What began as a secret affair between a married woman and an older man ended in a horrific act of violence that has left a Pennsylvania community in shock.
Authorities say 61-year-old Jose Luis Rodriguez snapped when his lover, 31-year-old Geraldina Peguero-Mancebo, refused to leave her husband.
The outburst ended with the deaths of Geraldina, her husband Junior Cabrera-Colon, and their one-year-old son Jeyden Junior Peguero — a tragedy that prosecutors described as “one of the most heartbreaking crimes in recent memory.”
According to Berks County prosecutors, Rodriguez, who had been a family friend, first shot Cabrera-Colon in the head on Sept. 13. He then turned his rage toward Geraldina, who had reportedly tried to distance herself from him.
When she refused to leave her husband, Rodriguez killed her too — and, in an act that District Attorney John Adams called “pure evil,” drowned her baby boy by throwing him face-down into a muddy pond.
“I can’t imagine anything more horrifying than throwing that 1-year-old child into that pond of water and leaving him there to die,” Adams said during a press conference. “This was cruel. It was horrible. It was a different level. In reflection, it just makes me want to cry.”
The mother and child were reported missing on Sept. 15, just two days after Cabrera-Colon’s body was found. Investigators discovered Geraldina’s body four days later in a remote grassy field in Ontelaunee Township, about ten miles south of Reading. The next day, they found Jeyden’s tiny body “partially submerged in a marshy area.”
An autopsy revealed that the toddler’s lungs were full of mud, confirming that he was alive when Rodriguez left him to drown.
Family members told WFMZ that Rodriguez had been close to the couple and that his relationship with Geraldina had become complicated in recent months. Her cousin described the entire ordeal as “unthinkable,” saying no one could have imagined that a man they once trusted would commit such an atrocity.
Rodriguez, already facing a first-degree murder charge for Cabrera-Colon’s death, has now been charged with two additional counts of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. Prosecutors are weighing whether to pursue the death penalty.
For many in the Dominican community where the couple lived, Geraldina’s story is a chilling reminder of how control, jealousy, and obsession can turn deadly.
What began as a private entanglement ended as an unimaginable tragedy — one that claimed not only two young lives but also the innocence of a baby who never had a chance to grow up.
