Monterey County man sentenced for girlfriend’s 2008 murder
A Monterey County man has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
41-year-old Victor Cabrera was found guilty of murder for strangling his girlfriend Roshni Singh.
On September 28, 2008, Cabrera strangled his girlfriend, Roshni Singh in her Marina home. Cabrera was in deep financial debt and believed that because he was the beneficiary on Ms. Singh’s $600,000 insurance policy, this would solve his problems.
He conspired with his co-defendant, Francisco Agaton-Hernandez, to stage a fake robbery. After Cabrera strangled the victim, the conspirators carried her body out to her SUV. They then drove to the car repair shop where Cabrera worked. At the shop Agaton-Hernandez tied up Cabrera and knocked some items off the shelves to make it appear a robbery had occurred. Agaton-Hernandez then drove the victim’s body to a nearby apartment complex leaving the SUV with the victim’s body inside.
Cabrera waited half an hour and called 911 with his tongue, claiming to have been robbed, and tied up by two men. He also insisted his girlfriend had been taken.
Monterey Police were immediately suspicious and questioned Cabrera for more than 5 hours. While the detectives exposed many inconsistencies in the defendant’s story, they lacked probable cause to arrest him. Police released the defendant to go to his parents’ home in Salinas. Officers set up surveillance in front of the home. Cabrera almost immediately jumped the back fence and fled to Mexico where he remained for 8 years.
Roshni Singh’s body was found in her SUV shortly thereafter. Police tried to find Cabrera but his family was uncooperative. The autopsy determined that she was strangled and her death likely occurred just after midnight, hours before Cabrera claimed she was abducted.
Phone records led the police to co-defendant Agaton-Hernandez. He was questioned and ultimately admitted to helping move the victim’s body and staging the robbery, although he denied having prior knowledge of the murder. Agaton-Hernandez was convicted of aiding and abetting murder at a 2011 trial, and is serving a life sentence.
In 2016, District Attorney Investigator Oliver Mining, with the help of the FBI, hunted down Cabrera and effected his arrest in Mexico. He was subsequently extradited to the United States.
The jury also found true the special circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain; this special circumstance made the only possible sentence Life without the possibility of parole.
