A 52-year-old Waukegan man accused of hiding a woman’s body in a trash can full of bleach couldn’t be jailed under Illinois’ new no-cash bail law when he was arrested in April. But on Saturday, his luck ran out.
Federal immigration agents arrested Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez at a Chicago market over the weekend, saying he is a Mexican national living in the United States illegally. And unlike local prosecutors and judges, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) isn’t constrained by Illinois’ SAFE-T Act.
Mendoza-Gonzalez is now in federal custody.
Authorities say he concealed the body of 37-year-old Megan Bos of Antioch, who disappeared in February. After nearly two months of investigation, police allegedly found her decomposing body in a bleach-filled trash can behind Mendoza-Gonzalez’s home. He told investigators she overdosed at his home, and instead of calling for help, he hid her in the basement for days, broke her phone, then moved her body outside, prosecutors claim.
Despite the disturbing allegations, Mendoza-Gonzalez was released from custody within days because none of the charges against him—abuse of a corpse, concealing a death, and obstruction—qualify for pretrial detention under the SAFE-T Act.
That outraged Bos’ family and elected officials.
“We have lost all common sense when it comes to enforcing law and order,” Antioch Mayor Scott Gartner said after Mendoza-Gonzalez was released in April. “When the SAFE-T Act was being debated, there were voices sounding the alarm about what could happen if it were to become law.”
“There’s other extenuating circumstances in this case. Not only the type of crime, how long the crime was concealed, the fact that the person that was arrested for this is not a U.S. citizen and you know, can maybe flee from the country,” Gartner said in April.
While national outlets have reported that Bos was found decapitated, the Lake County Coroner’s Office told Lake and McHenry County Scanner in April that the claim was not true.
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