Sarah Monteiro wants people to remember her sister Jessica as the kind, nurturing, naive woman she was, and not the victim whose dismembered body was found in a storage unit in Lenexa.
Opening statements took place Monday in the trial of Justin Rey, the man who was found, allegedly living in a storage unit in Lenexa with his two young daughters, along with an ice cooler that contained his wife's remains.
Rey claims he cut up his wife's body after she committed suicide out of the fear his daughters would be taken from him. Jessica Rey had recently given birth to a baby girl.
Sarah Monteiro was told her sister met Justin when the two were still in high school in the central valley of California. From the time she met Justin, she found him to be a little strange and very controlling of her sister.
Jessica was the oldest child in her family, five years older than Sarah.
"She was just very sweet, she couldn't really see the bad in the world," said Sarah, who remembers Jessica as her only mother figure. "She would always say God will take care of it -- God will be good."
Justin isolated Jessica from her friends and family, Sarah says. The sisters would go years without talking with each other. The couple had a total of six children. Two were taken away by the state of California, and Arizona authorities confiscated two more. The final two girls were with Justin in the storage unit and are in foster care.
Sarah knows the wise thing to do would be to leave Justin early on and take the children. She hopes people hesitate before judging her sister too harshly.
"In a controlling relationship, when you're stuck in it, you are really stuck in it, and that's where Jessica fell," Sarah said. "She fell short."
Details are murky about the reasons the couple's first four children were taken away. Justin could be violent, and he threatened to kill Jessica at least once, Sarah said.
"Someone had put (Jessica) in hiding in Arizona after something he did, and it was so horrible she couldn't describe it," Sarah said.
Sarah Monteiro has contacted legislators in an effort to create a federal law against dismembering and mutilating a corpse. She says she recently heard from a Senate staffer who told her there was interest in the idea. Sarah started a petition, seeking 100,000 signatures in support of the law.
Justin Rey is charged with seven counts, including child endangerment, contributing to a child’s misconduct and sexual exploitation of a child.
