ICE agents arrest undocumented immigrant charged with concealing missing Antioch woman’s dead body

CHICAGO (WGN) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have arrested an undocumented immigrant after he was charged with concealing a missing Antioch woman’s body in mid-April, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security.

The DHS said 52-year-old Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez was arrested by ICE officers in Chicago sometime Saturday.

Mendoza-Gonzalez, who previously lived in Waukegan, was awaiting his next court appearance at the time of his ICE arrest in connection with the Antioch and Waukegan Police Departments’ investigation into the disappearance and death of 37-year-old Megan Bos.

Mendoza-Gonzalez was taken into police custody on Thursday, April 10, and later charged with two counts of concealment of a death, abuse of a corpse and obstructing justice.

The reason why he was out of police custody and ICE was able to arrest him in Chicago on Saturday is because all of the counts Mendoza-Gonzalez was charged with are considered Class 4 felonies, but are not detainable offenses under Illinois’ SAFE-T Act.

Earlier that day on April 10, Waukegan police officers went to an area business to question Mendoza-Gonzalez, a person of interest in Bos’s disappearance.

He told Waukegan police through a translator about how Bos came to his house on Wednesday, Feb. 19, but he initially said she left after her visit. When asked about her whereabouts and whether she was still alive, Mendoza-Gonzalez said he did not want to be arrested at the business, according to investigators, but did not say why.

WPD then moved the conversation to their precinct, where Mendoza-Gonzalez told police Bos was in a container in his yard in the 700 block of Yeoman Street.

Officers went on to secure a search warrant for Mendoza-Gonzalez’s home and found her body on the property.

As WPD’s conversation with Mendoza-Gonzalez carried on, he explained Bos’s visit to his home in greater detail.

According to Waukegan police, Mendoza-Gonzalez said when Bos came over to his house on Feb. 19, she snorted drugs at some point, but he wasn’t sure what kind of drug it was.

Mendoza-Gonzalez then told police that Bos asked him if she could hang out in his basement while he worked on a plumbing issue in a different part of the house. Police said Mendoza-Gonzalez obliged, and when he came back to check on Bos later that day, Mendoza-Gonzalez told them he allegedly found her dead of what he thought was an overdose.

WGN-TV has reached out to the Lake County Coroner’s Office (LCCO) to see the toxicology report attached to Bos’s autopsy records.

Mendoza-Gonzalez told detectives he was afraid he was going to be in trouble, so he left her in the basement for several days before moving her to a container in his yard, where she remained until WPD found her on April 10.

According to investigators, Mendoza-Gonzalez told them he broke Bos’s phone and threw it in the trash on the night of the alleged overdose. He said he didn’t know what he was going to do with her when police asked what he planned to do next.

The DHS’s press release on the ICE arrest of Mendoza-Gonzalez claims Bos was found decapitated and bleached on his property—a claim that has been refuted by Bos’s mother and proven wrong through autopsy records.

Bos’s mother, Jennifer Bos, said her daughter was not found decapitated, but was found bleached.

After police recovered Bos’s body, her remains were taken to the LCCO for an autopsy on Friday, April 11. According to the LCCO, her body showed no signs of trauma or a struggle before her death.

Bos was reported missing on Sunday, March 9, and APD launched a missing persons investigation into her disappearance. At the time, family members said they had last heard from her on Monday, Feb. 17.