For Lilia Aucapina's Family, a Long-Awaited Meeting

The family of Lilia Esperanza Aucapina, whose body was found in the woods near her Sagaponack house in late November after she was missing for six weeks, met with Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, Southampton Police Chief Robert Pearce, and two lawyers from the town attorney’s office Friday morning to review how and why the police came to the conclusion that Ms. Aucapina’s death was a suicide.

According to Foster Maer, chief litigator from JusticeLatino, a Manhattan civil rights group that has questioned the police determination, the session lasted over two hours, with much of the evidence presented to the family being of a graphic nature. While he was not ready to dispute the police determination that Ms. Aucapina took her own life, he pointed out factors that led him and the family to continue to question the report, which was prepared at the request of Mr. Schneiderman.

He said that the meeting revealed the different efforts the Southampton Town Police made in their investigation of the case. “We have a better understanding of what they learned.” Still, he asked why it took police so long to find the woman. “How could they miss the body? Could it have not been there and somebody staged it?” he asked. Ms. Aucapina was found hanging from a low tree branch only after the leaves had already fallen in the thickly wooded area.

Southampton Town police conducted several searches of the area, with help from police departments across the county in the days and weeks after Ms. Aucapina’s 21-year-old son reported her missing on Oct. 10.

Ms. Aucapina’s estranged husband, Carlos Aucapina, was treated as a person of interest by police after the woman’s disappearance and was arrested twice, by Southampton Town Police as well as East Hampton Town Police, for violating an order of protection Ms. Aucapina had obtained against him in the days before her disappearance. He ended up spending several days in county jail before the $10,000 bail set in Southampton could be posted.

Colin Astarita, his attorney, said recently that the Southampton case was due to be dismissed. However, the East Hampton case, stemming from an incident in the parking lot of the Meeting House Lane Medical Practice on Montauk Highway in Wainscott on the morning of her disappearance, is still open.

Mr. Maer wondered why the Suffolk County Homicide Squad had not become involved in the investigation. “If the homicide detectives had been there, they would have conducted a search that would have found the body,” he said.

The family and his office are going to “carefully review” the documents and photographs they were presented with Friday morning over the next couple of weeks, and then meet again with the Town Supervisor.

He said that the family was prepared to accept a conclusion after it reviews the report. “They are very straightforward. It is hard to believe a close family member might have done something like that.”

Mr. Maer said that Mr. Schneiderman had agreed with him that communication between the police and the family could have been better. There is a gap between the Latino community and the police that needs to be bridged, he said.

Mr. Schneiderman was not immediately available for comment.