Brittany Killgore

Case background and investigation

Brittany Killgore was a 22-year-old Marine wife who disappeared from the Fallbrook area of San Diego County, California, on April 13, 2012. She had recently filed for divorce from her husband, a Marine who had returned from a deployment to Afghanistan. According to prosecutors, Killgore was picked up that evening by Louis Ray Perez, a Camp Pendleton staff sergeant she knew, under the pretext of being taken to a birthday dinner cruise. Shortly after leaving her apartment, she sent a friend a text message reading 'Help.' She was never seen alive again. Four days later, on April 17, 2012, searchers recovered her body in a rural area near Lake Skinner in Riverside County.

Investigators focused on Perez and two women who lived with him in a Fallbrook home that authorities described as containing a 'sex dungeon' of restraint devices and bondage equipment: Dorothy Grace Marie Maraglino and Jessica Lynn Lopez. Prosecutors alleged the three were part of a sadomasochistic household and that Killgore was lured to the home, restrained, and killed. An autopsy determined she died of homicidal violence; officials cited strangulation and reported marks consistent with handcuffs and an electrical weapon. Lopez was hospitalized after an apparent suicide attempt during the early investigation and, according to authorities, left a letter taking responsibility for the killing, a document her defense later disputed. All three were charged with murder and related counts and pleaded not guilty.

After a trial in San Diego County Superior Court, a jury on October 21, 2015 convicted Louis Ray Perez, Dorothy Grace Marie Maraglino and Jessica Lynn Lopez of first-degree murder with a kidnapping special circumstance, along with kidnapping, torture and attempted sexual battery; Perez and Maraglino were additionally convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, a charge of which Lopez was acquitted. Perez and Maraglino were sentenced on November 19, 2015, and Lopez on January 8, 2016, each to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In August 2025, California's Fourth District Court of Appeal upheld Lopez's conviction, rejecting her challenges under the state's revised felony-murder law and finding she was either a major participant in or aided and abetted the killing. As of 2026, all three convictions stand and the defendants remain incarcerated.