25-year sentence for killing of American University professor

A judge sentenced Jorge Rueda Landeros to 25 years in prison on Tuesday for the beating death of an American University professor at her Bethesda home in 2010.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Rachel McGuckian said she did not give 56-year-old Rueda Landeros the maximum penalty for second-degree murder in this case, 30 years, because he had no criminal record.

She called the killing a heinous act and Rueda Landeros the “Achilles heel” in Sue Marcum’s otherwise fulfilling life. He lived free for more than a decade, McGuckian added, “while Ms. Marcum’s family and friends were left to grieve.”

The sentence will include time served for the more than three years Rueda Landeros served before trial, according to his defense attorneys, who had asked for 12 years. A dual citizen of Mexico and the U.S., he was extradited from Mexico in 2023 to face trial in Montgomery County.

After the hearing, his lawyers said they planned to appeal.

A jury in October took less than a day to find Rueda Landeros guilty in the killing of Marcum, a popular accounting professor at the university’s Washington, D.C., campus.

Marcum, 52, was found dead in the basement of her home on Oct. 25, 2010.

Rueda Landeros’ DNA was discovered on her fingernails and on a bottle of tequila he used to bludgeon her. Marcum fought him as he choked her, prosecutors said.

After he killed her, Rueda Landeros tried to make it appear that she died in a botched burglary.

‘I’ll miss her smile’

Larry March of Gaithersburg, who found Marcum dead in her home, told the court in a victim impact statement that she was his “best friend.”

“After finding her at the bottom of the steps — I was lost,” he said, his voice cracking.

He said he still has nightmares about that moment and has blamed himself for failing to warn Marcum more forcefully about Rueda Landeros, whom he considered a “fraud” and “con artist.”

Rueda Landeros, a yoga instructor, was also Marcum’s Spanish teacher and her sometimes romantic interest.

“Little by little, I saw him taking over, but I didn’t push her,” he said. “I’ll miss her smile, her her wit, her commitment to others. ... Those things are all gone.”

Alan Marcum, Sue Marcum’s older brother, attended every day of the trial last year. In court Tuesday he talked about family get-togethers without her, and how her killing deprived her students.

“She missed the celebrations, and we missed her love,” he said. “Her colleagues and her students have not been inspired by her teaching genius since then.”

After the hearing, Marcum said he was “satisfied” with the 25-year sentence, and noted that his sister would have turned 68 on Monday.

The defense

In court, Rueda Landeros’ attorney Meghan Brennan disparaged the investigation into Marcum’s death, referring to a string of burglaries that she said could have been connected to it. The defense wanted to argue this at trial, but the judge had ruled it relied heavily on inadmissible hearsay.

Brennan added that Rueda Landeros, in green jail scrubs and walking with a cane, had had a heart attack in prison, and that he has been a model prisoner.

Assistant State’s Attorney Debbie Feinstein countered Tuesday that the investigation into Marcum’s death had been thorough and that Rueda Landeros killed Marcum brutally.

“He struck her many, many times on the head, on her body. And also strangled her,” Feinstein said. “He wanted to inflict that serious bodily harm. He wanted to kill her.”