After she gave birth in secret, her body was cut up and stuffed in an ice chest

Sara Monteiro of Tulare typed the name of her sister’s husband into a search engine and unexpectedly found a breaking news story from Kansas.

Justin Todd Rey, 35, of Flagstaff, Arizona, was under arrest in Lenexa, Kansas. On Oct. 24, human remains had been found in an ice chest in a storage shed that he was using to sleep in.

“I started crying,” Monteiro said. She called her other sister, Rhonda Monteiro, and said, “Rhonda, he did it. He killed her.”

An hour later, a detective called her to say Jessica Monteiro Rey, 32, was dead.

“They told me he cut her up and put her in the ice chest,” Sara Monteiro said.

Also found at the storage shed: a newborn no older than five days, and a 2-year-old girl.

Rey has been charged with two counts of aggravated child endangerment. Monteiro said Rey is “100 percent responsible” for her sister’s death, but it may not be murder.

“He’s not admitting he killed her, he’s not saying he didn’t,” she said. He told two stories to authorities, she said: “He said she died in childbirth, and the second time he said she committed suicide.”

According to a story in the Kansas City Star, Rey and his wife were in a hotel together where authorities say Jessica apparently gave birth to the newborn.

Sara Monteiro said her sister delivered her baby in the hotel instead of a hospital because the couple was trying to conceal from authorities that they were having children. The 2-year-old girl was also born in secret.

They hid because their older four children had been taken away by Child Protective Services, Monteiro said. Two of them are now legally adopted, and she is not sure where the other two are.

It appears that something went wrong during the childbirth and medical help was needed, she said. But Rey would not seek help because he feared authorities would take away their remaining children.

As a result of that decision, “he neglected her chance of survival,” Monteiro said. When Jessica died, he cut up the body to hide it so he could keep the two children, she said.

Jessica was the middle child of three sisters and no brothers, she said. She and Jessica grew up in Tulare, Hanford and Visalia, mostly living with their mother, but also their father. Their parents were divorced.

When Jessica was 15, they moved to Palm Springs where Jessica graduated from high school and went to college in hopes of becoming a fashion designer: “She was artistic,” Monteiro said.

She met Rey and dropped out. “She …  fell head over heels in love with him,” she said. They married in 2004 in Palm Springs. Nobody from his family was there, she said.

He never had a regular job as far as she knew. Jessica once told her “he was an escort man – he got paid to be a date and whatever else,” she said. He told her sister he grew up in Compton.

Before long, he wouldn’t let her talk to her sisters. “He was controlling,” Monteiro said.

Because she and her sister grew up in a home where verbal and physical abuse was common, “that’s what my sister knew as love, and that’s what she married.”

They started having children, she said. For reasons unknown to Monteiro, authorities removed the four children from their care.

The last time she saw her sister face to face was more than 10 years ago, she said.

But Jessica would call now and then. In April, she called and said she was hiding from her husband after he took up with another woman and dumped her on the street with their child. But she later got back together with him.

Monteiro said the family is now trying to arrange for her remains to be brought to California, and they will try to gain custody of the two youngest children.

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 5:48 PM with the headline "After she gave birth in secret, her body was cut up and stuffed in an ice chest."