CHICAGO — The FBI announced a $10,000 reward Thursday for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of a man accused of killing his new bride. Authorities are focusing their search for 30-year-old Arnoldo Jimenez in the Mexican state of Durango, said police in suburban Chicago.
Jimenez married Estrella Carrera on May 11 in Chicago and allegedly stabbed her to death just hours later in her suburban apartment. Her body was found still clad in the silver sequined cocktail dress she wore to celebrate their wedding.
Capt. Joseph Ford of the Burbank Police Department said Thursday that investigators have received more than 450 tips about Jimenez's whereabouts, including sightings of his 2006 Maserati.
"We are still actively searching for the 2006 Maserati but we don't believe Jimenez is currently using it for transportation," Ford said.
Searchers are focusing on the area of Santiago Papasquiaro, a town of about 48,000 people, Ford said.
The 6-foot, 220-pound Jimenez could be using "Arnoldo Jimenez Rochel" as an alias. He is described as "armed and dangerous" on the FBI's wanted poster. He is wanted for first-degree murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI or local law enforcement agency.
Authorities began looking for Jimenez soon after Carrera's family reported that she failed to pick up her two children on May 12, as she had arranged. The family had been unable to reach Carrera or Jimenez, so they asked police to check on her well-being at her apartment in Burbank.
Police found Carrera's body on the afternoon of May 13. It was in the bathtub, still clothed in the dress she also may have worn at her wedding ceremony.
That day, the bride's family received a haunting phone call from a relative of her new husband. Jimenez's sister told them he had called her and tearfully said he had left his bride bleeding after a "bad fight," Carrera's sister told The Associated Press last week.
Investigators tracked Jimenez's cellphone from Chicago to Tennessee to Arkansas and finally to Texas, according to an FBI affidavit. The phone was last used May 13 in Hidalgo, Texas, near the Mexican border.
The affidavit said Jimenez was born in Texas and owns property in Pharr, Texas.