1989 Bayonne homicide solved after suspect's confession and DNA match

A 37-year-old Bayonne cold case finally cracked open with a confession and a DNA hit. Joseph Quiros-Soto, 62, has been charged with murder and murder during the commission of a burglary in the 1989 killing of Mauricio Cuadra, giving prosecutors a named suspect in a case that had sat unsolved for decades.

The killing happened on August 9, 1989, when Bayonne police responded to a report of a home invasion and shooting at 438 Avenue C in Bayonne, New Jersey. Officers found Cuadra, 48, who had been shot by an unknown man who entered the apartment. Cuadra was pronounced dead a short time later.

Cuadra was visiting his girlfriend at the apartment when the shooting happened, and her two young children were present during the home invasion. That detail has always made the case feel especially brutal: this was not a random street crime, but a violent intrusion into a home already filled with witnesses too young to make sense of what they were seeing.

What changed after nearly 37 years was not one piece of evidence, but several lining up at once. According to police documents, Quiros-Soto went to police in Locust Grove, Georgia, on August 28, 2024, and confessed to the killing. He later told Hudson County detectives that he had become a born-again Christian and wanted to confess after speaking with his pastor. Investigators say he also gave details only the killer would know.

Then came the forensic link that gave the confession more weight. Prosecutors say Quiros-Soto provided a DNA sample that matched DNA recovered from a stain on Cuadra’s sweatpants, which had been preserved from 1989. That kind of evidence is what cold-case detectives live for: something small enough to survive decades, but strong enough to connect a suspect back to the scene.

Quiros-Soto was arrested at his home in Griffin, Georgia, by the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office and was being held there pending extradition to New Jersey. The case now moves from a dormant file to an active prosecution, with Bayonne’s long-unsolved home invasion finally tied to a specific man and a specific chain of proof.

For Cuadra’s family, the arrest does not undo what happened in that Avenue C apartment, but it does end the old silence around it. After all these years, the killing is no longer just a cold-case entry tucked in a file cabinet. It has a defendant, a confession, and a DNA match, and the next fight is over getting Joseph Quiros-Soto back to New Jersey to answer for it.