Man Charged With Dismembering Wife Now Accused Of Killing Man

KANSAS CITY, MO — Justin Tod Rey, the man arrested after sleeping in a Kansas storage unit with his two children and his dismembered wife's remains, is now charged in a killing in California. Rey was charged Wednesday with murdering Sean Ty Ferel, The Desert Sun reported.

The Palm Springs, California, man vacationed with Rey and vanished in May 2016. Three months later, Rey crashed Ferel's vehicle in Los Angeles. Ferel's body was never found, but his blood was in the trunk, and his belongings were found in an Arizona storage unit that Rey had rented.

Rey remains jailed on $1 million bond in Kansas on child endangerment charges. He's also charged with abandonment of corpse in Missouri, where his wife died. His attorney didn't return a phone message.

Rey posed for photos with his dead wife, their newborn and their toddler before chopping up her body in a Kansas City hotel room, court records stated. Rey, 35, was arrested after being found with the remains at a Lenexa storage unit. He was charged with abandonment of a corpse and child endangerment in Jackson County, Missouri.

Rey told police his wife, Jessica Monteiro Rey, died after giving birth on Oct. 20, court records said. He said he cut up her body in a bathtub two days later with the children present and put some of her body parts in a large cooler. He disposed of the remains that didn't fit, the court papers said.

According to a search warrant, hotel management said Rey tried to disguise his voice as a woman's when he called the front desk to check out Oct. 23. The warrant says surveillance video footage shows him pulling a red cooler with a black bag on top through the hotel, while pushing a stroller with a toddler walking beside him.

The remains were discovered Oct. 24 inside a cooler and tote at a U-Haul Moving and Storage facility in nearby Lenexa, Kansas, after Rey slept there with the children. Emergency responders checked on the children, who were later taken to a hospital. The affidavit says the baby wasn't wearing adequate clothing and had an eye infection.

After Rey was arrested and put in a police vehicle, he was asked about his wife's whereabouts. He responded that she had died several days earlier and was in the cooler and one of the totes, which he had been trying to remove from the storage unit, the detective wrote.

Missouri and Kansas court records don't say how she died, and Rey provided conflicting information. In one statement to police, Rey said his wife committed suicide after giving birth. In other statements he just said that she died.

Photo credit: Tammy Ljungblad/The Kansas City Star via AP