Airport Victim Identified

A Lima, Peru, man said he believes his wife was the woman who smuggled herself into the United States in a suitcase, only to be crushed to death by other luggage at Los Angeles International Airport. The woman’s body was found Monday by customs inspectors among the unclaimed baggage. Juan Espinoza said his wife, Maria Silva Falcon de Espinoza, 26, disappeared five days ago and left a note that said, “I am going very far away, to earn a lot of money” to support the couple’s four children. “I think it was her (in the suitcase), because given our difficult economic situation, she had expressed her desire to me to go to work in the United States,” he said. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office has not identified the body, but Espinoza said the description of the woman and the clothes she was wearing matched that of his wife. “Her intention was to go to New Jersey and live with a member of our family,” Espinoza said. “I think Maria could have had the ingenuity to go inside a suitcase.”