The defendant pleaded not guilty after authorities said a Theodore mother and her two children were killed and buried in Baldwin County.
MOBILE, Ala. — Prosecutors in Mobile County have laid out a sweeping capital murder case against Hector Gamaliel Argueta-Guerra, accusing him of kidnapping and killing a mother, her teenage daughter and her 2-year-old son before burying their bodies together in a wooded area near Summerdale.
The case matters not only because three people are dead, but because investigators say key parts of it were built from physical evidence, court testimony and a chain of events that began with a disappearance report and ended with a grave recovery in another county. The defendant, 31, has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty, while investigators continue to work on major unanswered questions, including the exact murder weapon, the order of the killings and the motive.
By the time the defendant stood in court on the newly filed charges, the state had already turned the case into one of the most serious prosecutions on the local docket. Judge Jill Phillips read the allegations as an interpreter translated the hearing. Prosecutors said the counts included capital murder during kidnapping, capital murder during burglary, capital murder involving two or more victims and capital murder involving the death of a child younger than 14. The charging package also added three abuse-of-a-corpse counts and an obstruction charge tied to allegedly false identification given to investigators. District Attorney Keith Blackwood said the state had reviewed preliminary autopsy findings and would pursue death as a punishment if the case ends in conviction.
The documents behind those charges paint a grim picture. Authorities said the victims were Aurelia Choc Cac, 40, her daughter Niurka Zuleta Choc, 17, and 2-year-old Anthony Garcia Choc. Court records and law enforcement briefings said all three died from sharp-force trauma caused by an edged weapon. Investigators said Anthony suffered a fatal wound to the head and Aurelia suffered wounds to the chest and back. Officials have not publicly detailed Niurka’s injuries in the same way. Blackwood said the state still could not say exactly what kind of bladed instrument was used. When asked whether a machete might have been involved, he said investigators were still working to determine the precise weapon.
One of the most important pieces of evidence surfaced before the bodies were found. During a March preliminary hearing on the kidnapping charges, a detective testified that blood collected inside the family’s Theodore home belonged to Niurka. That statement gave prosecutors a direct biological link between the violent scene inside the residence and one of the missing victims. Investigators had already described blood throughout the house, signs of a struggle and the unexplained absence of a mattress and a clothes hamper. They also said the family’s phones and cash were still inside, facts that made a voluntary disappearance less likely. The prosecution’s theory now appears to rest on the argument that the crimes began inside the home and continued after the victims were taken away.
The state’s narrative also had to adjust when the defendant’s identity shifted in public records. Early reporting and booking records referred to Juan Carlos Argueta Guerra. Later, prosecutors said the man in custody had provided inaccurate identifying information and moved to amend the filings to reflect the name Hector Gamaliel Argueta-Guerra. That procedural wrinkle did not change the substance of the allegations, but it added another count and gave the case a more complicated paper trail. Officials have also said the suspect has alleged gang ties and a criminal history outside Alabama, though those claims remain separate from the proof required to convict him in this case.
The body recovery gave the prosecution its broadest factual foundation. Authorities said investigators searching land connected to the suspect found three bodies on March 11 in a wooded area off Downing Road in Summerdale, in neighboring Baldwin County. The bodies were buried together, wrapped in plastic and bedding. At first, officials said jewelry recovered with the remains led them to believe the bodies were those of the missing family. On March 26, authorities said forensic methods had positively identified them and that next of kin had been notified. The timeline from disappearance to identification helped transform a kidnapping prosecution into a capital murder case supported by both scene evidence and recovery-site evidence.
Even so, the prosecution is moving ahead with gaps still in the public record. Investigators have said they do not know whether the victims were alive when they left the house, do not know the motive and have not found the weapon. Those unknowns will matter later, especially if defense lawyers challenge intent, sequence or aggravating circumstances. For now, though, the state has chosen to front-load the gravity of the case: three dead family members, a child victim, burial allegations and a death-penalty decision announced before the early hearings were over.
The next phase is likely to center on pretrial litigation, forensic development and any further disclosure by prosecutors as they build toward indictment and future court dates in a case that has already moved from a missing-family alert to one of the region’s most closely watched capital prosecutions.
Author note: Last updated April 8, 2026.