LYNNWOOD — After a Lynnwood man raped a high school girl who was dying of an overdose, he stuffed her body in a plastic crate and told friends he was thinking of fleeing to Mexico, according to new charges filed Friday.
Brian Roberto Varela, 19, bragged and joked about raping the dying girl to three coworkers at Dairy Queen, in a group text where he sent photos of Alyssa Mae Noceda, 18, passed out with blue lips, court papers say.
Varela was formally charged Friday with first-degree manslaughter and second-degree rape in Snohomish County Superior Court. He had told his friends — and later told police — that Noceda snorted a line of crushed Percocet pills, before he prepared a “dab” of highly concentrated THC for her to ingest on the night of Feb. 3.
Noceda, who had attended Mariner High School, collapsed onto the bed less than a minute after mixing the drugs, Varela told detectives. Search warrants revealed at 11:30 p.m., Varela opened Google to research what to do if someone overdoses on Percocet. According to charging papers, the first result would have said to call 911. He did not.
Instead, prosecutors say, a minute later he took a photo of the girl in her underwear and sent it to his friends.
“LOL I think she od’d, still breathing,” he wrote, according to police reports. Varela used slang words to suggest he was sexually assaulting her “to pass the time.”
One friend, 18, asked Varela to send video of the nude girl, according to warrants detailing the texts. Police suspect Varela raped Noceda as she was dying on the bed.
“But not joking she od bruh,” he reportedly wrote in a text at 11:36 p.m. He added that he could continue to sexually assault her and used a vulgar acronym to suggest that he was laughing.
Two minutes later he sent another close-up photo. Noceda never woke up. Varela played an online game until he fell asleep, according to the charges.
Varela awoke in the morning to find Noceda’s body cold and stiff. His roommate, 20, later told officers Varela opened the door in the morning saying he needed help, court papers say. Varela showed the girl to his roommate and another friend, according to the charges. The men confirmed Noceda had no pulse, and the roommate claimed he told Varela to call 911.
Varela, however, left the body locked in his room, court papers say. He went to work a double-shift at Dairy Queen, where he recounted the story of the overdose to coworkers. He told them he didn’t know if Noceda was alive when they had intercourse, and he seemed to be boasting when he said she died having sex with him, according to the reports. He confided his plan to bury the body in Marysville, the documents said.
“I think I’m leaving to Mexico fellas,” he texted to friends around 4:45 p.m. Feb. 4, according to court records. Police reports show Varela is a U.S. citizen, but he has family friends who live in Mexico.
That night around 11 p.m., Varela grabbed a plastic crate from his mother’s home down the street, returned to the room and washed the body in an effort to destroy DNA, the charges say. He took a last picture of Noceda’s body at 2:58 a.m. Feb. 5. Then, he told police, he stuffed the body in the crate, tossed a sheet over it and went to bed.
Varela had lived in the home for about two months, after he was kicked out of his mom’s house for being involved with drugs and gangs, according to police reports. Officers believe he’d been using cocaine, cannabis and Percocet.
Noceda’s mother, Gina Pierson, wrote a post on Facebook around 8 a.m. Feb. 5, begging people for help finding her daughter.
Varela used the deceased girl’s thumb to unlock her iPhone 8, to make a post on Snapchat so that people would think she ran away, according to his statements to police. He disposed of Noceda’s phone in the woods near his work.
On his own phone, he had looked up how to hide a dead body, and how to bypass the pass code on an iPhone, according to the charges.
A coworker tipped off police. Officers found Varela at home. The body was in the crate in his room.
Varela spoke with detectives. He claimed the sex was consensual. He told police, however, that Noceda seemed “really out of it,” according to the charges. Noceda’s underwear was found in her purse, separate from the body. Varela admitted to police he knew his DNA would be on the underwear. So he planned to destroy it.
He told detectives Noceda brought the pills with her to the party. His roommate claimed that on the day of the party, Varela was showing off a box of pills he referred to as “Percs.” A box of three unidentified white pills was found in his bedroom, on a desk alongside his smoking devices.
“The statement from Varela that Noceda brought, crushed and snorted Percocet pills (‘percs’) makes the presence of pills at the location worth noting,” Snohomish County sheriff’s detective David Fontenot wrote, in an application for a search warrant.
Noceda’s cause of death remains under investigation. An autopsy revealed no obvious outward signs of trauma that would explain how she died, according to the charges. Toxicology tests can take months to complete.
The defendant’s arraignment is scheduled for Monday.
Caleb Hutton: 425-339-3454; chutton@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @snocaleb.
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