An estranged couple returned to a former residence before a foreclosure auction, and only one of them drove away according to prosecutors.
VILLA PARK, Ill. — A vacant former home in unincorporated DuPage County has become the key setting in the murder case against Brian C. Hernandez, who prosecutors say killed his estranged wife there while the two were clearing out belongings before a foreclosure auction.
What gives the case its sharpest detail is not just the charge, but the place. Authorities say Hernandez, 28, and 24-year-old Estefania Abril-Hernandez went back to the residence on Ingersoll Road on March 18 to clean and recover personal items before the property was to be sold the next day. Prosecutors say she never left alive. By dawn, deputies had entered the house through an unlocked window, found her body in an upstairs bedroom and begun a prosecution that now includes five murder counts and a request for a possible life sentence.
The property sits at the center of nearly every major fact in the public record. Prosecutors say the couple’s visit there happened because the house was no longer truly their home. It was vacant, they said, and the foreclosure auction was imminent. That detail helps explain why investigators later found Abril-Hernandez in a second-floor bedroom rather than at an active household scene, and why the house held both personal remnants and the vacuum power cord prosecutors say was used to kill her. The state has alleged the argument at the house turned physical and that Hernandez wrapped the cord around her neck more than nine times. Daily Herald later reported prosecutors also said Hernandez accused Abril-Hernandez of infidelity, adding another claimed motive detail to an encounter otherwise described in only broad strokes.
The house also shaped the investigation. After Abril-Hernandez’s family reported her missing at about 8 p.m. on March 18, authorities began looking for her and her vehicle. State troopers stopped that car on Interstate 80 at about 2:45 a.m. the next morning, prosecutors said, with Hernandez driving and Abril-Hernandez’s cellphone in his possession. Investigators then went back to the last place they believed the couple had been together: the old residence on the 100 block of 1S Ingersoll Road. At about 3:49 a.m., they entered through an unlocked window and found Abril-Hernandez dead. The scene, as described by prosecutors, was stark and still, with the body on a bed and the cord tightly around her neck.
Because the home was vacant, the public record leaves open some practical questions. Officials have not said whether utilities were active, whether neighbors saw the couple arrive, or whether anyone heard an argument from outside. Prosecutors have not publicly described a full inventory of what was taken from the house, what remained there, or whether the foreclosure process itself generated any additional records about access to the property. But they have said enough to make the location more than background. The house was where the couple went together, where the alleged violence happened, and where investigators believe the killing can be anchored in time and place.
Outside the property itself, the case widened quickly. Prosecutors said Hernandez was subject to an order of protection linked to an earlier domestic violence-related case and was on pretrial release when Abril-Hernandez died. They also said investigators found messages allegedly sent by Hernandez after the killing to another person, including one asking for a call because he had something to confess. On March 23, Judge Joshua Dieden denied pretrial release. By April 7, prosecutors had filed to seek a natural life sentence if Hernandez is convicted, and Daily Herald reported he pleaded not guilty and was due back in court on May 13.
The image that remains is of a place already in transition before it became a crime scene: a house being emptied, a sale date looming, personal items still inside and an upstairs room where authorities say a life ended. Public officials have spoken in legal terms about charges and detention, but the setting gives the case a different weight. It suggests a final errand tied to a past life of shared residence, now folded into a murder file that will continue to move through court long after the foreclosure date itself has passed.
As of April 16, the Ingersoll Road house remained the fixed point in the public narrative, while the criminal case against Hernandez awaited its next hearing on May 13.
Author note: Last updated April 16, 2026.