Federal prisoner pleads guilty to murder in Barrow County woman's slaying

A man described by prosecutors as a leader of a drug organization with direct links to a drug cartel in Mexico recently was sentenced to life in prison in the slaying of a Barrow County woman whose body was dismembered and burned two years ago.

Edwin Murillo entered a guilty plea to the murder of Rossanna Delgado, a married woman with two children, who went missing in April 2021. The 37-year-old Bethlehem woman’s remains were found four days later at a mountain cabin in the Cherry Log community of Gilmer County.

Appalachian Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee released a statement that the slaying of Delgado was done at the direction of Murillo, who at the time ran his drug dealing operation out of a prison.

Murillo, 31, is currently incarcerated in a federal “supermax prison” in Florence, Colo., serving time for possession of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute. Murillo, formerly from Gwinnett County, was sentenced in 2019 in U.S. District Court to 25 years in prison.

While serving time in a Georgia state prison, federal agents said Murillo was working with a Watkinsville woman in an operation to distribute meth in various locations, including Athens.

A murder trial was scheduled for Murillo on Monday, but that was negated after his guilty plea.

Murillo is the second person to plead guilty to murder in the Delgado case.

Previously: Sentences imposed in murder, torture of Bethlehem woman

In May, Oscar Manuel Garcia, 28, of Austell was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded to several charges including murder, moving a body from a crime scene and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO).

Several others involved in the case have also pleaded guilty to various charges including kidnapping, concealing the death of another and RICO.

According to the district attorney’s office, members of the drug organization run by Murillo conspired to abduct Delgado. She was kidnapped on April 16, 2021, when she was lured to a shopping center in DeKalb County under the false pretenses of a shopping trip, according to the DA’s report.

She was first taken to a home in DeKalb, where she was tied up, then transported to locations in Clayton and Gilmer counties. Investigators said she was ultimately taken to the rental cabin in Gilmer County, where the suspects made reservations using a person's stolen identity.

Delgado was tortured in the cabin where she was killed at Murillo's order, then dismembered and the body burned, investigators said.

Four suspects in the case all fled to Mexico, but three were apprehended in Reymosa and a fourth in Durango, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Prisoner linked to cartel pleads to murder in Barrow woman's death