‘When I Was 12 I Watched My Mother Murder My Father’

On Sept. 14, 2014, Maxxy Lopez, then 12, watched in silent terror as her mother, Heidi Juarez, and half brother Melquin strangled to death her father, Miguel Lopez, 35, in the living room of the family’s home in Los Angeles. Her mother threatened to kill Maxxy next if she talked, and for nearly a decade Maxxy kept the killing she had witnessed secret, repeatedly refusing to tell relatives who asked what had happened to her missing father. But in 2022, after first revealing the truth in private to a friend, she called police in L.A. and went public with her story.

The wheels of justice turned quickly: Heidi, 48, and Melquin, 30, her son from a previous relationship, were arrested the following year, and after Maxxy testified against them at trial, both were convicted of first-degree murder on June 26, 2025, and then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. “Maxxy showed a tremendous amount of courage,” says Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson, who prosecuted the case. “She was committed to seeing this through.”

Now, in her own words, Maxxy, 23, opens up about finding justice for her father.

I was a daddy’s girl. Out of the five siblings I was the closest to Dad because I always wanted to be with him. He was a truly kind soul. He loved the outdoors and would always take us to the beach or to build snowmen in the mountains. He was very creative too. He taught me how to make pom-poms with yarn and how to burn mixtape CDs.

And he went all out for Christmas and especially Halloween. I remember one year we both dressed as vampires—I was a vampire girl, and he wore a cape and face paint. We were always the ones who handed out the candy to kids in our neighborhood.

In 2012 my family moved from a tiny apartment in Koreatown to a three-bedroom house in South Los Angeles. We had a pool, a swing set and our own washing machine. I shared a big princess-themed bedroom with my younger sister Mia. My dad let me choose the color for the walls, and I asked for pink. Every night Mia and I would talk for hours before going to sleep.

It was supposed to be a house where we’d all have a happy childhood and a better future, but it ended up becoming a house of nightmares.

After we moved into the new house, my dad and my mom, Heidi, started arguing a lot and spending time apart. Dad was outgoing and liked to have fun. He would go out drinking with his brother, my uncle Francisco, and when he’d come home, my mom, who really didn’t like hanging out with other people, would yell at him and tell him to get out.

Eventually Dad moved in with his brother. Mom said he could only see the kids on weekends, but every time he came over, she’d lock the front gate and tell him to go away. I remember standing at the window and seeing him outside with a pizza or chocolates and just crying and waving to him.

I woke up late on Sept. 14, 2014. I had gone to a One Direction concert at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena the night before. I was supposed to go with my sister, but she changed her mind, so my 18-year-old half brother Melquin took me and waited outside the whole time because he thought the band was just for girls.

The next morning, my mom was talking on the phone in the living room. She was with her friend Guadalupe, who had just stopped by. I could hear my dad on the other end of the phone. Mom was telling him that my sister and I were sick with high fevers. “You have to come and help them,” she said. I was confused because I wasn’t sick, and when I said that out loud, my mom told me to go to my room and stop listening to other people’s conversations.

About an hour later I heard my dad’s voice in the living room: “Where are they? Are they okay?” I was standing by my bedroom door when I heard my mom ask my dad to retrieve a box from a shelf. For him to grab it, he had to turn around and reach over. That’s when I saw Melquin grab Dad from behind and force him down hard onto a patio chair. My mom started looping rope around his wrists and the armrest of the chair. He was saying, “What’s going on?” as if they were playing a joke. Mom started yelling at him, calling him a traitor. She had found out that Dad had a new girlfriend and that his girlfriend was pregnant. “You are never going to see your new kid,” she said.

Dad tried to scoot out of the chair, but every time he moved, she smacked him. When I took a step toward the living room, crying, my mom started snapping her fingers, pointing at me to go back to my bedroom. I turned around as if to go back to my room but stayed in the doorway. My mother then told Melquin, “Go ahead. Do it.” He went behind the chair and wrapped his hands around my father’s neck. I was panicked. I froze. My mom kept saying, “Keep going, keep going, keep going. Hurry.” My dad started yelling my name like crazy—“Maxxy! Maxxy! Maxxy!”—before taking his last, deep breath. My mom said, “Rest in peace,” in Spanish and then leaned down, kissed his forehead and kissed his cheek.

I went back to my room and cried and cried. Later I watched through the front door as Mom and Melquin loaded a big bag into the trunk of our Ford Expedition in the driveway. They drove off, and I didn’t see them again until the next morning. We didn’t go to school that week. My mom threatened me and forbade me from saying anything. “If you ever do, the same thing is going to happen to you,” she said.

My life started to fall apart. I got kicked out of the honors program at school. A teacher pulled me out of class and told me, “You were one of my top students. How are you failing this badly?” He kept asking me what was wrong, and I remember telling him, “I can’t say anything.” I was extremely scared of my mom. I wasn’t allowed to go to other people’s houses or to have sleepovers. She would check my phone every day and keep it with her at night. My self-esteem dropped. I was depressed. My uncle had reached out to me several times. He would always ask, “Do you know anything?” I kept saying no. I felt so guilty about the whole thing.

Even when I moved out after I turned 18 in 2020, I feared my mom would attack me. I carried pepper spray and a bat, and sometimes I put a chair against my door. Finally I told a friend about the murder. I was like, “I need to tell you something that I saw, and I don’t know what to do.” My friend was very firm. “You need to call the police. This is big,” she said. I was scared, but I knew she was right.

At the time my sister was living with me. On June 19, 2022, I went over to my mom’s place to get my sister’s birth certificate so I could enroll her in school. I knocked, and she said through the door, “You want something to happen to you? I suggest you get out.” That triggered me. I started panicking. But I made the call to police that day—and later realized it was Father’s Day.

My dad’s last act in life was to show up when he thought I was sick. If I couldn’t help him when he was killed, the least I could do was to work with police and prosecutors when my mom and Melquin were arrested and tried for murdering my dad, whose badly burned body had been recovered the day he was killed but remained unidentified until I reported his murder in 2022.

I felt a huge relief when Mom and Melquin were convicted. I don’t feel scared anymore. I’m proud I did the right thing. And I think about my dad every day and especially on Halloween when I hand out goody bags to the kids, just like we used to.