‘Suitcase Killer’ Javier Da Silva, gets 30 years for kidnapping, murder of ex-girlfriend
(Valerie Reyes, brutally murdered, Image credit: New Rochelle Police Department)
On September 23 in a Southern District of New York courtroom, Javier Enrique Da Silva Rojas was sentenced to 360 months in prison for the 2019 kidnapping and murder of his ex-girlfriend, Valerie Reyes. Reyes’ deceased body was discovered in Connecticut, tied up and bound and stuffed into a suitcase. Da Silva, aptly named the “Suitcase Killer” in the press, was arrested in Flushing, Queens, in February 2019, and pled guilty to the charge of kidnapping that resulted in the murder of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes .
Late in the evening on January 28, 2019, Da Silva, then 24, rented a car in Flushing, New York, and drove to his ex-girlfriend’s home in New Rochelle, arriving there in the early morning hours of January 29. Reyes only dated Da Silva for about three months and broke off the relationship with him in April 2018. But in the early morning hours of January 29, 2019, Da Silva got into Reyes’ apartment where the two had a violent confrontation, during which Reyes suffered head trauma, bruising around the face, and a large hematoma to her forehead.
Da Silva then kidnapped Reyes – covering her mouth with several layers of packing tape and binding her feet and hands with packing tape and twine and putting her in a suitcase – before dumping her body, still inside the suitcase, in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Over the next several days, Da Silva used Reyes’ debit card on various occasions to withdraw approximately $5,350 in cash from her bank account. Da Silva also sold an iPad belonging to his victim in the days following her death.
U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss stated: “Javier Da Silva committed a horrific kidnapping that resulted in the death of a young woman. In the days after, he used her ATM card to empty her bank account and then attempted to cover up the evidence of his conduct. Valerie Reyes, the victim of this crime, was in the prime of her life when it was senselessly ended by Da Silva’s abhorrent act. Those who commit violence, especially those who kill, will not escape justice.”
On January 30, 2019, Reyes was reported missing to the New Rochelle Police Department. A few days later, on February 5, 2019, her body was recovered in a red suitcase alongside a public road in the Town of Greenwich, Connecticut. The Connecticut Medical Examiner’s Office later concluded that Reyes died of homicidal asphyxiation.
The battered woman suffocated inside the “suitcase that became her coffin,” prosecutors said in a pre-sentencing filing, as quoted by The New Yok Daily News. Clinching Da Silva’s guilt in this case was the fact that his DNA was recovered from the suitcase handle and also found under Reyes’ fingernails.
For more on Da Silva’s sentencing, see the video accompanying this article.
(Cover photo: Javier Enrique Da Silva Rojas and Valerie Reyes, Image credit: Instagram)
(Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York)
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today / Follow Richard on Facebook and Twitter
