By Sue Epstein
January 22, 2010, 2:58PM
PERTH AMBOY -- Bail was set at $2 million this afternoon for a Perth Amboy man charged with killing his wife and dumping her body in Virginia.
Franklin Camacho Jr., 40, pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in the death of Leonilda Caceras-Camacho, 45. He is accused of hitting her in the head with a hammer earlier this week.
Mitsu Yasukawa/The Star-Ledger
Franklin Camacho Jr., 40, of Perth Amboy, listens to Judge De Vesa while sitting next to Vernon Estreicher, right, Assistant Deputy Public Defender, during his arraignment in the killing of his wife.
Camacho sat quietly, dressed in green prison garb, as Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Neil Casey gave Superior Court Judge Frederick De Vesa details of the case to justify the request for a high bail.
Casey told the judge that authorities traced Camacho to Virginia and knew when he was returning to New Jersey by pinging his cell phone. Camacho was arrested on the N.J. Turnpike in Mercer County by State Police troopers.
The prosecutor said Camacho killed Leonilda Caceras-Camacho, 45, in their apartment at 340 Madison Ave. in Perth Amboy sometime between Tuesday and Wednesday. After he killed her, he was caught on videotape buying a mop, bleach and a garbage can at a nearby store, Casey said.
Meanwhile, Caceras-Camacho's family began looking for her Wednesday and questioned her husband, who told them she had been arrested by U.S. immigration authorities, Casey said. Her family did not believe him and filed a missing persons report with police.
The prosecutor said when police came to the Camacho home to talk to him, he told them the same story he told his wife's family.
Casey told De Vesa the prosecution has a witness to the attack, but did not identify the witness.
After Camacho spoke to the officers, he left the house while investigators obtained a search warrant for the residence.
When investigators learned Camacho was gone, they obtained his cell phone number and followed his route by pinging the phone.
Caceras-Camacho's body was found Thursday morning in a trash can in the parking lot of a shopping center in Woodbridge, Va.
Camacho was arrested on the Turnpike as he returned to New Jersey. Casey said authorities found the bloody top to a garbage can, woman's clothing and a bloody bra in Camacho's car. He said they also found what they believe was the murder weapon.
De Vesa, in talking to Camacho earlier in the hearing, revealed Camacho is charged with hitting his wife in the head with a hammer.
Caceras-Camacho's family was in court for this afternoon's hearing, but declined to comment.
Mitsu Yasukawa/ The Star-Ledger
Members of the Leonilda Caceras-Camacho's family listen and become emotional during an arraignment of Franklin Camacho Jr., 40, of Perth Amboy.
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Perth Amboy man accused of fatally beating woman found in trash can in Virginia
By KEN SERRANO
STAFF WRITER
A Perth Amboy man questioned but never charged in the 1999 murder of his live-in girlfriend has been accused of beating a woman to death in the city and driving her body to Virginia, where it was found dumped in a trash can near Interstate 95.
Franklin Camacho Jr., 40, was arrested by New Jersey State Police in Hamilton, N.J., at Interchange 6 of the New Jersey Turnpike at about 6 a.m. Thursday as he was returning from Virginia, said Jim O'Neill, spokesman for the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office. Camacho has been charged so far only with the woman's murder.
The body of the victim, whose identity had not been released pending notification of family, was found about 8 a.m. by Prince William County police. It was stuffed in a garbage can in the parking lot of a shopping center in Woodbridge, Va., authorities said. Woodbridge, Va., is about 230 miles from Perth Amboy.
O'Neill declined to say exactly how police came upon the body or linked Camacho to the slaying.
But he did say that a missing persons report was filed when the victim could not be located. Police later obtained a search warrant and examined what they believe to be the location of the attack.
Detective Ralph Pineiro of the Perth Amboy Police Department and Investigator Eleazar Ricardo of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office determined that Camacho hit the woman, whom he knew, in an undisclosed location in Perth Amboy, O'Neill said. It appears the attack occurred on Tuesday, he said.
The investigators also found out that Camacho had driven to Virginia and was heading back to New Jersey, O'Neill said.
Working off a description of the Perth Amboy victim, authorities in Prince William County called Middlesex County investigators when they found the body, O'Neill said.
The results of an autopsy performed Thursday by authorities in Virginia were not immediately available.
Camacho is being held without bail. No court date had been scheduled, but he is expected to be arraigned today (Friday) in Superior Court, New Brunswick, said Nicholas Sewitch, assistant Middlesex County prosecutor.
Sewitch said other charges related to the disposal of the body would be presented to a grand jury.
As of 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Camacho had not yet been taken from Perth Amboy to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in North Brunswick.
Camacho was questioned in connection with the 1999 murder of his live-in girlfriend, Iris Maldonado, in New Brunswick, a slaying that remains unsolved.
The body of the 22-year-old New Brunswick woman and mother of four was found stuffed into a storm sewer on Remsen Avenue in North Brunswick on July 27, 1999.
Police said her body may have been wheeled to the Remsen Avenue sewer, right around the corner from her home, in a 45-gallon garbage can after she was stabbed to death. A witness saw a Hispanic man wheeling the garbage can near the Jack Pincus Senior Citizen Housing Complex on Remsen Avenue shortly before the body was found, authorities said.
In an interview with the Home News Tribune, Camacho said he never hurt his girlfriend.
"I told (the police), this is my girlfriend. I wouldn't do anything to her. I love her,'' he told a reporter. "We didn't argue much. I never hit her.''
A few days before Maldonado's murder, the state Division of Youth and Family Services took her four sons, ages 16 months to 5 years, and put them in foster care. DYFS officials did not give a reason.
Sewitch on late Thursday declined to discuss the prior murder.
O'Neill would not comment on the trash can in Virginia in which the unidentified woman's body was found Thursday.
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