UPDATE: Cruz sentenced for murder of Alma Del Real

She was a young woman who left her mother in Mexico and came to South Bend for a better life. Instead, she died a violent death.

“She had plenty of plans to continue working, to go to school, to be better as a person, to make a family,” said Susanna Luganas in translation of the words said in Spanish by the mother of 22-year-old murder victim Alma Del Real.

“I'm sure if this had not happened we would be celebrating her accomplishments, her goals, her achieving things that she wanted to achieve,” said Luganas, again, in translation of comments made by the victim’s mother.

Punishment was doled out Friday for the murder of Alma Del Real, the South Bend woman who disappeared in April of 2015. Alberto Cruz received 60 years behind bars for the crime. Cruz dropped out of Washington High School in his sophomore year but always had a job and had never before been arrested.

Cruz was also said to be a close and trusted friend of the victim before he became her killer. “Really, the only person who knows what happened was Alberto Cruz, and that his version that he last told was not the truth. The judge characterized it as somewhere near fantasy,” said St. Joseph County Deputy Prosecutor Christopher Fronk.

It’s assumed that Cruz was alone in his desire for a romantic relationship and that he abused the trust that Del Real had placed in him. “She had been out with the defendant many times and had always trusted him to get her home and the fact that he betrayed that trust, that is significant,” said Fronk.

The 60-year sentence handed to Cruz was five years short of the maximum. Cruz won’t be eligible for possible release until he’s 70 years old.

It certainly wasn’t the outcome hoped for by those who organized search parties and kept the case in the public eye when Alma went missing, but it perhaps provided the kind of closure the entire community needed.

“There's a lot of factors that play against me and my family, being Hispanic, police they say they had handled cases like this but I know for sure this kind of woke them up a little bit as far as the needs of the Hispanic community, and the need for a bilingual person now everywhere within the police department,” said Alma’s aunt, Susanna Luganas.

The man convicted in the murder of a South Bend woman was sentenced Friday.

In May, a jury found Alberto Cruz guilty of killing 22-year-old Alma Del Real.

Del Real went missing in April 2015, and hundreds of people in Michiana responded.

Friends and family searched for her for six weeks until her body was found off a rural Marshall County Road.

On Friday morning, Cruz was sentenced to 60 years behind bars. During sentencing, Judge John Marnocha cited the fact that Del Real had trusted her killer.

The judge also said that Cruz's version of events bordered on fantasy.

Because he had no criminal history, Cruz was given five years less than the maximum sentence.