A man has pleaded guilty to killing a Cobb County woman after sexually abusing one of her daughters, officials announced Monday.
Yuridiana Villalobos’ three daughters called for help after their mother was shot to death in their Mableton home on April 25, 2023. Last week, her boyfriend, Hugho Pacheco, 53, pleaded guilty to malice murder and aggravated sexual battery and was sentenced to life in prison, the district attorney’s office said.
“These little girls were separated from their father in 2021,” senior assistant district attorneys Stephanie Green and Jared Horowitz said in a joint statement. “Their mother let Pacheco into their home, thinking he would take care of them and be a father figure to her daughters. She was horribly mistaken. Pacheco robbed them of their childhood, robbed them of their innocence, and robbed them of their mother. The damage to these children is immeasurable.”
That April morning, Villalobos’ girls woke up to a loud bang in their house, prosecutors said. They went to check what happened and saw their 58-year-old mother on the ground with Pacheco standing over her.
Pacheco hurried the girls back to a bedroom and told them to be quiet, according to the prosecution. Afraid that he might kill them, they stayed there until they saw him outside through a window. He was putting something inside the trunk of their mother’s car, got in it and drove away. Officials did not say if they discovered what was put in the trunk.
Once Pacheco left, one of the girls ran to a neighbor to ask for a cellphone to call 911, prosecutors said. The girls’ phones had been scattered in the driveway.
When police arrived, they found Villalobos with a single gunshot wound to the abdomen. She was on the dining room floor, wrapped in a sheet and was already dead, authorities said. A 9 mm shell casing was found on the bed inside the main bedroom, which had been locked.
Pacheco was arrested two weeks later in Alamo, Texas.
“It was an honor to fight for these little girls who showed an incredible amount of bravery as they faced their mother’s killer and abuser in court,” Green and Horowitz said. “Their mother would have been proud.”
The sexual abuse of one of the girls was later discovered during forensic interviews, prosecutors said. Pacheco entered an Alford plea on the aggravated sexual battery charge, meaning he has pleaded guilty and accepts the punishment while maintaining his innocence.
“Today’s outcome ensures that this predator will never harm another innocent person,” District Attorney Flynn D. Broady Jr. said in a statement. “I commend the courage of the victim’s children and the swift, thorough work of law enforcement and prosecutors who brought Hugho Pacheco to justice.”
The district attorney’s statement did not say who is caring for Villalobos’ daughters.
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