Maria Bernarda Popol Garcia’s relatives alerted police after days without contact, setting in motion a case that later reached Honduras.
TELFORD, Pa. — The investigation that eventually sent U.S. and Honduran authorities searching for a homicide suspect began with a family’s simpler concern: Maria Bernarda Popol Garcia had stopped responding, and the people closest to her did not know where she was.
On March 13, relatives contacted police in Palisades Park, New Jersey, and reported that they had not heard from Popol Garcia for about a week. They told officers the young woman lived in Telford, Bucks County, with her boyfriend, Darwin David Espinal-Del-Cid. The report was passed into the Pennsylvania investigation, bringing Telford Borough police to the apartment on North Main Street. No one answered during the initial visit. When the search continued, Popol Garcia was found dead inside the residence, and what had begun as a missing-person case became a homicide investigation.
The discovery confronted investigators with two immediate questions: what had happened inside the apartment and where Espinal-Del-Cid had gone. Prosecutors later charged him with criminal homicide, possession of an instrument of crime, theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception and abuse of a corpse. They allege he killed Popol Garcia days before her family went to police, hid her body, took her phone and money and left the United States. Espinal-Del-Cid was arrested in Honduras on Aug. 17. The charges have not been adjudicated, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
Authorities say the homicide investigation quickly pushed detectives backward in time. On March 6, a week before the missing-person report, Popol Garcia told a co-worker that she was moving out of the apartment and began taking belongings to another residence. Prosecutors say she had decided to end her relationship with Espinal-Del-Cid. The two were together in a rideshare vehicle late that night and argued, according to District Attorney Joe Khan. They then returned to the apartment so Popol Garcia could gather additional possessions.
Neighbors supplied another piece of the developing timeline. They told investigators they heard a loud argument in the apartment during the early hours of March 7. Authorities regard that period as the last time Popol Garcia was known to be alive. Prosecutors allege that Espinal-Del-Cid attacked her with a sharp object and caused a fatal wound to her neck. An autopsy later found that she died from an edged cutting weapon and classified the death as a homicide. Officials say her body was then concealed in a bedroom closet, wrapped and covered with clothing.
The passage of several days before the body was discovered became central to the investigation. Prosecutors allege Espinal-Del-Cid took Popol Garcia’s Android cellphone and sent messages while posing as her, making it appear that she remained alive after the killing. The district attorney’s office also accuses him of taking approximately $400. Those alleged acts are reflected in the theft and deception charges, while the manner in which authorities say the body was hidden supports the abuse-of-corpse allegation.
By the time Popol Garcia’s relatives reported her missing, investigators say Espinal-Del-Cid was no longer in Pennsylvania or even the United States. Financial and airline records showed that he bought a one-way ticket to Honduras and departed March 9. That was several days before police were first sent to the Telford apartment. The chronology gave detectives a difficult starting point: the suspected homicide was already days old, the body had been concealed and the person who would become the principal suspect was across an international border.
The physical discovery of Popol Garcia’s body gave investigators an autopsy finding and a scene, while interviews gave them the surrounding chronology. Co-workers knew she had been moving. Family members knew her communication pattern and that they suddenly could not reach her. Neighbors remembered the argument. Airline and financial records documented travel. Phone information helped investigators retrace movements and communications, according to published reports. The case was built through those different strands rather than through a reported eyewitness account of the fatal attack.
Popol Garcia had immigrated to the United States from Guatemala and worked as a server at a Latin American restaurant and grocery in Telford. Bucks County officials said friends and colleagues remembered her as a gentle, kind person. Local news reports described her as someone working to help her family. Her relatives told The Philadelphia Inquirer that she had been trying to leave a relationship they characterized as abusive. She was around her 23rd birthday when her body was found, according to authorities.
As detectives focused on Espinal-Del-Cid, the investigation expanded well beyond Telford. The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said numerous local police departments assisted along with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs. Identifying a suspect and filing charges could not by itself return him to Pennsylvania, so investigators also had to locate him in Honduras and work through international law-enforcement and legal channels.
That effort culminated in Pespire, Honduras, on Aug. 17. Honduran agents with the Technical Agency for Criminal Investigation took Espinal-Del-Cid into custody during an operation coordinated with the FBI, prosecutors said. The arrest ended the search phase that had followed his March departure, but it opened another process: extradition. He was held in Tegucigalpa while Honduran authorities considered the United States’ request for his return to Bucks County.
Honduran news reports said an extradition judge ordered Espinal-Del-Cid held provisionally on the day of his arrest. La Prensa reported that the court scheduled a Sept. 2 proceeding for evidence related to the extradition request. U.S. reports in August also described him as awaiting extradition. A search of reliable publicly available reporting through Sept. 28 did not establish that he had since been delivered to Pennsylvania, so no later court appearance or trial schedule can be stated as confirmed.
The missing-person origin of the case is significant because the family’s concern was the event that finally brought authorities to the apartment. Prosecutors allege that Espinal-Del-Cid had already taken several steps to prevent that discovery from happening quickly: concealing Popol Garcia’s body, using her phone to make it appear she was communicating and leaving the country before relatives went to police. Whether prosecutors can prove those allegations will be determined through the criminal process rather than by the charging documents alone.
Investigators have not publicly resolved every question. Action News reported in August that the weapon used in the killing had not been recovered. No publicly available court proceeding has yet tested witnesses or evidence in an adversarial Pennsylvania hearing following Espinal-Del-Cid’s Honduran arrest. The exact content of all communications attributed to Popol Garcia’s phone has not been released in the sources reviewed for this article. Those gaps matter because they distinguish what authorities allege from what has been established through a conviction.
What is clear from the verified timeline is how quickly the case crossed jurisdictions. A young woman preparing to move in Bucks County disappeared. Her family in another state contacted police. A local apartment became a homicide scene. Records led investigators to an international flight. Federal authorities and Honduran agents joined the search. Five months after the killing, the accused man was arrested in Central America and placed into an extradition process that could eventually return the case to the Pennsylvania county where it began.
The latest reliable public information available as of Sept. 28 leaves the case between those stages. Espinal-Del-Cid has been located and arrested, but his Pennsylvania criminal case has not been resolved. Popol Garcia’s relatives no longer face the uncertainty of not knowing where she is, but the legal system has yet to determine criminal responsibility for her death. Bucks County prosecutors continue to pursue the charges while awaiting the procedural steps necessary to bring the accused back before a local court.
Author note: Last updated September 28, 2026.