LAFAYETTE, Indiana — Lafayette police Sgt. Shawn Verma said that Seyene C. Vargas was arrested in Seattle on Sunday on a murder warrant. They believe she killed Laportia Shenett and Kadeisha Ross in Shenett’s apartment on Cochise Drive.
Four counts of murder, one count of obstruction of justice, and one count of false informing were brought against Vargas, 50, of the 3800 block of Wembley Drive in Lafayette. A charge of using a firearm was also brought by the prosecutors to add to the sentence.
On the night of February 28, Vargas tried to get in touch with Shenett. A probable cause statement says she told Shenett to ask Ross to leave so that Vargas and Shenett could be alone. Shenett stopped answering Vargas’s texts around 8:43 p.m. on February 28.
The affidavit says that Vargas went to a friend’s place a short time after the text messages stopped. His gun and car were borrowed by her. She left her two cell phones at the apartment of a friend.
The affidavit says that at 9:13 p.m. on February 28, security video showed the car driving toward Shenett’s apartment on Cochise Drive. After eight minutes, the car driving away from Shenett’s apartment was caught on tape. At 9:25 p.m., the car is back at Varga’s apartment building.
Ross and Shenett were not found until around 7:30 a.m. The court record said that Shenett’s sister came into the flat on March 1. Shenett wasn’t there when she said she would drive her sister home from work. When her sister got home, she found Ross and her sister dead in the room.
The bodies were found not long after Vargas and her friend were driving to Gary, Indiana. There, Varga took apart the gun used in the killings and hid the parts in different places in the city, according to the prosecutor’s statement. Later, the police found the gun’s parts, put it back together, and checked it. prosecutors say the earliest ballistics tests show that the handgun is likely to be the one used in the crime.
Vargas is waiting to be sent back to Lafayette.
Vargas could spend 90 to 130 years in jail for each murder charge if he is found guilty. She could get up to 20 more years in prison if she is found guilty of making a gun threat.
For obstructing justice, she could spend another six to thirty months in jail, and for false reporting, she could spend another twelve months.
