Early next year, Jorge Rueda Landeros will be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for the 2010 killing of his business partner and sometime love interest, American University Professor Sue Marcum.

The jury required less than a day to decide a case 15 years in the making. Two weeks ago, they quickly sided with prosecutors, who unfolded a compelling story about a troubled romance, a financial scam and a night of drinks that ended with Marcum being bludgeoned with a tequila bottle and strangled. Rueda Landeros’ DNA was found on the bottle and on Marcum’s fingernails.

Prosecutors and the primary detective considered it a straightforward murder case. The jury convicted Rueda Landeros, 55, of second-degree murder. Outside the courtroom, however, thoughts about who killed the popular professor are more complicated, and jurors never heard evidence that Rueda Landeros’ attorneys say might have resulted in an acquittal.

Two police officers who played an early role in the investigation say the wrong person is being sent to prison for the brutal killing of a beloved professor. But they never testified about their doubts during the trial; the judge presiding over the case decided their hunches heavily relied on inadmissible hearsay.

It’s not unusual for some exculpatory evidence to be ruled inadmissible in a criminal trial. It’s also not unusual for police officers to disagree during an investigation. What is unusual, experts say, is when police officers publicly doubt the decision to charge a suspect on trial.

One of those original officers, former D.C. Detective John Paprcka, has taken his criticisms even further since the conviction, personally contacting a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of unjustly convicted people.

That’s extremely unusual, particularly for a high-profile case, said retired New York Police Department Detective Michael Alcazar.

“It is pretty rare,” said Alcazar, a former second-grade detective who is also an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

And it’s one thing to challenge fellow police officers, Alcazar continued, but even more unusual to question prosecutors, because the consequences can be so far-reaching.

“It’s more of a battle against the district attorney because they potentially convicted the wrong person,” Alcazar said. “If it’s the wrong person, it’s going to open a whole bunch of civil lawsuits.”

Burglary gone wrong?

Sue Marcum, who taught accounting at American University and was named professor of the year several times in her department, was 52 when she was killed at her home in Bethesda. Her brother on the witness stand said that his younger sister was once the tax director for Ringling Bros. circus and that she made her often dry subject lively for a generation of students.

A friend found her bloody and bruised body at the bottom of her basement stairs, her house in disarray. Some items had been stolen, and her SUV was missing. Police later recovered the car in D.C. after a chase that ended with the 18-year-old driver crashing the car. The teenager initially told authorities that he had found the keys on the ground, but later said he got them from his brother.

At the time, Paprcka was working alongside Montgomery County police detectives and investigating similarities in about 60 burglaries that occurred in upper Northwest D.C. and in the county. He has told Montgomery County police, the state’s attorney’s office and The Banner that he believes the murderer was involved in one of those burglary rings — people he investigated or maybe even arrested for property crimes.

Judge Rachel McGuckian twice ruled against defense attorneys’ requests to present information about possible suspects tied to the burglary rings. While defense attorneys could argue that Marcum died in a botched burglary, McGuckian ruled, they were not allowed to name potential suspects who were not charged.

The defense attorneys had wanted to tell the jury how an anonymous tipster reported that unfamiliar men were seen in Marcum’s neighborhood the morning police found her body. A second person, a criminal informant linked to one of the burglary rings, had told investigators that he knew of a burglary that had gone wrong and in which a professor had been killed.

McGuckian wouldn’t allow it.

“It’s clear to the courts that the defense wants to use these tips to argue that the real murderers are these three, or five, or four young Black males,” the judge said. “These tips are certainly, as I said, hearsay.”

The judge also rejected the idea that what happened at Marcum’s home fit into the pattern of burglaries in the region because none happened very close to her home or near the time of her death.

“These burglaries are not similar,” she said. “They’re similar to the extent that somebody broke in and took things, which is like every burglary.”

These rulings continue to haunt Paprcka and a second investigator, Michael Hartnett, a now-retired Montgomery County police lieutenant who headed the 2nd District Investigative Section in Bethesda at the time of Marcum’s murder. They both believe investigators ignored links between Marcum’s death and the burglary rings.

“I think he is innocent of the murder,” Hartnett said of Rueda Landeros.

“I wish the real murderer would be apprehended,” Paprcka said. “I can’t name who that is because I don’t know who it is.”

Paprcka has maintained that the burglaries he investigated in the D.C. area were, in fact, similar to the scene uncovered at Marcum’s home: All happened close to midnight while the homes were occupied. Entry was made through open doors and by removing window screens. Stolen items included laptops, gaming systems, cellphones and purses — some of the same items stolen from Marcum’s home. And sometimes, he said, cars were stolen and recovered along the few blocks of Q Street in Washington — the general area where Marcum’s stolen Jeep was found and taken by the teen.

A dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, Rueda Landeros, 55, was living in Mexico after Marcum’s murder under a fake name until his extradition in 2023. Nevertheless, Paprcka argued, the evidence against him is “explainable” since the pair knew each other well.

“It’s been eating at me from the time Montgomery [police investigators] said, ‘We have DNA from a tequila bottle,’” Paprcka said. “I think they got the wrong guy.”

The case against Rueda Landeros

At trial, prosecutors put Montgomery County Police Sgt. Lawrence Haley on the stand. The former homicide detective had investigated Marcum’s killing and told the jury that investigators’ thinking changed markedly when Rueda Landeros’ DNA was found on shot glasses, the tequila bottle and on Marcum’s fingernails.

That’s when they stopped pursuing the 18-year-old who led police on a chase in Marcum’s Jeep, he said. The story of an enraged on-again, off-again romantic partner driven to murder made more sense.

“I just didn’t believe she would share a drink with a burglar,” Lawrence said.

Prosecutors also described Marcum’s troubled financial dealings with Rueda Landeros. She took out a second mortgage and invested $300,000 in a brokerage account that he promised would make a 35% return. Instead, they argued, Rueda Landeros walked away with $252,000 and Marcum lost even more than she borrowed: $312,000.

Haley testified that there were signs in Marcum’s home that a burglary was faked. For one, the kitchen window was only opened about 10 inches — not enough for a tall man to slip through, he said. Rueda Landeros is 6 feet tall, according to court records.

Next to the window were a set of plates and soap dispenser that surely would have been knocked to the ground if someone had come through the window, Haley said.

The cut screen was found outside the home — not inside, as one might expect if someone had broken in — and other items remained on the windowsill.

Haley also pointed out that a glass tabletop found on the floor was not cracked, and a vase on the stairs was intact even though the plants it once contained were scattered on the staircase. If either had been knocked to the ground, they would have been damaged, Haley said.

Haley also testified that police had exhausted other leads. They had searched homes where the teenager who was found with Marcum’s jeep was known to spend time.

“There was nothing there,” Haley said.

During closing arguments, Assistant State’s Attorney Debbie Feinstein called the disappearance of Marcum’s SUV a “coincidental auto theft.”

But that’s where Paprcka thinks officials have the story at least somewhat wrong. In a 2023 email to prosecutors, he wrote that the criminal crews he investigated would often put on latex gloves before their burglaries. They would steal a car, fill it with stolen items and drive to the area of D.C. around First and Q streets. There, they would unload their loot and abandon the car and keys.

Hartnett, the retired Montgomery County police officer, agrees with Paprcka’s assessment. He told The Banner that Marcum’s home was likely targeted like so many others in D.C. and Montgomery County in 2010. He wanted the jury to hear about those break-ins, those responsible for them, and the fact that her car was at one point near where burglars used to abandon stolen cars.

“The burglaries would go back and forth,” he said of the crime spree. “Maybe D.C. would get hit one night, we’d get hit the next night.” The burglars would typically work from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., he said, and steal things on the first floor while residents slept.

In contrast to the judge, Hartnett concluded that many burglaries had occurred near Marcum’s home at the time of her death. The theft of her car, he said, and its discovery in the area where burglars dumped cars “is way too coincidental.”

Still, following Rueda Landeros’ verdict, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy called the convicted murderer a “con man” and the jury’s decision a “perfect verdict.”

“This case was not someone who came over with a weapon premeditatedly and took the life of another human being,” he said. “They were sitting there clearly having a drink, talking to each other, and something happened.”

Rueda Landeros’ attorneys, Tatiana David and Meghan Brennan, have not yet announced whether they plan to appeal.

“It’s about the injustice,” David said. “Why can’t we put all the facts out there and let the jury decide?”