A Hispanic couple schemed to kill a mother and her steal baby

A California county sheriff said a couple executed a cold, calculating plan to lure a mother to their home, strangle her and then run off with her baby. Merced County sheriff's deputies have arrested Teresa Ceja Robles, 33, and her husband, Jose Augustine Velarde, 37, and charged them with murder in the killing of Ana Lila Diaz DeCeja inside their Planada house. The victim's infant boy was reunited with his surviving family members including his father and grandmother - nine days after being abandoned in frigid conditions on a stranger's front stoop. Sheriff Mark Pazin said that the pair killed the 26-year-old woman because they wanted to have her 2-month-old boy, a desire that began after Diaz let Robles hold the baby in a medical clinic shortly after his birth. Pazin said Robles and Velarde got Diaz to come over to their house, where the mother was "immediately attacked by the husband, savagely strangled ... and lit on fire to hide the evidence." A charred body, identified using dental records as that of Diaz, was found later that day in an almond orchard in Snelling, less than a 30-mile drive to the north.