Chicago wedding-night murder suspect returned to U.S. after decade on run

Arnoldo Jimenez, the Chicago man accused of killing his new wife on their wedding night, was brought back to the United States after more than a decade on the run. FBI Chicago said Jimenez was taken into custody without incident in Monterrey, Mexico, on January 30, 2025, and the case moved through a coordinated extradition effort involving Mexican, U.S. and international authorities.

The FBI said agents from Chicago and San Antonio worked with the bureau’s legal attaché in Mexico City, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Mexico’s Fiscalía General de la República and Interpol. Jimenez had been placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on May 8, 2019, a sign of how intensely investigators pursued the case. The bureau later raised the reward for information leading to his arrest from up to $100,000 to up to $250,000 on May 25, 2023.

Jimenez is accused in Cook County of first-degree murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in the death of Estrella Carrera, 26. FBI materials say the couple married in a city hall ceremony on Friday, May 11, 2012, then attended a celebration with family and friends. Authorities say Carrera was stabbed more than 18 times less than 48 hours after the wedding and left in the bathtub of her Burbank apartment, still wearing the dress from the reception.

Carrera’s disappearance drew immediate attention because her family had been watching her two children and reported her missing when she did not pick them up. Her body was found on May 13, 2012, and the case quickly became one of the most disturbing domestic homicides in the Chicago area. The FBI described Jimenez in a 2023 podcast as a Ten Most Wanted fugitive accused of murdering his new wife just hours after the ceremony.

Jimenez spent years outside U.S. custody after the 2012 killing before his arrest in Monterrey in January 2025. He was later returned to the United States after more than a year in custody in Mexico, bringing a long fugitive search into its next courtroom phase. With Jimenez now back in Chicago’s orbit, the prosecution is once again in position to press forward on a case that began on a wedding night and ended in a bathtub in Burbank.