Men Indicted After Queens Mom's Body Found Stowed In Car

FAR ROCKAWAY, QUEENS — Four men accused of beating a Queens mother and stashing her body in the trunk of a car were indicted on murder charges Wednesday, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced.

In the middle of the night of April 14, police spotted the men carrying a large item from a Far Rockaway building to the trunk of a car and then driving away. When cops pulled the car over about a mile away in Nassau County, they discovered the object was a dead woman’s body, wrapped in a blanket, the DA said.

Four Far Rockaway men — named by the DA as Allan Lopez, 22, Jose Sarmiento, 21, Rigel Yohairo, 20, and Anander Henriquez, 28 — were indicted on second-degree murder charges. The victim was identified as Nazareth Claure, 31, a Queens mother-of-one.

Brooklyn resident Rodolfo Lopez, 26, who was among the men originally arrested and charged by police in connection to the murder, still faces charges for concealing a human body and tampering with physical evidence, a DA spokesperson told Patch.

According to the DA, the four Queens men attacked Claure with a machete and baseball bat for a couple of hours on the night of April 11.

Several days later, on April 14, cops pulled over the car and found the body, the DA said.

All four men were indicted on murder and weapons charges, and Sarmiento and Yohairo were also charged with concealing a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence.

Henriquez — who was not in the vehicle carrying Claure’s corpse — faces a charge of aggravated criminal contempt, and Lopez was also hit with a drug possession charge.

In a news release, the DA described the killing as “cruel” and “ruthless,” adding that because of it “a young boy is now without his mother and a community is grieving.”

New York Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations, Peter C. Fitzhugh, called the killing “another reminder of the depraved indifference to human life that continues to be the calling card of various street gangs in NY."

No other mention of gangs, or gang-related involvement, was made in the release.

The four men are expected to return to court on July 27 and each face up to 25-years-to-life in prison if convicted.