A trial date has been set for a man accused of killing a woman and beheading her granddaughter in 2018.
Yoni Martinez Aguilar, 30, is charged with capital murder in the slayings of 13-year-old Mariah Lopez, a Challenger Middle School student from Huntsville, and her grandmother, Oralia Mendoza, 49.
Their bodies were dumped in rural Madison County in June 2018 in what authorities said at the time were killings connected to a drug cartel.
Israel Palomino, 38, also faces capital murder charges in the killings and set for trial later this year.
According to WHNT, Aguilar’s trial is set for May 1, 2023, at the Madison County Courthouse.
According to testimony at a 2018 preliminary hearing, Lopez was beheaded with a knife, while Mendoza was fatally assaulted with a knife and left lying in a Madison County Cemetery.
Mendoza was connected to the Mexican Sinoloa cartel, and she and her granddaughter were killed just days after a drug run to Georgia, according to investigators.
Along with Aguilar, Palomino and another woman, Mendoza traveled just outside Atlanta to pick up a batch of methamphetamine the night of June 2, 2018.
Something apparently went wrong during the trip, and Palomino became suspicious of a setup, according to investigators.
During the early morning hours of June 4, Mendoza was told she and Lopez would be taken somewhere safe.
Instead, Palomino and Aguilar, who was Mendoza’s boyfriend, took the woman and girl to Moon Cemetery on Cave Springs Road.
In a statement to investigators, Aguilar said Mendoza and Palomino got out of the car and argued about the drug run.
The argument escalated, and Aguilar told police Palomino killed Mendoza. Authorities have said her cause of death was sharp force trauma caused by a knife.
Because Lopez was a witness, the suspects took the girl to a secluded area on nearby Lemley Drive, and Aguilar said Palomino forced him to kill the girl.
Aguilar told investigators he was holding the knife when Palomino came up to him and moved his arm back and forth in a sawing motion, according to testimony at a hearing.