Cesar Santana, left, and Leiner Miranda Lopez are charged in the killing of Luz Hernandez, 33, right, a beloved kindergarten teacher and mother of three in New Jersey. (Photo from the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office and Hernandez’s Facebook page)
The estranged husband of a beloved New Jersey kindergarten teacher and mother of three whose beaten and strangled body was found in a shallow grave earlier this month now faces a first-degree murder charge in the domestic violence case, prosecutors said on Wednesday.
Cesar Santana, 36, was charged in the death of Luz Hernandez, 33, whose body was found three miles away from her Jersey City home on Feb. 7, 2023.
Along with the murder charge, Santana faces hindering, failing to dispose of human remains, and tampering with physical evidence, said Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez in a news release.
Cesar Santana was arrested at a motel in Miami on Feb. 10 and booked on charges of desecrating/concealing human remains.
Santana was extradited to New Jersey on Tuesday and held at the Hudson County Correctional Facility pending his first court appearance.
Police are seeking a second man, Leiner Miranda Lopez, 26, in the case. He was charged with desecrating/concealing human remains. Authorities ask that anyone with information regarding his whereabouts contact the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office at 201-915-1345.
Investigators linked the two suspects to the crime from a traffic stop the day before Hernandez was reported missing by her colleagues at BelovED Community Charter School in Jersey City, where she has a memorial page in her honor.
The traffic stop was near where authorities later discovered her body, authorities said. The two were in an unregistered vehicle that was impounded. A search of that vehicle uncovered evidence, prosecutors said without elaborating.
Multiple news reports, citing friends and associates, say Santana was Hernandez’s estranged husband and father of their three children, but officials have not declared that publicly.
Mourners paid tribute at her funeral on Feb. 15.
“It’s heartbreaking. It’s touching. She had children. She was a schoolteacher,” bus attendant Miss T. said at the funeral in an interview with ABC7NY.
Bret Schundler, the school’s founder, said she touched many lives.
“People are devastated,” he said. “The way that she touched others and the way they feel about her shows the kind of person she was.”
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