Crime & Safety

Lopez Gets Two Life Sentences for Murdering Germantown Mom, Son

Judge: 'It's too bad the death penalty was not an option' for killing Jane and William McQuain.

Curtis Lopez received the toughest penalty possible under Maryland law Monday in the brutal 2011 killing of a Germantown mom and her son.

Lopez was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole for killing Jane McQuain while she slept and then kidnapping and beating to death with a baseball bat her son, William McQuain, 11.

“It’s too bad the death penalty was not an option,” Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Mary Beth McCormick said just before she handed down the sentence.

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In addition to the life sentences, Lopez was sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping and 12 years for robbery.

Lopez entered an Alford plea in January. An Alford plea means a defendant has not acknowledged guilt but admits there’s enough evidence for a conviction.

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In October 2011, Jane McQuain was beaten in the back of the head with a 30-pound dumbbell and stabbed with butcher knife as she slept in her Germantown apartment. Prosecutors claimed that her estranged husband, Lopez—a convicted felon—had killed her for money.

After he beat and stabbed McQuain, Lopez took her valuables, drove off in her SUV, and withdrew cash from her bank before picking up her 11-year-old son William McQuain from a sleepover.

After driving around for hours and stealing more things from Jane McQuain’s storage unit, Lopez beat the boy to death with a metal bat—shattering his skull into 36 pieces—and dumped his body in the woods.

As police searched for William, Lopez was selling off Jane McQuain’s possessions. He gave her SUV to his girlfriend in North Carolina.

Police later found William's body. Though Lopez wasn’t William’s biological father, Lopez was the man he called “Dad.”

“He laid on your chest as a baby,” Jane McQuain’s cousin, Suzanne McQuain Hicks, said during the sentencing hearing.

Hicks was one of eight who testified during the proceeding. Friends and colleagues described Jane McQuain as being like a sister and mom and called Lopez a coward for killing a child and a beating a woman as she slept.

Hicks refused to address Lopez by name during her testimony.

“You are nothing,” she said, looking directly at Lopez. “You are not a person. When I walk out of this room I will forget you as society will when they lock you up.”

Toward the end of the hearing Lopez offered an apology.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Lopez said. “There are no words that can say it.”

Jane McQuain’s brother William McQuain—Jane McQuain’s son’s namesake—said called the apology “hollow.”

“He should have thought about that before he killed them,” McQuain said.


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