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Juan Gonzales Jr. was sentenced at age 45 to concurrent life terms for the murder of Kathy Lujan and tampering with physical evidence, a human corpse, in Midland, Texas.

Lujan, 41, lived with Gonzales, her common-law husband, and their two sons. Reporting described Gonzales as her common-law husband, not a legally married husband. Lujan was reported to have been involved with two other men.

On May 11, 2016, Gonzales and Lujan argued about his taking her money and a phone conversation she had had with someone. After a scuffle, he choked and killed her, wrapped her body in moving blankets, placed it in a vehicle and drove to an oil field, where he hid it. On May 14, 2016, he filed a missing person report and told police she had left after an argument. Lujan's bank accounts were drained in the days after she disappeared.

Midland police initially looked at the two men Lujan had been seeing, but both had solid alibis. Investigators came to treat the case as a homicide. Gonzales was jailed on a credit card abuse charge connected to the drained accounts and, after some weeks in jail, contacted lead detective Rosie Rodriguez of the Midland Police Department.

In a videotaped interview with Detective Rodriguez that was later shown to the jury, Gonzales said he had found Lujan lying face down on the kitchen floor with a cut on her head, panicked and hid her body. News reports also said he told investigators she had taken her own life. He led detectives to her remains on County Road 160, and the autopsy ruled her death a homicide. Gonzales did not admit strangling Lujan in the interview, but later admitted it in court.

Gonzales pleaded guilty in the 441st District Court of Midland County to murder and tampering with physical evidence, a human corpse, and chose to have a jury decide his punishment. The punishment trial began on August 14, 2017. He testified that Lujan confronted him in the kitchen, that they fought, and that he sat on top of her and choked her. He asked the jury to find that he acted under the immediate influence of sudden passion, which would have reduced the offense to a second degree felony.

The jury rejected sudden passion, found an enhancement allegation true and, on August 17, 2017, assessed life in prison and a $10,000 fine on each charge, to run concurrently. Midland County District Attorney Laura Nodolf's office prosecuted the case. The Eleventh Court of Appeals in Eastland affirmed both judgments on August 8, 2019, rejecting complaints about the prosecutors' jury argument and the sufficiency of the evidence on sudden passion. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused his petition for discretionary review on November 20, 2019. No later development has been publicly reported.

The video is a police interview-room recording that runs about 181 minutes and presents the interview itself. It opens with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved. The uploader listed May 24, 2016, as the interview date, but that date was not verified.

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Part 2 of 4 of the recording described above.

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Part 3 of 4 of the recording described above.

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Part 4 of 4 of the recording described above.