheco,Angel Pacheco Obituary, Death; – A couple who has been incarcerated for five years on charges of murdering five individuals, including two children, had their bail amounts established this week.
Areli Aguirre-Avilez and Heidi Wolfe were assigned bail amounts of $2 million and $1 million, respectively, during a session at the Alexander County Superior Court on Wednesday, as reported by the clerk’s office.
Previously, both individuals had been detained without bail in relation to the mass homicides that occurred in 2019. The suspects are alleged to have killed two children, whose bodies were discovered in a burned residence, as well as three individuals found in a charred vehicle in Virginia.
Investigators revealed that law enforcement responded to a residence on Pine Meadows Lane on June 15, 2019, where they uncovered the bodies of two children who had been shot before the house was set ablaze. The victims were identified as America Pacheco, aged 12, and Angel Pacheco, aged 11.
At that time, the children’s mother, Maria Calderon Martinez, was missing but presumed deceased. It was suspected that her remains had been discarded in the Catawba River. However, several months later, on November 4, 2019, the Grayson County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia discovered three bodies in a burned vehicle that had been reported missing from Alexander County.
Authorities indicated that the vehicle identification number (VIN) corresponded to a vehicle stolen from the site of the Alexander County homicide. A deer hunter located the truck in a wooded area. The vehicle had been incinerated, and three sets of human skeletal remains were found in the truck bed.
The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed the identity of Maria Calderon Martinez, the mother of the two deceased children, as one of the bodies located in the vehicle, along with two men.
The men, identified as Jose Carlos Mendez-Pena and Luis Fernando Sanchez, were known to Martinez. At the time of the murders, police reported that Martinez had sought a protective order against her ex-husband, Aguirre-Avilez, who had allegedly threatened to set the house on fire previously. Aguirre-Avilez faces charges of first-degree murder and statutory rape of a child aged 15 years.
