PLACERVILLE, Calif. — Editor's note: Video in this story is from previous coverage of the case.
Nearly four years after El Dorado County 11-year-old Roman Lopez was reported missing and found dead, his father Jordan Piper has changed his plea to guilty in the case.
Piper appeared in El Dorado County Superior Court Thursday to change his plea in the charge of second-degree murder. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 21.
The change of plea came days after Piper was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexual exploitation of a girl, which is unrelated to Lopez’s death but was discovered during the investigation into it.
In that case, Piper made 30 recordings of a minor in Groveland in 2019 and made hundreds of screenshots from the recordings showing the girl’s genitals and pubic area.
DEATH OF ROMAN LOPEZ
According to investigators, Roman, his biological father Jordan, stepmother Lindsay and seven other children had recently moved to Placerville around the time of his death.
The case was initially investigated as a suspicious death. Police didn’t find anything in their first search of the home, but they found Roman’s body inside a storage bin in the basement during a second search.
An autopsy found no signs of obvious trauma, though it showed Roman was severely malnourished and dehydrated when he died.
Jordan and Lindsay were arrested in Feb. 2021 and charged with child abuse, poisoning and torture.
It wasn’t until Oct. 2021 that the pair were charged with Roman’s murder, and it wasn’t until May 2022 that Lindsay flipped her plea on a charge of second-degree murder from ‘not guilty’ to ‘no contest.’ She was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
WATCH MORE ON ABC10: Father, step-mother face murder charges after the death of Roman Lopez | October 29, 2021
