A Calcasieu Parish jury has found a southwest Louisiana man guilty of murder in the brutal death of a 72-year-old woman in 2023. District Attorney Stephen Dwight says after 43-year-old Christopher Cater killed Sheila Ortega, he drove around with the woman’s body for a month.
“The line about what happened, where he was, where she was. just continued to lie throughout those 30 days, and this was 30 days during the summer,” Dwight said.
It took just over an hour for a jury to convict Cater of first-degree murder and unlawful disposal of remains.
“Then there’s Google searches on how to get rid of a body, how long will the body stink after they’ve been murdered. The Google searches really killed him. It didn’t take the jury long to look through all that and to return a guilty verdict,” Dwight explained.
Prosecutors say Cater killed Ortega while he was intoxicated and her death was caused by blunt force trauma. An LSU forensic expert testified Ortega’s injuries included bone fractures to her spine, neck and face.
“He maxed-out all of her credit cards. Once she realized this, she, I think, tried to terminate their relationship. And that’s when he decided to kill her and continue to milk the estate dry,” Dwight said.
Cater was also found guilty of identity theft and he’ll be officially sentenced on October 7th. When deputies arrested him, Cater admitted to opening up loans in her name.
