Police say David Varela flew to Hong Kong as investigators found Lina Guerra dead inside the couple’s downtown apartment.
NORFOLK, Va. — A U.S. Navy reservist has been charged with first-degree murder after police said they found his wife dead in a kitchen freezer at the couple’s downtown Norfolk apartment on Feb. 5, and investigators later learned he had boarded a flight to Hong Kong.
The case has drawn local, federal and international attention because the suspect, 38-year-old David Varela, remains outside the United States while prosecutors try to bring him back to Virginia. Norfolk police identified the victim as 39-year-old Lina M. Guerra, whose family had reported her missing after weeks without contact. The allegations, the unanswered questions about how she died and the challenge of extradition have turned a missing-person case into a cross-border homicide investigation.
Police said Guerra was reported missing on Feb. 4 after relatives became alarmed that they had not heard from her in weeks. According to investigators, that silence stood out because family members were used to frequent contact with her, including relatives in Colombia. The next day, detectives investigating the missing-person report went to the apartment building on the 300 block of E. Main Street in Norfolk. There, they found Guerra unresponsive inside the home and later said her body had been placed in the kitchen freezer. Norfolk police said she was pronounced dead at the scene. In the same apartment, investigators found Guerra’s cellphone, and Varela’s Tesla was outside in the parking area, according to court records described in local reports. By Feb. 10, after an autopsy, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had ruled Guerra’s death a homicide, and Norfolk police announced that Varela had been charged with first-degree murder.
Investigators have released only part of the picture. Police have not publicly described a motive, and court records cited by local outlets did not list a cause of death. What authorities have said is that Varela also faces an allegation of concealing a dead body to prevent detection, a detail that emerged in reporting based on a federal affidavit. The affidavit said detectives, working with federal agencies, learned Varela was an active Navy reservist and that his failure to respond to his immediate supervisor was unusual. Investigators then tracked travel information showing he boarded a flight to Hong Kong on or about Feb. 5, the same day police found Guerra’s body. Authorities have said they have not reached him since. Norfolk police have said the case remains active and that they do not have additional details to release. That leaves several major questions unresolved, including when Guerra was killed, how long her body was in the freezer and whether anyone else may have seen or heard signs of trouble before her family called police.
As the criminal case unfolded, Guerra’s relatives began describing what they say they experienced in the weeks before her body was found. Family members told local television stations that they had not heard from her since mid-January, a sharp break from her normal routine. Paola Ramirez, Guerra’s sister-in-law, said through a translator that Varela told relatives in Colombia that Guerra had been arrested and sentenced to prison on a shoplifting case. Ramirez said he sent messages claiming he was distraught over her incarceration and even shared a photo that appeared to show Guerra in an orange jail outfit. But local reporting later said court records did not show that Guerra had been charged with or convicted of such a crime. Ramirez also said the family had long worried about controlling behavior. She told reporters that Varela would not let Guerra work, study, make friends or go out alone, and she said there had been violence earlier in the relationship. Those statements are allegations from relatives, not charges filed in court, but they have become part of the public account surrounding the case because they help explain why Guerra’s relatives became suspicious of the story they were being told.
Friends and relatives have also painted a picture of Guerra that stands in stark contrast to the way her death was discovered. Ramirez said Guerra was “the pillar of our family,” describing her as hardworking, humble and deeply loved. Another relative, Elizabeth Echavarria, spoke in grief after the homicide charge was announced, saying, “It’s awful he took my little girl away.” A friend told local media that Guerra loved her three dogs and was known as a kind and gentle person. Those memories do not answer the central investigative questions, but they do show the reach of the loss across borders and across a family network that stretched from Hampton Roads to Colombia. The apartment building itself sits in a busy part of downtown Norfolk, not far from offices, restaurants and waterfront traffic, which has added to the shock around the case. What happened inside the residence remains largely sealed within police files, but outside it, the killing has unsettled relatives, neighbors and a city already familiar with the difficult work of homicide investigations.
The next phase will depend less on what happened inside the apartment than on whether prosecutors can get Varela back to Virginia. Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi has said his office is working with Interpol and other agencies on the effort. Fatehi said international extradition is unusual in his experience and described Interpol as a clearinghouse that helps police agencies in more than 190 countries share information about suspects and fugitives. Local reporting has said Norfolk police are also working with the FBI, Homeland Security and NCIS, the Navy’s criminal investigative arm. That cooperation matters because the case now involves both a local homicide prosecution and an international search. If Varela is detained abroad, prosecutors would still need to move through the legal steps required to return him to Virginia to face the murder charge. If he is not located quickly, the case could remain in a holding pattern, with the criminal count pending but no initial court appearance, no plea and no hearing date. For now, police have not announced an arrest, and the public timeline ends with a plane trip out of the United States and a homicide charge waiting in Norfolk.
The case has become one of those rare investigations in which paperwork, family grief and unanswered forensic details all carry equal weight. Detectives have publicly confirmed only the basic sequence: a missing-person report, a search at the apartment, a body found in the freezer, a homicide ruling and a suspect believed to be overseas. Family members, meanwhile, have filled in the emotional space between those facts, describing weeks of confusion, suspicious messages and the shock of learning that Guerra was dead. Fatehi, speaking about the broader strain of such cases, said intimate partner killings are especially painful because they involve people who were supposed to care for each other. That sense of rupture has shaped the public response as much as the unusual details of the investigation. Even so, the legal case will turn on evidence, not emotion: forensic findings, travel records, communications data and whatever else investigators can place before a court if and when Varela is returned.
As of March 16, 2026, Varela remained wanted, the homicide charge remained pending in Norfolk, and authorities had not announced an arrest. The next milestone is whether investigators locate him abroad and begin formal extradition steps to bring the case into a Virginia courtroom.