BARRETO
Daily Journal
JACKSON – Inmate Janet Barreto, once on the U.S. Marshals’ Most Wanted Fugitives list for the death of her adopted 2-year-old daughter in Union County, has died.
Barreto, 43, died shortly after 9 a.m. today at the Central Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson of natural causes.
Barreto pleaded guilty to six counts of child endangerment, three counts of child abuse, and one count of manslaughter and was sentenced to 25 years on Sept. 29.
Janet Barreto’s biological daughter, Marainna Torres-Morphis, posted on social media last week that her mother had been hospitalized and that she was soliciting prayers for her.
“(N)o matter what she will always be my mother,” she wrote. “I’m asking for everyone to please pray for her. She is in ICU and (they’re) not thinking she will pull through it. Only God and prayer can change this.”
Barreto spent five years on the run with her husband, Ramon Barreto, after failing to appear for trial in 2009. She was added to the U.S. Marshals Service’s 15 Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2013. She and her husband were captured in Oregon in August 2014.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections website last week listed Barreto’s location as “NOT APPLICABLE TEMPORARY MOVEMENT-BED HELD” and her unit – usually referring to an inmate’s prison division – as “LOCAL HOSPITAL.”
Ramon Barreto remains in the Union County Jail awaiting trial on related charges.