Meeting on Aucapina Death
The family of the late Lilia Esperanza Aucapina will meet with Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman on March 18 to review a report from Town Police Chief Robert Pearce on his department’s handling of the woman’s disappearance and subsequent death last year.
“Right now, it is almost like torture,” Foster Maer of LatinoJustice, a civil rights organization, said yesterday, referring to Ms. Aucapina’s relatives. “What they know is, they don’t know what is going on.”
“I want the family to be able to ask what questions they have,” Mr. Schneiderman said yesterday.
The report is scheduled to be studied tomorrow by the supervisor, the police chief, and Detective Sgt. Lisa Costa. It will be, the supervisor said, “a summary of the investigation. How the man hours were dedicated. How they conducted the investigation.” After thorough vetting, he said he would decide whether the police finding of suicide is correct or if a new investigation is called for.
Ms. Aucapina’s estranged husband, Carlos R. Aucapina, 50, is still facing possible prosecution in East Hampton for allegedly violating an order of protection for her. The order stemmed from an incident on Oct. 10 in the parking lot of the Meeting House Lane Medical Practice on Montauk Highway in Wainscott. It was the last time she was seen alive.
The order of protection had been issued by Justice Martha L. Luft in Family Court in Riverside just days before. Ms. Aucapina presented an affidavit on Sept. 4 accusing her husband of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, stalking, forcible touching, and harassment. She described the prior two months, in which she said Mr. Aucapina obsessed about her fidelity, followed her when she went shopping, went through her social media accounts, and questioned friends about her activities.
She told the court that despite the fact she had moved into another bedroom in their house at 517 Toppings Path, Sagaponack, he still sought sex from her. The alleged final straw, she said, occurred on Sept. 1.
“I awoke at about 5 a.m. to find Mr. Aucapina kneeling next to my bed. I was surprised to find him there, because I had locked my bedroom door,” she wrote. “I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was praying because he had a bad dream about me.” She then got up and got ready to go to work, she said.
After the order of protection was issued, Mr. Aucapina moved in with a neighbor. For that reason Colin Astarita, Mr. Aucapina’s lawyer, said a similar charge he is facing in Southampton will be dismissed “in the interest of justice.”
The East Hampton incident occurred on Oct. 10 when Mr. Aucapina and Angel Tejada, who was accompanying Ms. Aucapina, confronted each other. Police said Mr. Tejada and Ms. Aucapina were walking toward her car, which she had parked there overnight, after spending the night with him. When Mr. Aucapina saw them together, Mr. Tejada said, he called Ms. Aucapina’s brother, Carlos Parra, who quickly arrived. Mr. Tejada dialed 911, but hung up before talking to an operator. Mr. Aucapina and Mr. Parra then left. An officer sent to investigate the call found Mr. Tejada and Ms. Aucapina still there. Mr. Aucapina was eventually charged after an investigation.
“Coming into contact with someone in a public place is not, in and of itself, a violation of that order unless there is continued engaged contact,” Mr. Astarita said. He also pointed out that the police had stated that Mr. Aucapina never directly confronted his wife.
At 11 that morning, Ms. Aucapina was scheduled to pick up her daughter in Sag Harbor, where she had been playing field hockey. She never showed up. At 9:30 that night, the couple’s 21-year-old son, Ronald Aucapina, called police to report his mother missing.
An intensive search by police of the woods behind the house, using Suffolk County K-9 units, helicopters, and all-terrain vehicles, was unsuccessful. Her body was eventually found in a densely wooded area by a hunter on the morning of Nov. 21. It appeared to police that she had hung herself from the branch of a tree.
“We had not only multiple searches, but multi-agency searches,” Lt. Susan Ralph of the Southampton Town Police Department said at the time. Between the “heavy foliage and thicket and the ground cover, we missed her.”
Ms. Aucapina’s siblings and extended family have refused to accept the determination that she committed suicide, believing it was hastily made. LatinoJustice became involved, organizing a vigil in Ms. Aucapina’s memory on the steps of Southampton Town Hall, then presenting letters to the outgoing town supervisor, Anna Throne-Holst, as well as Mr. Schneiderman, requesting a review of the investigation.
Mr. Astarita, who worked for four years in the Suffolk County Major Crimes Unit, pointed out that the Southampton Town police originally acted in the belief that a crime may have been committed.
“They had potential suspects, Angel Tejada, Carlos Aucapina, but with any homicide, the issue is habeas corpus, where is the body?” he said. They had potential suspects, and they were treating it, at that time, as a potential homicide. Once they found the body, they were able to tell, and these are professionals, they were able to determine that it was a suicide. And they still did not immediately close the case.”
Something police found, he said, pointed directly to suicide as the cause of death. “It could have been as simple as the position of the body. Everything for her stopped that day. That combined with forensic analysis of the body, they were able to determine the time of death, the cause of death and who caused it. It could have been as simple as, they only saw one set of footprints go into the area, and none come back. We are speculating.”
It is that sense of speculation that troubles the family. “Finding the body that many weeks later, I don’t know what evidence it produces,” Mr. Maer said yesterday. “Why did it take that long?” The family has “legitimate questions,” he said, adding that they would be able to accept the police determination if they were presented with convincing evidence. “Right now, there is nothing,” he said.