Yoga Teacher Killed Professor, Then Vanished

The sentence came more than 15 years after Marcum, 52, was found beaten and strangled inside her home in Bethesda. Prosecutors said the killing followed a bitter break in a personal and financial relationship and that Rueda Landeros tried to make the scene look like a burglary. The defense argued he did not kill her and said investigators focused on the wrong suspect. A jury in October convicted Rueda Landeros of second-degree murder, rejecting a first-degree murder charge and leaving the judge to decide how close the punishment should come to the 30-year maximum.

Investigators said Marcum met Rueda Landeros years earlier when he taught her yoga and Spanish in the Washington area. Over time, prosecutors said, the relationship became romantic and tied to money. Court records and testimony described Marcum putting her savings into investments controlled or handled by Rueda Landeros. In an email written in October 2008, Marcum accused him of having “no remorse for spending the money” after she learned $50,000 was gone. Prosecutors said the money fight did not end there. They argued that by 2010 Marcum was pressing for answers, and that pressure set the stage for a deadly confrontation at her house on Oct. 25, 2010.

Police said Marcum was found dead inside the home in the 6200 block of Massachusetts Avenue. Early signs suggested a break-in: rooms were messy, a rear entry point appeared disturbed, and valuables were missing, including items investigators later said were taken to sell. But detectives came to believe the break-in was staged. They said Marcum likely knew the person who attacked her and that the killing involved both blunt-force injuries and strangulation. Prosecutors and investigators described evidence of drinking in the home, including shot glasses, and said a bottle found near her remains may have been used during the assault. The case drew attention in the region because it combined a brutal death, a missing suspect and a long trail of financial questions.

At sentencing, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said forensic work tied Rueda Landeros to the killing and did not point to another suspect. “The DNA linked him directly,” McCarthy said after the hearing, adding that investigators did not find other DNA that supported a different theory of who killed her. Prosecutors also pointed to financial records and an insurance policy as they built their case. They said Marcum lost about $312,000 in roughly two years of investing while Rueda Landeros gained about $252,000. Investigators also found that Marcum had a $500,000 life insurance policy that listed him as a beneficiary, a detail prosecutors said helped explain why a trusted instructor could become a deadly threat.

Authorities said the case turned on a match between DNA recovered from the scene and a sample tied to Rueda Landeros. Detectives learned he traveled often between Mexico and the United States, and investigators obtained a cheek swab at a border crossing during the period they were building the case. In April 2011, police said, the DNA evidence helped confirm him as a suspect, and an arrest warrant followed. By then, investigators said, he was gone. For years, Marcum’s family waited through a cycle of tips and dead ends as police and federal partners tracked a man they said was living freely outside U.S. reach. Authorities said he used a new name while working as a yoga instructor in Mexico, and it took more than a decade to locate him.

Police said Mexican authorities arrested Rueda Landeros on Dec. 13, 2022, in an operation coordinated with U.S. officials. He was later returned to Montgomery County in July 2023 to face charges and was held without bond, according to police and court statements at the time. Prosecutors said the case that finally reached a jury relied on DNA, emails, banking and investment records, and testimony about how the home was left after the killing. The defense said the death was a burglary that went wrong and challenged the idea that financial conflict proved murder. Rueda Landeros did not testify at trial, and his attorneys continued to say at sentencing that he was not guilty.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Rachel McGuckian sentenced Rueda Landeros, 56, to 25 years in prison, exceeding state sentencing guidelines that attorneys said ranged from 12 to 20 years. McGuckian called the killing “heinous” in court and said the facts showed an abuse of trust, according to people who attended the hearing. She said she did not impose the full 30-year maximum in part because he had no prior criminal record. The sentence includes credit for the time he has already spent in custody, which attorneys said totals roughly three years. Court filings did not immediately list a date for any appeal hearing, though convictions can be challenged in higher courts.

Family members and friends described Marcum as an unusual and joyful teacher who made accounting feel alive. Her brother, Alan Marcum, told reporters after the sentencing that the day before the hearing would have been her birthday and that the case had marked the 15th anniversary of her death. He said his sister once worked at Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and carried that spirit into the classroom, including wearing a red clown nose to explain depreciation. Larry March, a longtime friend, said the sentence brought a kind of closure after years of uncertainty. “Sue is now doing God’s work, and we now can do Sue’s work on this earth,” March said, as the group left the courthouse.

The case remains closed at the trial level, with Rueda Landeros headed to serve a sentence that could keep him incarcerated into his 70s. Prosecutors said the conviction rested on forensic evidence and records gathered over years, while the defense maintained he was wrongly blamed. No additional court dates were announced Tuesday.

Author note: Last updated March 5, 2026.