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       A fugitive yoga instructor accused of killing an American University accounting professor in her home nearly 13 years ago — and fleeing to Mexico before his recent capture — made his first courtroom appearance in Maryland on Wednesday and was ordered held without bond.

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       Jorge Rueda Landeros, 53, greeted Montgomery County District Judge Holly D. Reed with a polite “good afternoon” and calmly gave his name — consistent with a charming bearing authorities say he was known for when living in the Washington area years ago. But the details in a murder warrant given to Rueda Landeros as he was booked into Montgomery’s jail painted an entirely different picture.

       Inside Sue Marcum’s home, according to detectives who wrote the warrant, Rueda Landeros smashed the woman with an unidentified weapon and suffocated her as she tried to fight him off. Among the clues the detectives said tied him to the killing: Scrapings from under Marcum’s fingernails contained Rueda Landeros’s DNA.

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       “It was a brutal attack,” Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones said Wednesday. “I believe he thought he would never be caught. That is why he went into hiding in Mexico.”

       Rueda Landeros was arrested in Mexico in December and brought to Maryland this week.

       Marcum, beloved by her students and a wide circle of friends, met Rueda Landeros in about 2006 when he taught a Spanish class in Dupont Circle. He also wrote poetry, studied yoga and day-traded stocks. The two grew close, practicing meditation before dawn, reading books together and going to concerts.

       In 2008, Marcum made the initial contribution to an investment fund they shared. As investigators would learn after her death — in going through emails between her and Rueda Landeros — Marcum had grown “increasingly concerned and uneasy about the way Rueda Landeros was handling and spending monies that had been in this brokerage account,” according to the arrest warrant.

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       Investigators also learned that Rueda Landeros had become the sole beneficiary of a $500,000 life insurance policy in the event of Marcum’s death.

       Over the years, Rueda Landeros has proclaimed his innocence. “I had nothing to do with the murder of Sue Marcum. That was not me,” he told The Washington Post in an interview 12 years ago from Mexico.

       He said at the time he wouldn’t be surprised if authorities tried to link him to the crime with DNA, saying he’d been in Marcum’s house as recently as a month before she died. He said his fingerprints and DNA would be present from that and previous visits.

       “I understand what they see from their end,” he said at the time. “They’ll find me all over the place if they look hard enough … I drank wine from glasses there. I drank water from the glasses there. I’ve eaten with the forks there. I slept in that bed and the sofa.”

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       “It doesn’t look good,” Rueda Landeros said. “That’s why I’m here in Mexico.”

       He also openly discussed the life insurance, saying that he and Marcum had talked about looking out for each other as they grew older.

       Rueda Landeros’s appearance in court Wednesday was brief, largely because his attorney from the public defender’s office waived his right to have his bond conditions reviewed.

       “Mr. Rueda Landeros is innocent, has asserted his innocence before, and continues to today,” Michael Beach, head of the public defender’s office in Montgomery, said in an email Wednesday. “We look forward to a trial in a courtroom in this case.”

       The case attracted wide attention from the beginning. Police were called to Marcum’s home on Oct. 25, 2010. Her body was found on a lower level. An autopsy showed she had died of blunt-force trauma and asphyxiation.

       Earlier coverage: Rueda Landeros taunts detectives from Mexico

       Investigators initially suspected a burglary gone bad, a theory bolstered when an 18-year-old was found driving Marcum’s stolen Jeep. The teen led police on a chase, crashed the Jeep and gave inconsistent explanations of how he ended up behind the wheel, according to court records. But investigators could never put the teen inside Marcum’s home, and they came to think he might have found the Jeep after it had been moved from her house.

       Detectives began learning more about Rueda Landeros, who was 12 years younger than Marcum and held dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, according to authorities.

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       By the time investigators in Montgomery decided to act, he had gone to Mexico. For a while, he was thought to be living near the Texas border in Ciudad Juárez. But any attempt to capture him went cold.

       Late last year, though, he turned up in Guadalajara under the name León Ferrara and was teaching yoga, according to news outlet El País Mexico. Mexican authorities arrested him.

       At a news conference Wednesday, Tom Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, said Rueda Landeros’s capture was made possible in large part to “very strong relationships” between the FBI and Mexican authorities.

       He said information about Rueda Landeros’s possible location in Mexico first came to the FBI.

       “We did further investigative steps to refine what we were going to pass to the Mexicans. We passed them this information. But it’s the Mexicans who are going to go out and look for him. And in this case they did. They looked for him. They arrested him. … We were in contact with them as that was happening.”

       Earlier coverage: Rueda Landeros picked up in Mexico

       On Tuesday evening, while being checked into the Montgomery County Detention Center, Rueda Landeros was asked how long he lived at his present address. “Six hours,” he responded, according to court records.

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       Before that, he said he’d spent eight months in Mexico City, which is consistent with his arrest in Mexico, and before that had spent 12 years in Guadalajara, suggesting he hadn’t spent much time in Juárez after leaving the United States, according to court records.

       Marcum’s friends and family reacted with a sense of relief after Rueda Landeros’s arrest and extradition.

       “I’m grateful for the work of local, national and international law enforcement,” brother Alan Marcum said Wednesday. “If he is found guilty, I hope he spends a long time in prison so he can never do anything like this to anyone else again.”

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