Children report parents missing before mom’s body found in cornfield, SC officials say
Children reported their parents missing in 2020 before their mom’s body was found buried in a South Carolina cornfield, prosecutors said.
The children’s father, Dionicio Abarca, was then accused of killing his wife, Alicia Garcia. Now, nearly four years later, the husband has been found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, according to the Seventh Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
“Alicia Garcia was taken from her children in a brutal way,” Assistant Solicitor Adrienne Barry wrote in a Jan. 28 news release. “The justice system served her today.”
An attorney believed to be representing Abarca in the Cherokee County case didn’t immediately respond to McClatchy News’ requests for comment on Jan. 29.
The case dates to July 18, 2020, when Abarca and Garcia told their children they were going to run errands. But the two didn’t come home, so the children reported them missing the next day, prosecutors said.
Investigators reportedly said they learned the couple had a fight the night before their disappearance. Details from the family led deputies to a field, where the body of 37-year-old Garcia was found “partially buried between rows of corn,” the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office told WSPA and WYFF in 2020.
Prosecutors said Garcia had “gashes to her head and neck made by a machete-type weapon. Two ... of the wounds fractured Ms. Garcia’s skull; a third wound cut her trachea.
“After killing his wife, Mr. Abarca abandoned his truck and made an unwitting nephew drive him out of state,” the solicitor’s office wrote. “Mr. Abarca refused to let his nephew turn the vehicle around or use a cell phone.”
Abarca reportedly was caught near the Alabama coast after the 17-year-old nephew begged his uncle to let him sleep. Abarca, found with two passports and $1,000 in cash, later came back to South Carolina, according to prosecutors and news outlets.
Then in January, a Cherokee County jury found Abarca guilty of “murder and possession of a weapon during commission of a violent crime.” In addition to the life sentence for the murder charge, he was ordered to serve five years behind bars for the weapon conviction, according to officials and online court records.
Abarca, 46, is from Gaffney, roughly 50 miles northeast of Greenville.
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