A San Diego man who authorities said flew to Texas to kill his boyfriend — stabbing him 93 times then leaving his body in a ditch in fall 2020 — was sentenced Thursday to life in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Alexander Yoichi Duberek, 25, pleaded guilty last July in the Northern District of Texas to interstate domestic violence resulting in death.
The victim is identified in federal court documents as “John Doe,” but the Plainview Herald, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and other media outlets identified him as 30-year-old Chad Luera.
According to federal court filings, Duberek flew to Texas on Oct. 31, 2020. Luera believed they were going on a romantic outing.
But Duberek admitted he arrived a few hours early, took an Uber to a Sam’s Club parking lot and bought a 2009 Toyota Camry for $3,000 cash, the documents state. He then drove to a Walmart and spent more than $560 on several items — among them a knife, a hatchet, a collapsible shovel, a head lamp, a flashlight, a backpack, bath towels and Febreeze.
Duberek later stopped and bought energy drinks before he picked up the victim at his Plainview, Texas home, according to the filings.
“This defendant looked his boyfriend’s family in the eyes and described the date night he had planned for the two of them,” U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton of the Northern District of Texas said in a news release Thursday.
Instead, Simonton said, Duberek “carried out a sadistic, premeditated plan” to kill the victim and leave his body.
After the attack, Duberek drove to Houston where he abandoned the Camry and fled, the documents state. Authorities eventually found the car, which had the victim’s blood inside.
Duberek was on the run until March 2021 when he surrendered himself to the FBI in San Diego.
Simonton’s office said that during the sentencing, the victim’s aunt said Duberek left her nephew “who he reportedly loved and wanted to marry, on the side of the road, like yesterday’s trash, like his life didn’t matter, to bleed to death.”
“Why would he extinguish a light that shone so brightly for so many? Why didn’t he just stay in California, move on with his life?” she said in court.