Missouri dismemberment suspect charged in California

A father-of-two who was arrested after he was found sleeping in a Kansas storage unit with his dismembered wife’s remains has been charged in a California killing. 

Justin Tod Rey was charged Wednesday with murder in the death of Sean Ty Ferel. 

The Palm Springs, California, man disappeared in May 2016 after vacationing with Rey. Three months later, Rey crashed Ferel’s vehicle in Los Angeles.

Sean Ty Ferel

Justin Tod Rey (left)  was charged Wednesday with murder in the death of Sean Ty Ferel in 2016

Ferel’s body hasn’t been found, but his blood was in the trunk, and his belongings were found in an Arizona storage unit that Rey had rented. 

Rey is jailed on $1 million bond in Kansas on child endangerment charges. He’s also charged with abandonment of corpse and it’s possible that Rey could be hit with more charges once authorities figure out how his 32-year-old wife Jessica Monteiro Rey died. 

Rey is jailed on $1 million bond in Kansas on child endangerment charges

Rey is jailed on $1 million bond in Kansas on child endangerment charges

Justin Rey has claimed that she committed suicide four days after giving birth to their second child. 

Her dismembered remains were discovered October 24 inside a cooler and tote at a U-Haul Moving and Storage facility in Lenexa.

Officers had been called to check on the welfare of their two small children staying in the unit because it was emitting a foul odor.

A Lenexa police detective wrote in the affidavit that responding officers spoke to a man who was pushing a stroller and had given Rey and his children a ride to the storage unit after finding them waiting for a bus near a Kansas City, Missouri, bar. Rey is homeless, and the man had seen people giving Rey money.

Rey told U-Haul employees that he had stayed in the unit overnight and told the man that he and his children were planning to do so again, the affidavit says. 

Emergency responders checked on the children, who were later taken to a hospital. The affidavit says the baby wasn’t wearing adequate clothing and had an eye infection.

After Rey was arrested and put in a police vehicle, he was asked about his wife’s whereabouts. He responded that she had died several days earlier and was in the cooler and one of the totes, which he was trying to remove from the storage unit, the detective wrote.

Rey, 35, was arrested on October 24 after police found him living in a Kansas City, Missouri storage unit with his newborn baby and toddler along with his wife's dismembered corspe

Rey, 35, was arrested on October 24 after police found him living in a Kansas City, Missouri storage unit with his newborn baby and toddler along with his wife’s dismembered corspe

It's possible that Rey could be hit with more charges once authorities figure out how 32-year-old Jessica Monteiro Rey (pictured) died

It’s possible that Rey could be hit with more charges once authorities figure out how 32-year-old Jessica Monteiro Rey (pictured) died

According to the warrant, Rey, his pregnant wife and a 2-year-old child checked into a Kansas City, Missouri, hotel on September 25. His wife gave birth on October 20 and died sometime in the next three days.

Rey told investigators that after his wife gave birth, he used a plastic fastner and a shoe string to secure their baby’s umbilical chord. 

After she died, he says he took took pictures with her dead body and newborn baby. He let the body rot in the room for two days before breaking it down.

Rey says his wife committed suicide shortly after giving birth, but her cause of death is still under investigation

They say he admitted to dismembering her body after she died in the bathroom of the hotel room, in front of the two kids. What body parts wouldn’t fit in the tote and cooler were flushed down the toilet or boiled.

The warrant says Rey called the front desk, disguised his voice as a woman’s and checked out on October 23, according to hotel management. The warrant says surveillance video footage shows him pulling a red cooler with a black bag on top through the hotel, while pushing a stroller with a toddler walking beside him.

The man who picked dropped Rey off at the storage facility the day he was arrested says he and his wife passed the father and his two kids on the street panhandling.

‘We assumed he was probably waiting on a wife or a girlfriend or whatever,” the witness said. That woman never came because, Rey told them, she was dead.

‘He told me before we left the restaurant that he lost the child’s mother during childbirth, that she’d passed,’ the unnamed man said.

Rey said he was waiting on money from the military and needed a ride to Union Station to take a train out of town. But he asked him to swing by the storage unit first where he had been staying since getting kicked out of his apartment for not paying rent. 

Police say Rey admitted to dismembering her body after she died in the bathroom of the hotel room, in front of the two kids

Police say Rey admitted to dismembering her body after she died in the bathroom of the hotel room, in front of the two kids

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk