The night before Valerie Reyes vanished, she told her mother in a distressing call that she feared for her life and worried that she would be murdered
The 24-year-old woman whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase in the Connecticut woods had premonitions the night before she vanished that someone was going to kill her, multiple news outlets report.
On Tuesday morning, highway workers found the suitcase on an isolated stretch of a road and immediately called police, Greenwich Police Capt. Robert Berry said in a statement.
Inside was the body of a fully clothed young woman whose hands and feet were bound, he said.
The victim was later identified as Valerie Reyes of New Rochelle, New York, a sales clerk at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Eastchester, whose family had reported her missing on Jan. 29.
On the night of Jan. 28, the last time mother Norma Sanchez spoke to her daughter, the panicked young woman was telling her she felt scared that something bad was going to happen to her, the Journal News, local news station WABC and The New York Times report.
Reyes lived alone in an apartment in New Rochelle, near where her mother lives, and suffered at times from anxiety and depression, WABC reports.
She had broken up with her boyfriend a few days earlier, according to the Journal News.
“She was going on about how frightened she was in that apartment,” Sanchez said on Thursday, the Times reports.
“She was hearing about all these murders of women,” Sanchez said.
Her fearful daughter told her, “‘I just can’t get it out of my head,'” she said, the Times reports.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
During that call, Reyes was “very scared, very frightened,” Sanchez said, the Journal News reports. “She didn’t mention anything or no one specific. She just said, ‘I’m scared. I’m paranoid, mommy. I’m getting anxiety attacks.’ She was having a hard time talking.
“I asked her, ‘Why do you feel this way? Was there someone at your house?’ I asked about her ex-boyfriend. And she said, ‘No,'” Sanchez said, according to the Journal News.
Then she told her mom, “I feel like somebody’s going to murder me,” the Times reports.
Reyes had spent time with her family on Jan. 27, Sanchez said, the Times reports.
“We just went about our day, having fun,” Sanchez said.
On Jan. 29, morning, Reyes failed to show up for work and Sanchez could not reach her daughter.
A friend said she had seen her near the Greenwich train station, the Times reports.
After notifying police that her daughter was missing, Sanchez learned from detectives in New Rochelle that on Jan. 30, a day after Reyes vanished, a surveillance camera had recorded her at a Chase Bank branch near Radio City Music Hall in New York City at 6:30 a.m., the Times reports.
One week after her daughter vanished, Sanchez learned from police that the body found in the suitcase, which belonged to Reyes, the Journal News reports.
“She just ended up in evil hands,” Sanchez said, the Times reports. “Whoever did this needs to pay. My baby is gone. They found her in the luggage. Such a nightmare.”
During a Thursday night candlelight vigil for her daughter in New Rochelle, Sanchez, addressing the killer, said, “My daughter did not deserve whatever you did to her,” the Journal News reports.
“My daughter was a good soul,” she said. “You will get caught.”