Crime & Safety

UPDATE: Marine Wife Victim Planned Dinner Cruise Night of Disappearance

Family of Brittany Killgore say she was due to move to the East Coast before her disappearance Friday.

New details have been revealed by the family of Marine wife Brittany Killgore, whose body was found in Temecula on Tuesday.

The victim, who was estranged from her Camp Pendelton-based husband, was supposed to go on a dinner cruise the night she diseappeared, a family member told the Daily Journal of Park Hills, Mo., a newspaper near Killgore's hometown.

Killgore's grandmother, Cheryl Coble of Farmington, Mo., told the newspaper the victim's mother had notified San Diego law enforcement about her daughter's disappearance after receiving a call from a stranger who found Killgore's cell phone in downtown San Diego.

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On Friday, the night of her disappearance, Killgore was supposed to go out with Perez and his girlfriend to a dinner cruise, but it was unclear if the plan came together, Coble told the newspaper. Perez's girlfriend apparently backed out at the last minute, she added.

Killgore's father, Darryl Wreast, and grandfather flew to Southern California this week and handed out photos and information about her, Coble said.

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Killgore, a former Missouri resident, had separated from her husband and shipped all her belongings to her parents' home in Pennsylvania, with plans to travel there this week to move back in with them, Coble told the newspaper.     

Killgore's family had lived in Rolla, Mo., before relocating to Pennsylvania last fall. Killgore had been looking forward to reuniting with her family on the other side of the county, her grandmother said.

"She just wanted to be at her parents' house and just wanted to sit and hold her new niece," Coble told the Daily Journal.

Killgore filed for divorce last week, according to court records. Marine Corps officials agreed to send her husband, Cory, home from his combat deployment following his wife's unexplained disappearance. He reportedly was due to arrive back in San Diego County sometime this week.

Two suspects were in custody and being investigated by the San Diego Sheriff's Department.

Killgore had vanished Friday night after meeting 45-year-old Louis Ray Perez, a Camp Pendleton-based Marine who was subsequently arrested on unrelated charges, according to investigators.

in a Vista courtroom this afternoon to charges of possession of stolen property and illegal possession of an assault rifle. In addition to facing those accusations, Perez was being "actively investigated" in connection with the Killgore case, San Diego County Sheriff's Department Capt. Duncan Fraser told reporters.

Investigators were able to find the remote spot—about a mile north of Lake Skinner at Borel Road and Buck Road— following the arrest of a second suspect in the case, according to Fraser.

Jessica Lynn Lopez, 25, was taken into custody late Tuesday morning at a Point Loma motel on suspicion of murder, according to Fraser, who declined to disclose her alleged role in the slaying.

After being treated at a hospital for self-inflicted cuts she had suffered in an apparent suicide attempt, Lopez was booked into Las Colinas women's jail in Santee late Tuesday night. A suicide note indicated what happened to the Killgore and where her body could be found.

Lopez, who was being held without bail, was slated to make her first court appearance in the case Thursday.


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