ESPANOLA, NEW MEXICO: A New Mexico man will reportedly spend the next 35 years of his life behind bars after brutally beating and killing his five-year-old stepdaughter and dumping her body in the Rio Grande River, Law and Crime reports.
Malcom Torres, 29, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in April and was sentenced by a judge on Monday, October 30, in the death of Renezmae Calzada.
The victim's mother reported her missing from their Espanola, New Mexico, home on September 8, 2019, after she had been in the care of Torres.
The incident prompted a statewide Amber Alert and a massive search for the girl.
Malcom Torres claimed he noticed Renezmae Calzada missing the day before
Torres claimed that he spent an hour outside looking for Renezmae after he said that the girl went missing the day before.
However, according to court documents, he went back inside and resumed “drinking heavily” rather than calling law enforcement.
Torres provided police “zero assistance” in locating the girl and refused to let them review his phone. He denied any involvement in her disappearance.
Officers finally discovered Renezmae’s body three days after she went missing in the Rio Grande at Santa Clara Pueblo, about five miles from her home.
Why did Malcom Torres kill Renezmae Calzada?
Prosecutors believe Torres killed the girl and then drove her body and dumped her in the river where she was eventually found.
As per the authorities, he killed her because he was upset that he had to care for the girl despite her not being his biological daughter.
The defendant's 18-month-old son, who was in the home at the time, was not hurt.
What injuries did Renezmae Calzada suffer?
Renezmae suffered from blunt force trauma to the head and a fractured left wrist, among other injuries throughout her body, prosecutors said. A child abuse expert described the injuries as “excruciatingly painful” for her.
“This could have been your child. It could have been my child,” Raul Bujanda, FBI special agent in charge for the New Mexico district, told reporters Monday during a press conference.
“She was a beautiful soul that was taken way too soon from us,” Bujanda said.
Torres agreed with the medical examiner’s findings as part of the plea deal but claimed he was too drunk to remember what he did to his stepdaughter.
Prosecutors were asking for a 30-year sentence but a judge decided to give him 35.
What did Renezmae Calzada's mother say?
“I have a lot of anger,” her mother Victoria Maestas said at the press conference, adding “I am not God. I can’t judge him. I’m angry and I’m upset. I may not like the time he got either, but it’s something and I got an apology and he didn’t deny it. So four years of denying and not saying anything and today is the first time we got something.”
Her grandmother said the family will continue to raise her brother to remember his late sister and “let him know how precious she was.”
“We’ll never, ever forget our baby girl,” she said.
