A South Sioux City woman who helped her husband avoid arrest for a South Dakota murder will spend as much as four years in prison after being sentenced in Dakota County District Court on Friday.
Reyna Castellanos, 37, pled no contest in May to being an accessory to a felony and false reporting. Judge Bryan Meismer sentenced Castellanos to no less than three years and no more than four years for the accessory charge, and 180-240 days for false reporting. The sentences will run concurrently.
Castellanos helped her husband, Alfredo Castellanos-Rosales, as he was being sought for the April 25, 2023 stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend, Jordan Beardshear, in her Dakota Dunes, S.D., apartment.
Castellanos-Rosales called Castellanos the morning after the murder and asked her to help him leave the country. She picked him up near the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Dakota City and drove him to a Sioux City credit union, where he withdrew $15,000 in cash before she dropped him off at a rural residence outside of Jackson.
Castellanos later denied any knowledge of the stabbing when questioned by police, but said she had picked up her husband, took him to a bank and then left him on a highway in Sioux City. After police found data on her cell phone and confronted her with the information, she admitted she had taken him to the Jackson home and brought food before taking him to Sioux City.
The 41-year-old Castellanos-Rosales was later arrested in Mexico and returned to Union County, S.D. He was found guilty of first-degree murder after a trial that concluded June 25 of this year. He will be sentenced in August and faces a mandatory life sentence in prison.
