Trial date set for woman accused in baby Sofia case

In the months leading up to her daughter’s Nov. 11 birth, Laura Abarca filled her home with items a baby would need. She was thrilled to learn of her pregnancy. She told Manuel Gonzales he would be a father by sending him a snapshot of a positive pregnancy test.

Gonzales felt a little nervous about the baby’s arrival. But Abarca was nothing but happy.

“She waited 27 years to have her daughter. … With so much love, with so much hope, she was ready to be a mother,” her mother, Guadalupe Nogueta Del Rio, said.

Given the joy and baby preparations they witnessed at their home at 215 N. Brunswick, the story Yesenia Sesmas tells about how Abarca had agreed to turn over 6-day-old Sofia for her to raise just doesn’t make sense, Gonzales and Del Rio testified through a Spanish interpreter during a preliminary hearing Thursday morning in Sedgwick County District Court.

Prosecutors say Sesmas, 34, shot Abarca once in the forehead on Nov. 17 and abducted the baby to raise as her own. Sesmas claims Abarca at the last minute backed out of an arrangement to hand over the child and she shot her accidentally while trying to convince her to honor the deal.

“We had everything ready. (We) bought clothes. Got the crib ready. Everything that the baby was going to need,” Gonzales said. The couple had every intention of taking care of their daughter, Sofia, themselves, and wanted her “to grow up” and “for her to be happy.”

“She had the house full of things for her daughter,” Nogueta Del Rio told a packed courtroom. “How would she give her away? How would she give her to her?”

Sesmas, who is criminally charged in connection with the case, sat silently listening to her own Spanish interpreter relaying testimony and statements by attorneys and the judge during a two-hour hearing. In the end, after hearing from Abarca’s relatives, one of their neighbors and law enforcement who investigated the case, District Judge Ben Burgess decided that there was probable cause to believe that first-degree premeditated murder, kidnapping and aggravated interference with parental custody had occurred and that Sesmas was the right suspect.

Defense attorney Jason Smartt argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Sesmas had pulled the trigger. The neighbor, who testified she saw a strange woman peeking out from Abarca’s door around the time she would have died, didn’t get a good enough look to provide a positive identification, he said. “People kidnap people all the time without killing,” he said.

Burgess set Sesmas’ jury trial for April 17, but the date will likely be postponed to give attorneys more time to prepare.

Sesmas stood silent when given a chance to enter a plea. Burgess entered a not-guilty one on her behalf.

Prosecutors say Sesmas, who is a Mexican national, faked a pregnancy for months and shot Abarca once in the forehead after Abarca refused to hand over Sofia on Nov. 17. Sesmas had gone to Abarca’s west Wichita apartment while she and the baby were alone that day under the guise of friendship, they say.

After killing Abarca in her living room, Sesmas packed Sofia into a pink-and-gray diaper bag and tucked the gun used in the shooting in a basket of laundry, took both to a car she had parked outside and drove away, according to testimony given during Thursday’s proceeding.

Gonzales found Abarca dead on their couch and the baby missing after he came home from work at about 3:30 p.m. Abarca’s mother, who lived with the couple, was also at work when the shooting happened.

After more than a day without leads, law enforcement identified Sesmas as a suspect and tracked her to a home in Dallas. A SWAT team serving a search warrant there found Sofia, Sesmas and others inside. The baby was alive and healthy.

Nogueta Del Rio testified that she knew Sesmas by the name Jessie and that she and Abarca had been friends in the past.

Gonzales told the court he didn’t know her and had never heard Abarca talk about her.

Wichita police Detective Michelle Tennyson testified that Sesmas, during an interview with law enforcement, said that Abarca didn’t want Sofia because she wasn’t a boy and had agreed to give her to Sesmas to raise. Sesmas, herself, had been pregnant but miscarried and instead of telling her family about the loss, faked a pregnancy for months.

According to Tennyson’s testimony about the police interview, Sesmas also said that:

Three to four weeks before Abarca’s death, she bought a gun from a man online and then went back to Texas. She brought it with her when she came for Sofia to scare Abarca if she backed out. At the last minute, Abarca decided she didn’t want to give up Sofia because Gonzales was excited about having her. But she went to the apartment anyway to talk to her.

She didn’t intend to shoot Abarca, but the gun went off accidentally as she was passing it back and forth in her hands to prove to Abarca that the gun was real. After the shooting, she peeked outside the front door then went to the bathroom to check if there was any blood on her. She suddenly remembered the baby and decided to take her with her to Dallas. Eventually, the plan was to travel to Mexico with the infant, where she would raise her.

This story was originally published March 16, 2017 at 7:32 PM with the headline "Trial date set for woman accused in baby Sofia case."