WISN
October 20, 2015
A man is behind bars after police said he confessed to a crime that was committed when he was just a teenager, breaking his decades-long denial.
Jose Ferreira, 50, confessed to police that when he was 17 he pushed Carrie Ann Jopek down a flight of stairs during a house party because she had second thoughts about making out with him.
Jopek hit her head and died.
Ferreira made his first court appearance this week and is charged with second-degree murder for a crime committed in 1982.
Jopek was suspended from middle school one day in 1982, and spent the day at a house party.
According to the complaint, Ferreira told police he remembers she agreed to go into the basement with him. But she tried to turn around on the steps telling him “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” officials recount in court documents.
“She told me she wasn’t going to have sex until she got married,” Touisgnat said. “She was 13 when she told me that. And I believed her. Such a pretty girl though, oh, my baby.”
Ferreira told police he gave her a shove, and she broke her neck falling down the stairs.
He told police he buried her under the porch, where she was found a year and a half later. Ferreira denied knowing anything about it until now.
“Now he’s gonna pay for what he did to her,” said Carolyn Touisgnat, the victim’s mother.