Suspected accomplice in Vanessa Guillén killing indicted on 11 charges
The Texas woman suspected of helping her boyfriend cover up the killing of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillén was charged Wednesday with 11 crimes.
Cecily Aguilar, a 23-year-old civilian, is accused of helping Spc. Aaron Robinson dismember Guillén’s body to hide the killing at Fort Hood.
Guillén, 20, was bludgeoned to death April 22, 2020. Robinson, also 20, died by suicide July 1 as authorities moved to arrest him.
Aguilar confessed in a June 2020 police interview to helping Robinson cut up Guillén’s body in the woods near the Leon River in Belton, about 20 miles east of Fort Hood in central Texas. Her attorneys attempted to get the confession thrown out, but a judge denied their efforts last month.
Aguilar was initially charged with three evidence tampering charges and had pleaded not guilty, but the feds expanded the case and took it back to a grand jury, which returned the superseding 11-count indictment Tuesday.
Now, Aguilar is charged with three counts of being an accessory after the fact, two counts of tampering with evidence, one count of conspiracy to tamper, one count of destroying records and four counts of lying to investigators.
The feds said after Robinson killed Guillén, he told Aguilar that he needed help disposing of her body. Aguilar agreed, bought cement to help conceal the corpse, deleted information from Robinson’s Google account and also physically helped Robinson dismember Guillén’s body, according to investigators.
Guillén’s death prompted widespread outcry after her family revealed that she’d reported sexual assaults prior to her killing. More than a year after she was killed, the Army finally admitted in an report that Guillén had been assaulted while serving.
