Steven Acuna Killed His Wife & Then Stuffed Her in a Cement Filled Drum
Monday, September 26, 2011 at 10:00 am
Randy "Amanda" Lehrer was said to be a popular waitress at Tommy's Family Restaurant in Jersey City Heights, New Jersey. The Canadian immigrant and mother had worked there for four years. But she hadn't been seen since she left the restaurant on August 12...
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| Steven Acuna apparently believed he could stuff his wife into a cement-filled drum and leave her in the basement of his apartment building. No one would ever notice something like that, would they? |
For reasons unknown, she wasn't reported missing until five days later. Police searched the apartment she shared with her husband, Steven Acuna, with cadaver-sniffing dogs, but came up empty.
That's when Acuna, who worked at the same restaurant, suddenly got the bright idea to move with the couple's one-year-old daughter to his father's home in Toms River 50 miles away. It's always a bad sign when the husband abruptly decides to move when his wife goes missing.
But detectives had no idea what happened to Amanda until they got a tip that residents of the apartment building had access to the basement. When the cops began searching, they came upon a suspicious drum.
They cranked open to find it filled with cement. Since cement is expensive -- and there's no naturally reason to fill a drum with it -- they decided to bust it open. Sure enough, it contained Amanda's body.
Detectives aren't saying how Amanda died, but police believe Acuna killed his wife in a domestic assault, then bent her body into the drum.
When he moved, he was apparently under the belief that no one would ever find a dead woman left in the basement of an apartment building. Nor did he believe that police had the capacity to drive 50 miles to arrest him, since that's really far away.
See our last story from the Canada file: Bradley Hubbard Stabbed to Death With Club at Mini-Golf Course.
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