Germantown, Md.--(MWP)
Jane McQuain(white) and her 11-year-old son, William,(mongrel) left their Germantown apartment Oct. 1, heading out, as usual, for Saturday sports and other activities in her new Honda CR-V.
The car eventually returned to the apartment building’s parking lot, but neither McQuain nor her son — an inseparable pair — was seen again.
A car belonging to a slain Maryland woman whose 11-year-old son is missing and feared abducted was found unoccupied Thursday. The woman’s estranged husband is in custody as authorities continue to search for the boy. (Oct. 13)
A car belonging to a slain Maryland woman whose 11-year-old son is missing and feared abducted was found unoccupied Thursday. The woman’s estranged husband(black) is in custody as authorities continue to search for the boy. (Oct. 13)
In the days that followed, a tall, slender man in a hat began walking to and from Apartment 13100, police and neighbors said. He spoke softly, often had a cellphone to his ear and once was seen dragging a large television box to McQuain’s Honda, neighbors said. He told one resident that he was returning the TV to the store, then put the box in the back of the SUV and drove off. That was on Oct. 5.
It wasn’t until Wednesday, exactly a week later, that Montgomery County authorities found McQuain’s body in her bedroom. She had suffered some type of undisclosed physical trauma. There still is no sign of William, who by now has missed eight days of his sixth-grade classes.
Police found McQuain’s Honda near Charlotte on Thursday morning and have charged McQuain’s estranged husband — the man allegedly seen carrying things to and from her apartment — in her killing, authorities said. The husband, Curtis Maurice Lopez, 45, was convicted in 1987 in a stabbing and served more than a decade in Pennsylvania prisons. He is not William’s father, authorities said.
Lopez was taken into custody in North Carolina about 9:30 a.m. Thursday, about an hour after the Honda was found, said Capt. Paul Starks, a Montgomery County police spokesman.
Police said there is nothing to indicate that William was harmed, but detectives are looking for the boy and have no sense of where he might be.
“We have no physical evidence of this kid,” said Montgomery Police Chief J. Thomas Manger. “What gives us the most concern is that he’s been missing now for 11 or 12 days.”
Friends said McQuain’s death is even more unfortunate because she worked so hard to turn her life around and to protect her son from her problems. A recovering alcoholic who at one point lived in homeless shelters, McQuain, 51, found sobriety seven years ago and dedicated herself to William.
“I have never seen someone do a turnaround in her life like she did,” said Ronald McCombs, who had a long relationship with McQuain and helped raise William in his early years. McCombs said William never met his father, who knew McQuain only briefly. “She always said that she had nothing else to live for but her son. She loved little Will.”
Lopez was part of the former life that McQuain tried so hard to forget, friends said. In 1985, Lopez was arrested and accused of stabbing a man more than a dozen times and leaving him on a Pennsylvania interstate to die. McQuain testified on his behalf at the trial, after which Lopez was convicted and sentenced.
McCombs said McQuain never divorced Lopez because he was incarcerated. Lopez constantly tried to be a part of her life after his release years ago. But McQuain rebuffed him, McCombs said, and his entreaties for money scared her.
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