Colorado: Sister-in-law denies affair with Mirabel
Patty
by Greg Avery
Longmont Daily Times-Call
BOULDER — Allegations about an affair with his sister-in-law are at
the center of 21-year-old Matthew Mirabal's murder case, but the
relationship was denied in court Monday.
Prosecutors hope to get their theory about the suspected in-laws'
tryst allowed as evidence in the case to explain Mirabal's alleged
motive to strangle and decapitate his 24-year-old wife, Natalie
Mirabal, last Sept. 26.
Lisa and Marcus Mirabal, a couple for just over six years, testified
separately in court, denying sexual liaisons between Lisa and Matthew
took place while Marcus was at work, though testimony from others
suggested other possibilities.
Matthew Mirabal faces life in prison if convicted on the first-
degree murder count filed against him a month after he reported Natalie
Mirabal missing from their Longmont apartment and her body was found in
Lefthand Canyon.
Prosecutor Kathy Delgado first questioned Lisa Mirabal on Wednesday,
and the 23-year-old testified that Matthew Mirabal rarely if ever came
to their home during the day.
"The defendant never visited you while your husband was at work?"
Delgado asked.
"No, not unless he was with his wife," Lisa Mirabal responded.
"Were you having a sexual ...," Delgado started to ask.
"No ma'am. I was not."
"Let me finish the question," Delgado said. "We're you having a
sexual relationship with Matthew Mirabal?"
"No ma'am. I was not," Lisa Mirabal said again.
Her 24-year-old husband, Marcus, testified that he once suspected
Lisa and Matthew might have had an affair in 1997 but, after talking to
his wife, became convinced he was wrong.
"I hate to call it stress, but it was just my own mindframe. It was
my own mind making it up, not anything anyone did," he said.
One of the couple's neighbors had a different perception, however.
Cynthia Rightsell, who lived in the apartment next door to Lisa and
Marcus Mirabal in 1998, said she would see Marcus Mirabal's orange
pickup truck leave around 7:30 a.m. most days and "some Mexican guy" go
to the apartment's back door later. The person appeared and went inside
Lisa Mirabal's apartment often during a month-long period, she said.
"He came over every day or three or four times a week, but after a
while it stopped," Rightsell said.
On two occasions, Rightsell was awakened from a weekday-morning nap
by the sounds of a headboard banging against the shared wall between
her bedroom and the Mirabals' apartment — banging accompanied by the
sound of a man and woman having sex.
Defense attorney Megan Maningo asked Rightsell how she could be sure
it was sex she heard.
"It was pretty obvious. ... I mean, it woke me up," Rightsell said.
But when it came to identifying Matthew Mirabal as the "Mexican guy"
coming to her neighbor's back door, she wasn't quite as certain.
Rightsell picked Mirabal out in court as the man she thought visited
Lisa Mirabal's apartment after her husband left for work, but admitted
she could have mistaken him for some other Mexican man.
"To me they all look a lot alike, you know what I'm saying?"
Rightsell said.
Maningo showed Rightsell a photograph of an unidentified Hispanic
man and asked if it depicted the man she might have seen walking past
her apartment to Lisa Mirabal's back door.
"I'm pretty sure it was him," Rightsell said, pointing to Matthew
Mirabal, seated at the defense table. "I'm more sure it's him than the
guy in the picture."
Delgado questioned former Boulder County Jail inmate Curtis Reitman,
who befriended Matthew Mirabal in the days before being sent to state
prison.
Reitman said Matthew Mirabal got upset after a television news
broadcast after his preliminary hearing in December mentioned the
prosecution thought he had an affair with his brother's wife and that
it provided part of the motive to murder Natalie Mirabal.
"He got real emotional and went to his room and started crying ...
He said he had a one-time thing with his brother's wife and he didn't
want him to find out," Reitman said.
Matthew Mirabal later described the relationship as "one
indiscretion" in which he and Lisa Mirabal kissed and petted — not
having intercourse — but felt so guilty about it afterward that they
never did it again, Reitman said.
Under questioning from Maningo, Reitman said Delgado had agreed not
to challenge it when Reitman asks a judge to reconsider his sentence on
a Boulder felony burglary conviction in exchange for his testimony in
the Mirabal case.
The prosecution's stance could mean Reitman's three-year sentence
being halved if a judge approves the reconsideration request.
Reitman also seemed to believe Mirabal did not murder his wife.
"He couldn't do something like that. He couldn't hurt a fly,"
Reitman said of Matthew Mirabal.
Today, the court will schedule a future hearing for more testimony
about the alleged affair between Matthew and Lisa Mirabal.
District court Judge Daniel Hale will weigh the testimony to see if
it is relevant enough to let a jury hear it at trial as part of the
prosecution's theory about what motivated the slaying.
That ruling is expected later this month, at the same time as Hale's
decision on critical defense requests to throw out evidence gained from
police searches because, they allege, police acted improperly toward
Mirabal and included inaccurate statements in their request to a judge
for permission to search his apartment, his truck and his deceased
wife's car.
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> Sister-in-law denies affair with Mirabal
> by Greg Avery
> Longmont Daily Times-Call
>
> having intercourse -- but felt so guilty about it afterward that they