Two women have been sentenced by the New York State justice system to life in prison for kidnapping and torturing to death Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old trans man. A federal investigation is still ongoing and could expose the two murderers to the death penalty.
“I don’t know what is in your heart to be capable of such atrocities, but furthermore, to recruit six other people, including your own son?!” The judge Kristina Karle had no words strong enough to describe the horror of the fate inflicted on Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old trans man, whose remains were found in 2025 in a field in the state of New York, United States. Two women were sentenced this Tuesday, September 8, to life in prison for abducting him and torturing him to death over several weeks in a motel.
The two defendants, Precious Arzuaga and her former partner Jennifer Quijano, aged 40 and 32 respectively, had pleaded guilty to the charges against them. Five other people are implicated in this sordid case: two have also pleaded guilty and await sentencing, while three are to be tried in 2027, reports the New York Times.
Weeks of abuse
In September 2024, Sam Nordquist left Minnesota, his home state, to move to the state of New York where he met Precious Arzuaga, with whom he maintained an online relationship via TikTok. This mother of three lives in a social motel in the Finger Lakes region, near Lake Ontario. Having heard nothing for several months, the victim’s family alerted the authorities who discovered, on February 12, 2025, the young man’s remains in a garbage bag.
The investigation would establish that Sam Nordquist was the victim of a “deeply troubling pattern of abuse”: beaten, sexually assaulted, deprived of food and water, forced to live in a dog cage, to drink his urine and to ingest feces until his death on February 2. Several people participated in these abuses, including one of Precious Arzuaga’s three children. Describing the case as “more than a hate crime”, prosecutors, however, did not pursue aggravating factors related to the victim’s gender identity or skin color, saying they did not have sufficient evidence to establish them.
“Sam really loved me”
When delivering the sentences, Judge Karle expressed her persistent inability to understand the motive behind this crime. “We all want to know why someone so good was taken from him so tragically”, she stated before addressing Precious Arzuaga: “Was it because he was what you are not and will never be? Did you look at him and hate in him that kindness, that compassion, this empathy, that hope in him?” The two women did not offer further explanation for what led them to inflict such abuse on Sam Nordquist. “What the family said was true,” Precious Arzuaga simply acknowledged. “Sam really loved me, and my children, and I will accept my sentence.”
This conviction does not necessarily end the prosecutions against the two women. A federal investigation targeting them is still ongoing. If it leads to a trial, they could face the death penalty, abolished in the state of New York but still provided by federal law.
