Juan Manuel Delgado Jr., 42, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 37-year-old Krista Joy Hunt, whose remains were pulled from the Skagit River last month after she vanished in late January. He is being held on $1 million bail.

Hunt was reported missing on Feb. 1. She was last seen around Jan. 25 after she and Delgado were in a truck that ran out of gas near the Lone Star Restaurant in the rural Washington town of Concrete. According to her mother, Pamela Hunt, Krista got out of the truck, walked away, and was never seen again.

The search took a grim turn on March 12, when deputies conducting a boat search of the Skagit River located human remains near milepost 90, just east of Concrete. The Skagit County coroner later confirmed the remains belonged to Hunt. Investigators submitted charging paperwork to prosecutors on March 19, Fox News reported.

A pattern of brutality

The murder charge did not arrive in a vacuum. Pamela Hunt told Seattle-based KING-TV that her daughter described repeated, systematic violence at Delgado's hands. The details she recounted are difficult to read.

"She said he had boot-stomped her leg and her chest … She said one time he set a timer and told her he was going to hit her every 15 minutes."

In a GoFundMe post, Pamela described taking her daughter to the hospital after one encounter:

"The next day, I took her to the hospital—she was covered in bruises, both new and old, had been strangled, had two black eyes, and a broken leg."

Authorities have not publicly confirmed those allegations. The coroner has not determined an exact cause or manner of death. But the picture Pamela Hunt paints is one of escalating cruelty, the kind that does not resolve on its own and that the justice system exists to interrupt before it ends in a body in a river.

A suspect who was already in trouble

Delgado was already sitting in the Skagit County Jail on unrelated charges when the murder charge was filed. Jail records show he was facing charges of possessing an explosive device, unlawful possession of a firearm, and DUI. This was not a man the system had never encountered.

His behavior after Hunt's disappearance raises its own questions. According to an affidavit cited by KING-TV, Delgado told a deputy on Feb. 1 that he had not heard from Hunt in five days but wanted to return her two dogs. He reportedly told friends that Hunt may have been hit by a car. Days after she was reported missing, Delgado allegedly shot himself at a bar in Concrete but survived.

KING-TV also reported possible evidence of violence inside Delgado's truck, including clumps of hair and blood believed to be connected to Hunt.

Pamela Hunt has disputed the characterization that Delgado was her daughter's boyfriend, writing in a social media post that he "was a moment in her life." She did not mince words about what that moment contained: "He subjected her to relentless cruelty and nothing else."

A family left to carry the weight

Krista Joy Hunt's mother confirmed the discovery of her daughter's remains in a social media post on March 12: "My Daughter Krista Joy Hunt has been found."

She expressed gratitude to those who searched, writing that the love and support from "friends, family and friends we've yet to meet has been overwhelming in a most beautiful way." But gratitude does not blunt grief. Pamela described her daughter as fiercely independent, "not the kind of person you would think would be trapped in an abusive relationship." She called Krista her best friend and her only daughter.

Krista's brother, Rand, spoke to KING-TV about the toll: "I know the pain I'm going through. And it's hard … He stole 60 years of my relationship with Krista."

Sixty years. That is the math of murder. Not just a life taken, but every conversation, every holiday, every ordinary Tuesday that will now sit empty.

The question that keeps repeating

Every case like this forces the same uncomfortable question: were there points where the system could have intervened and didn't? A man allegedly beating a woman on a timer. A man already facing charges for possessing explosives and illegally possessing a firearm. A woman who ended up in a hospital covered in bruises, strangled, with a broken leg.

None of this happened in the dark. People knew. A mother knew. A hospital saw the injuries. And yet Krista Joy Hunt still ended up in the Skagit River.

Pamela Hunt wrote one line about Delgado that lands harder than any editorial could: "He tried to hide his shame; he cannot hide the truth."

The truth is in the river. The truth is in the charging documents. The truth is in the timer he allegedly set. The justice system now has Delgado in custody. What remains to be seen is whether it treats this case with the gravity that Krista Joy Hunt's life deserved all along.