Two women who tortured and killed a transgender man they had held hostage in an upstate New York motel were sentenced on Tuesday to life in prison without parole, the maximum penalty allowed by law.
The two women, Precious Arzuaga, 40, and her former romantic partner Jennifer Quijano, 32, previously pleaded guilty to all the charges they faced, which included first-degree murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and concealment of a human corpse.
Ms. Arzuaga and Ms. Quijano are among seven people indicted in connection with the death of the man, Sam Nordquist, 24, in February 2025. Two other defendants have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, and three are scheduled to face trial next year.
Ms. Arzuaga, whom prosecutors cast as the ringleader, had lived with her two young children in a roadside motel in the Finger Lakes region, where Mr. Nordquist was held captive for weeks and killed. Authorities say the children, a 12-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, were made to participate in his torture.
Another of her children, Thomas Eaves, 22, is among the defendants awaiting trial.
Before issuing the sentence, Judge Kristina A. Karle of Ontario County Court had Ms. Arzuaga sign orders of protection barring her from seeing her children for the rest of her life.
“I don’t know what lies in that heart of yours to be able to do those types of things, but then to be able to enlist six other people, one of which is your son?” Judge Karle asked.
“Sam felt pain for days and weeks on end, and you could have ended it,” she added. “This was someone who was good. Everything you are not.”
In September 2024, Mr. Nordquist traveled from his home in Minnesota to upstate New York to meet Ms. Arzuaga, whom he had developed romantic feelings toward after they chatted online.
He stayed with Ms. Arzuaga and her two children at Patty’s Lodge, outside Canandaigua, N.Y., one of several motels used by Ontario County to shelter people receiving housing assistance.
Mr. Nordquist’s trip was to have lasted two weeks. But weeks stretched into months, and his contact with family back home grew increasingly sporadic until it stopped altogether on Jan. 1, 2025.
At that point, authorities said, Mr. Nordquist was tortured — bound with duct tape, sexually assaulted and beaten, deprived of food and water and forced to consume feces and urine — until he died from his injuries on Feb. 2.
Mr. Nordquist’s body was found wrapped in a trash bag in the woods of a farm roughly 15 miles from the motel about two weeks later.
“Sam did nothing wrong other than believing in love,” James Nobles, the prosecutor, told the court.
The cases of Ms. Arzuaga and Ms. Quijano were handled separately, and the two were sentenced independently before a courtroom filled with roughly 80 onlookers, many of whom erupted into applause when each of the proceedings ended.
Mr. Nordquist’s mother, Linda Nordquist, and his sister, Kayla Nordquist, read statements in court, each of them stopping to compose themselves and fight back tears.
They described Mr. Nordquist as a loving, compassionate and kind person who believed the best in others and who had fallen for Ms. Arzuaga.
“Precious, out of every person involved in this case, you knew exactly why Sam came here,” Linda Nordquist said, addressing Ms. Arzuaga. “He trusted you. He believed you cared for him.”
“You used his trust and vulnerability to lure him into the nightmare that ended his life,” she added.
Ms. Arzuaga, who has been in custody in neighboring Monroe County, stood in court in handcuffs and a jail-issued maroon jumpsuit, her hair in braided pigtails. She bowed her head and cried as Mr. Nordquist’s mother and sister read their statements.
The grisly details of the case garnered news coverage nationwide, and in the L.G.B.T.Q. community, many people expressed bewilderment that prosecutors did not charge the case as a hate crime.
Prosecutors called the acts involved “bigger than a hate crime” and argued that each defendant was motivated by a variety of factors.
Sara Van Strydonck, an assistant district attorney, prosecuted the case against Ms. Quijano, known as Brooklyn, an on-again, off-again romantic partner of Ms. Arzuaga’s. She said at the sentencing that Ms. Quijano was driven in part by jealousy.
“This isn’t about Sam being transgender or Precious commanding Jennifer to do something,” Ms. Van Strydonck said. “It’s that Sam had Precious’s attention, and she hated him for that.”
Both women gave statements to the court apologizing to Mr. Nordquist’s family, acknowledging their role in his death and saying they would accept their punishments.
Outside the courthouse after the sentencing, Kayla Nordquist said she doubted the sincerity of their apologies and described fighting the urge to take revenge on Ms. Arzuaga in the courtroom.
“It was hard to be next to the devil and not turn into a demon,” Kayla Nordquist said.
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