The 25-year sentence for Jorge Rueda Landeros came with renewed attention to the life and work of American University professor Sue Ann Marcum.
ROCKVILLE, Md. — As a judge sentenced Jorge Rueda Landeros to 25 years in prison for the 2010 killing of Sue Ann Marcum, relatives and friends used the moment to talk as much about the professor’s life as about the man convicted of ending it.
That emphasis gave the hearing a different kind of weight. Marcum was not simply the victim in a long-delayed homicide case. She was a faculty leader at American University, a two-time alumna of the school and a teacher remembered for making accounting feel alive. The sentence, imposed after a 2025 second-degree murder conviction, closed a major legal chapter. But inside and outside court, the words that followed kept returning to who Marcum had been, how she taught and how a violent death in her Bethesda home cut short a life that many around her still described in vivid, affectionate detail.
Family members said Marcum had a rare gift for making technical material feel human. Her brother, Alan Marcum, told reporters that she once drew on her earlier work with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus to explain accounting concepts in class, even putting on a red clown nose while discussing the depreciation of elephants. He said she cared deeply about students and wanted them to feel that the subject mattered to their lives rather than simply to a ledger. American University has long preserved that memory. Its memorial materials describe her as a beloved professor, colleague and friend, and the university has continued a scholarship fund in her name. Old campus remembrances from students described a teacher who smiled often, challenged them and left notes of encouragement. Those details surfaced again as the court case neared its end.
The legal story behind that remembrance began with violence in Marcum’s home on Oct. 25, 2010. Police found her dead in the 6200 block of Massachusetts Avenue in Bethesda. The medical examiner determined that she died from blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. Investigators at first saw signs that looked like a break-in, including apparent entry through a rear window and missing property, but later said the burglary had been staged. Their inquiry led them to Jorge Rueda Landeros, who prosecutors said had once been Marcum’s Spanish teacher and yoga instructor before the two entered a romantic and financial relationship. Officials said Marcum lost large sums of money in investments connected to him and that tensions in the relationship had grown. By April 2011, police said DNA from the scene identified Landeros as a suspect, and an arrest warrant was issued.
The path from that warrant to a conviction was painfully long. Authorities said Landeros left the country and was in Mexico by the time the warrant was obtained. Reporting on the case later said investigators learned he had assumed a new identity. County officials said he was taken into custody in December 2022 and extradited to Montgomery County in 2023. His trial did not take place until October 2025, when a jury convicted him of second-degree murder after an eight-day proceeding. At sentencing, Judge Rachel McGuckian imposed a 25-year prison term. The years between the homicide and the sentence shaped how family members spoke about the case. Alan Marcum noted that the trial had coincided with the 15th anniversary of his sister’s death and that the day before sentencing had been her birthday, compressing grief, memory and legal closure into the same short stretch of time.
Friends also described what was lost beyond the courtroom record. Larry March, a longtime friend, said Marcum had recently moved into a new home and appeared to be beginning a fresh chapter. He said the sentence brought some closure, even as it could not restore what had been taken. Marcum’s work at American University had extended beyond the classroom. She directed the master’s in accounting program, taught graduate and undergraduate students and had been recognized as professor of the year for three straight years, according to reporting and memorial accounts. That professional standing gave the case a broader circle of mourners: family, students, alumni, faculty colleagues and local residents who followed the prosecution over many years. By the time sentence was imposed, the courtroom had become a place not only for punishment but for a final public accounting of a life interrupted.
Where the case stands now is legally clear and emotionally less so. The man convicted of killing Marcum has been sentenced, and the formal court process has moved from proof to punishment. The next date that matters most to those who knew her may not come from a docket at all, but from the scholarship, memories and campus rituals that continue to carry her name.
Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.