Vanessa Guillen suspects returned to burial site with hairnets and gloves days after murder to dismember body
The Fort Hood soldier accused in the disappearance and murder of Vanessa Guillen returned to the site of her burial with hairnets and gloves to dispose of her remains without a trace, new documents have revealed.
Guillen, a 20-year-old private first-class, was last seen in the parking lot of the Regimental Engineer Squadron Headquarters, 3rd Cavalry Regiment at Ford Hood at around 1 pm on April 22, 2020. She would remain missing for more than two months before investigators uncovered her remains at a location roughly 30 miles from the base.
The primary suspect in her disappearance, Aaron David Robinson, a 20-year-old Army Specialist from Illinois also stationed at Fort Hood, killed himself on July 1, one day after Guillen's remains were found. He shot himself in the head when authorities tried to approach him. While Guillen's family claimed that the 20-year-old was murdered because she intended to report Robinson for sexual harassment, he denied the allegations and had told investigators before his suicide that she was planning to report him to their superiors for his relationship with Cecily Aguilar.
Aguilar was the estranged wife of a former Fort Hood soldier and would prove pivotal in connecting Robinson to Guillen's disappearance. In an affidavit filed on Thursday, July 2, in US District Court in Texas, and seen by KHOU, an FBI agent detailed her testimony, which included a recollection of how her boyfriend killed Guillen and disposed of her body.
She told investigators that Robinson picked her up on the evening of April 22 or early morning of April 23 at the gas station where she worked and drove her to a site near the Leon River. He then walked her into the woods, where he showed her a plastic box with the body of a dead woman inside. She said Robinson admitted to killing her by striking her in the head with a hammer multiple times. Aguilar revealed she and Robinson proceeded to remove the limbs and head from the torso with a "hatchet or ax and a machete-type knife," attempted to burn the remains, and then buried the parts in three separate holes.
On April 26, she said they returned to the burial site with hairnet, gloves, and concrete. They dug up the remains, attempted to burn them, reburied them, and then covered the holes with concrete mixed from the cement. The hairnet and gloves, as well as the clothes they were wearing that night, were burned too. The cover-up first came to light on June 21, when searchers at the Leon River site found an area of disturbed earth and "what appeared to be the burned remains of a plastic tote."
While no human remains were found on that day, on June 30, contractors working on a fence nearby informed law enforcement officials of a suspicious find. When searchers returned, they found "scattered human remains that appeared to have been placed into a concrete-like substance and buried." Those remains were confirmed belonging to Guillen on Tuesday, July 7. Aguilar, who has been charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence, had appeared virtually in front of US Magistrate Judge Jeffrey C Manske a day earlier and has not yet entered a plea.