Longmont, Colorado - Mirabal murder
Teresa/Colorado
on page 54. Since it's not included on their on-line news,
I decided to post significant excerpts here.
Man got policy before wife died
by Kevin McMullen
Boulder - A Longmont man took out a $250,000 life insurance
policy on his wife weeks before she was strangled to death and
left near Boulder, a detective testified Thursday.
Natalie Mirabal, 24, was found in Left Hand Canyon on Sept. 26,
hours after her husband reported her missing. He said he last
saw her as she left for the grocery store.
Matthew Mirabal tried, and failed, to get a life insurance policy
worth $1 million on his wife earlier this year, Boulder County
sheriff's Detective Steve Cullen testified Thursday at Mirabal's
preliminary hearing.
Denied that amount, he called back the insurance company in
August to seek a $250,000 policy on his wife, Cullen said.
Detectives found the insurance policy, which was contained in
an unopened letter postmarked Sept. 3, in the couple's apartment.
But Matthew Mirabal never filed a death claim on his late wife,
Cullen testified under cross-examination.
Mirabal, a painter, must return to Boulder District Court on Monday
for the conclusion of his preliminary hearing to learn if he will stand
trial in his wife's slaying.
Arrest warrants and other court documents have been sealed in the
case, and sheriff's detectives and Longmont police have refused
to discuss a potential motive.
(The rest of the article includes testimony about fresh damage
to Natalie's car that her husband could not explain, including pieces
of wood from a branch or tree in the marks on the dusty Toyota
and a large dent on the front bumper.)
Patty
"Teresa/Colorado" <ctfedor@"not_at"home.com> wrote:
> Today's Denver Rocky Mountain News had this article
> on page 54. Since it's not included on their on-line news,
> I decided to post significant excerpts here.
>
> Man got policy before wife died
Thanks for the notice. There is another article in the Longmont Daily
Times-Call.
Mirabal hearing under way
Greg Avery
The Daily Times-Call
BOULDER — A $1 million insurance payoff motivated Matthew Mirabal to
murder his 24-year-old wife Sept. 26, prosecutors suggested in court
Thursday.
In the 21-year-old's preliminary hearing, the prosecution revealed
much that has been unknown about the strangulation and decapitation of
Natalie Mirabal. The young mother was found dead off a dirt track in
Lefthand Canyon hours after her husband reported her missing from their
Longmont apartment early that Sunday morning.
Investigators arrested Matthew Mirabal on a first-degree murder
count Oct. 22 — the day before his birthday.
On the first day of a hearing to determine whether investigators
have enough evidence to take Mirabal to trial, prosecutors Trip DeMuth
and Kathy Delgado called witnesses who laid out the circumstantial
evidence of their case, capped by testimony that Mirabal applied three
months before the slaying to have his wife covered by a $1 million life
insurance policy that listed him as the sole beneficiary.
Mirabal also appeared to try to get a smaller, $250,000 life
insurance policy from the same company after the first application
appeared headed for rejection, DeMuth told district court Judge Daniel
Hale.
"He wanted $1 million and got impatient when it looked like he
wouldn't get it," DeMuth said.
Boulder County Sheriff's Detective Steven Cullen testified Mirabal
also had talked to an insurance agent and had reason to believe at the
time of the slaying that a temporary $250,000 policy covered Natalie
Mirabal while the couple's application was reviewed by Protective Life
Insurance.
Defense attorney Steve Jacobson pointed out it appeared as though
Matthew Mirabal sought to have life insurance policies cover both of
them after the Columbine High School shootings made them concerned
about what would happen to their infant daughter if one of them died.
Cullen testified detectives also found documentation suggesting Mirabal
asked about coverage for himself, though it was unclear whether he
applied.
Natalie Mirabal's younger brother, 15-year-old Nehemiah Vasquez,
testified as a defense witness, discussing what it was like living with
his sister and Matthew Mirabal at 180 S. Pratt Parkway since April.
While he never saw them in a physical confrontation, Vasquez said
Matthew Mirabal had a quick temper that flared if his sister hadn't
done laundry or washed dishes or spent too much time with their
Platteville Apostolic Church pastor, Troy Hancock.
The night of the murder, Vasquez went to Boulder with his sister;
his brother-in-law; Mirabal's brother Marcus and his wife, Lisa; and
another couple from their church.
Matthew Mirabal reported his wife missing to Longmont police at
around 4:10 a.m., about 4 hours after the group returned from Boulder,
saying she went to the Safeway store two blocks from their home just
after midnight but never came home. He assembled his brother and
members of his church to search, and quickly found her empty car in the
grocery store parking lot.
Officer Matthew Cage, the first Longmont police officer to contact
Mirabal about his wife's apparent vanishing, testified Thursday that
Mirabal seemed nervous, had trouble speaking and was visibly shaking as
they talked in the Safeway parking lot around 4:20 a.m.
The officer looked at Natalie Mirabal's maroon Toyota Corolla in the
Safeway parking lot and noticed it was parked farther from the front
door than expected for an empty parking lot and was pointed the
opposite way than one would expect for somebody driving from Mirabal's
home. The car also had large fresh scratches on its passenger side that
looked to have been made by driving through bushes or tree branches,
and it had a new-looking dent on its front bumper, Cage said.
Mirabal couldn't say whether the scratches had been there before
that night, Cage testified. He got the impression Mirabal hadn't seen
the scratches until they were pointed out, and he began to feel
something about Mirabal's behavior didn't make sense, Cage testified.
"I felt he was hiding something from me," Cage said.
Vasquez later testified the car was undamaged earlier in the night,
and his brother-in-law was meticulous about keeping his cars in new
condition, Vasquez said.
Tire prints taken in Lefthand Canyon matched the Corolla, lead
sheriff's Detective Steve Ainsworth testified, suggesting it was the
vehicle that took Natalie Mirabal to Lefthand Canyon after she was
killed.
Vasquez also expressed doubt about his brother-in-law's story that
Natalie went to Safeway to pick up items for a church potluck the next
evening. He was also expected to bring food to the function — something
Natalie knew — and Vasquez believed his sister would have included him
in a trip to the grocery store, or at least told him she was going that
night.
"She never mentioned it to me," Vasquez said, observing they passed
grocery stores returning from Boulder that night but she never
mentioned needing to go.
Jacobson called Vasquez's testimony into question, asking the teen
how he felt about his brother-in-law since the arrest.
"You now think maybe Matthew did this," Jacobson asked.
"Yeah," Vasquez replied, but added he couldn't be sure.
For most of the day, Mirabal sat attentive, taking notes in the
hearing, but he cried as Boulder County Coroner Dr. John Meyer
described the injuries Natalie Mirabal suffered.
The prosecution also submitted testimony Thursday about Mirabal's
apparent visits to his brother's home on Meadow Drive while his brother
was at work but his wife was home.
A next-door neighbor told detectives that several times he saw
Matthew Mirabal being let into Marcus Mirabal's apartment after Marcus
left for work, and then leaving about two hours later.
A 71-year-old woman who lives a couple of blocks away on a different
street testified she saw a man she believed to be Matthew Mirabal park
a white Ford truck — the same kind Mirabal owns — on the street in
front of her house about a dozen times in late February and early
March, twice being dropped off back at the truck by a woman.
"It always came about 8:15 or before 9:45. It always left before
noon. Once in a great while it'd be there in the afternoon, but never
on weekends," Rosella Jones said.
She reported the truck to police, but got no response. Eventually,
it stopped turning up, Jones said, but she later realized its possible
connection to the murder case after seeing Matthew Mirabal's photograph
in this newspaper following his arrest.
How the testimony fits into the prosecution's case was not clear
Thursday, but the implications are of the sort that has prompted
Mirabal family members and church friends to blast sheriff's
investigators for treating them and Matthew Mirabal unfairly and
ignoring other potential leads.
Jacobson took up the argument Thursday, asking Ainsworth to explain
why detectives spent so little time looking into a string of possible
abduction attempts reported near grocery stores in Broomfield and
Longmont, including one reported at a Longmont King Soopers just hours
before Natalie Mirabal's disappearance. He also asked why detectives
discounted a Safeway employee's recollection of seeing a car similar to
Natalie Mirabal's in the store parking lot around 1 a.m. the night of
the murder.
"That'd be pretty strong evidence she did go to Safeway to get some
food and something bad happened, wouldn't it?" Jacobson asked.
He asked Hale to review Matthew Mirabal's 911 call to Longmont
police, and the videotape of his interrogation shortly after her body
was found, and judge for himself if Mirabal was treated fairly.
Hale promised to review the material before the hearing reconvenes
Monday morning.
It is scheduled to feature lengthy testimony from sheriff's
Detective Tony Matthews, who handled the physical evidence
investigators believe ties Mirabal to his wife's murder.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Patty
Natalie Mirabal's body was found later that morning in Lefthand Canyon.
Police believe she may have been strangled somewhere else, then
beheaded at the drop-off point.
The coroner testified Natalie Mirabal had several wounds to her face
and body, including a black eye, swollen lip and a head laceration
caused by blunt force.
Ainsworth told District Judge Daniel C. Hale that Mirabal had a recent
cut on the inside of his left thumb, a wound two witnesses said they
didn't see the night before the murder.
DaniGran
be. Would it really be the insurance? Some things are pointing away fromt
that.
If he did kill her, I wonder where their baby was? If he is capable of
committing this murder he is probably capable of bringing his baby while he did
it.
Maggie
***If he did it, insurance sounds like a pretty good motive to me--I can't
imagine what kind of job she had that would necessitate a $1 million insurance
policy on her life. And that lame excuse about them being worried about their
child doesn't make much sense unless they were both heavily insured. But I may
not be up on the latest--what is pointing away from insurance as a motive?
Maggie
"A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience."--Doug Larson
Teresa/Colorado
Man might have taken baby along during wife's slaying
By Kevin McCullen
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
BOULDER -- Matthew Mirabal may have taken his infant daughter with him when
he killed his wife and dumped her body in a mountain canyon north of
Boulder, authorities said Monday.
Bloody gloves and splintered pieces of a board linked Matthew Mirabal to the
slaying of his wife, Natalie, who was strangled and her body dumped in
Lefthand Canyon on Sept. 26, an investigator testified Monday at the
conclusion of Mirabal's preliminary hearing.
Boulder District Judge Dan Hale ordered Mirabal, 20, bound over for trial on
a first-degree murder charge after hearing a Boulder County sheriff's
detective testify that blood on the gloves matched that of Mirabal and his
wife. Hale also reduced his bond to $750,000.
The body of 24-year-old Natalie Mirabal was found hours after her husband
said she'd gone to a Longmont supermarket to buy groceries. Deputy Boulder
District Attorney Trip DeMuth argued Monday that Mirabal killed his wife
elsewhere, then drove her to the canyon.
DeMuth also said Mirabal also may have taken his daughter, Mikaela, then
4-months old, on his grim journey because investigators found a diaper bag
in Natalie's damaged Toyota in a Safeway parking lot.
Mirabal was arrested in October for investigation of first-degree murder in
the death of his childhood sweetheart. He had obtained a policy worth
$250,000 on his wife weeks before her death, according to testimony.
DeMuth would not say whether prosecutors might seek the death penalty.
Natalie Mirabal had a black eye and marks on her neck several weeks before
she was killed, according to two clerks at the Safeway store where she
regularly shopped. She said she got the injury in a car accident, although
both clerks said they were suspicious, according to the affidavit.
Hale allowed reporters on Monday to watch a videotape of Mirabal meeting
with police Sept. 26. Mirabal cried when detectives told him his wife's body
had been found.
One hour after learning of his wife's death, Mirabal spent 23 minutes
reading a magazine in the interview room as he waited for detectives to
return. He later slept, and asked several times for investigators to return
a sweatshirt he'd been wearing.
DaniGran
The articles I have been reading have been saying nothing is coming out of the
court room. At least, not yet.
Teresa/Colorado
preliminary hearing. Seems either the victim or the perp
was involved in an extramarital affair, too!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AP News
Bloody gloves found in car
by Greg Avery
Daily Times-Call
BOULDER - Bloody gloves and wood pieces link Matthew Mirabal to the
gruesome slaying of his wife, prosecutors said Monday, and the 21-year-old
will face a trial on first-degree murder charges.
In the second day of a preliminary hearing to weigh whether investigators
gathered enough evidence to put Mirabal on trial for the Sept. 26
strangulation and decapitation of 24-year-old Natalie Mirabal, a Boulder
County Sheriff's detective testified that DNA testing matched both the
suspect's and victim's blood to a pair of gloves found in her abandoned car.
District court Judge Dan Hale found enough evidence to send Mirabal to
trial, but reduced Mirabal's bond to $750,000.
Mirabal is scheduled to enter a plea Jan. 7.
In the first round of testimony last week, investigators established that
Mirabal had been made the sole beneficiary of a life insurance policy on his
wife, and it was suggested an extramarital affair may have provided more
motive.
"This was planned killing," prosecutor Trip DeMuth concluded for Hale on
Monday. "There was a scheme and a plan that had to be involved with this
murder."
Last week, lead sheriff's Detective Steve Ainsworth said he found
packaging for a pair of cotton work gloves the day after the murder in a
Wal-Mart bag left in the trash outside Mirabal's employer, Precision
Painting.
Detective Anthony Matthews testified Monday that he found a pair of
blood-stained cotton work gloves of the same brand on the front
passenger-side floorboard of Natalie Mirabal's Toyota Corrola. Colorado
Bureau of Investigation DNA testing matched blood on the palm of the left
glove to Natalie Mirabal's, and more blood in the inside the glove's thumb
along a cut in the fabric matched Matthew Mirabal's, the detective said,
suggesting the suspect wore the glove while cutting off his wife's head and
nicked himself in the process.
Investigators established last week Mirabal had a knife cut on his left
thumb matching position of the hole in the glove when they questioned him.
"That blood and his cut takes his signature back to the decapitation,"
DeMuth said, stressing the glove purchase as evidence of premeditation. "He
didn't just buy gloves, he was involved in his wife's purchase of
insurance."
Mirabal also sent three months worth of payment when he and his wife
applied for her life insurance policy in June, when only one month's $53
installment was due, DeMuth said, implying the slaying was timed to ensure
the coverage was still active.
Detectives also found a trio of pieces of a redwood two-by-two board: one
less than 10 feet from where Natalie Mirabal's body was found in Lefthand
Canyon, one off U.S. Highway 36 between Lefthand Canyon Drive and Boulder
near where investigators found the contents of Natalie Mirabal's purse, and
another piece in the utility box of Matthew Mirabal's Ford pick-up truck,
the detective said.
CBI testing concluded the pieces originally were part of the same
board, Matthews said, and testimony last week identified redwood
two-by-two's as something Mirabal regularly used at work.
A diaper bag found in the back seat of Natalie Mirabal's car the next
morning suggested Mirabal took the couple's 4-month-old daughter along when
he murdered his wife so the baby wouldn't cry and wake up 15-year-old
Nehemiah Vasquez, the victim's younger brother who was sleeping at the
couple's Longmont apartment when the killing took place - a deliberate ploy
by Mirabal to make Vasquez part of his alibi, DeMuth said.
In his closing argument, defense attorney Steve Jacobson called Vasquez
an unreliable and biased witness, and said his client's cut thumb happened
on the job, not from decapitating his wife.
Jacobson called the prosecution's case circumstantial evidence.
The evidence could also support the case that Natalie Mirabal was the
victim of a carjacking, and his client's work gloves were simply in the car
the night of the murder.
"Whoever carjacked Natalie took those gloves from the car and used them
in some fashion," Jacobson said.
After the hearing, Marcus Mirabal - Matthew's older brother and whose
wife investigators said last week regularly had Matthew over at their home
while Marcus was at work - said he believes his brother should be
exonerated.
"If the justice system works he will be," he said. "He's my brother, and
I know he's innocent."
The family's offer of a $10,000 reward for information pointing to a
different suspect has yielded some tips, he said, but declined to be more
specific.
Patty
really watch my back if my spouse insisted on taking a large life
insurance policy out on me but not on himself.
Excerpt from Boulder's Daily Camera:
Detectives did not find any prints in the car, which had a driver's
seat and rearview mirror in position for the 4-foot-11 Natalie Mirabal.
They did find a pair of dark bloody gloves slightly hidden from view on
the passenger's side floorboard. The palm of the left glove was stained
with blood consistent with Natalie's blood type.
snip
Two friends of the Mirabals told detectives that they remembered that
the cut on Matthew Mirabal's hand was not there at 11 p.m., hours
before he reported his wife missing.
Investigators also testified that they found Matthew Mirabal's
fingerprints on the tag that apparently came from the gloves. The tag
was found inside a Wal-Mart bag in a trash bin at Matthew's job site.
snip
A videotaped interview with detectives shows Matthew casually talking
to detectives about the cut on his hand. He tells them he must have
gotten it from playing around with a razor he uses for painting.
At that point, Matthew Mirabal has not been told by police that his
wife is dead. When detectives announce she has been found dead, Matthew
appears to break down in tears.
"I am 20 years old; my wife is dead," he said on the tape.
Matthew Mirabal's public defender, Steve Jacobson, told the judge
Monday that his client probably cut himself with the knife while
wearing the glove before Natalie Mirabal's murder. The glove was left
in the car and the real killer, who "car-jacked" her from the Safeway
parking lot, had it on when he killed her, Jacobson argued.
In support of their case against Matthew Mirabal, detectives testified
they found three pieces of redwood that could link the murder to him.
One of the pieces was found next to Natalie Mirabal's body in Lefthand
Canyon. A second piece was found along U.S. 36, between Boulder and
Lefthand Canyon Drive, in the same area where Natalie's identification
was found. A third piece was found in the back of Matthew Mirabal's
truck.
An examination of the pieces of wood showed all three were cut from the
same board, detectives said. None of the pieces was stained with blood.
DeMuth also suggested that Matthew initiated a life-insurance policy on
his wife three months before her death, but at the same time did not
obtain insurance on his own life.
Mirabal's attorney pointed out that Natalie Mirabal's signature was on
the papers and that the insurance policy was probably not a secret to
her. Jacobson also highlighted that the couple had ignored mail
requiring signatures on a permanent policy. Prosecutors said there was
a temporary certificate still in effect.
Jacobson said the prosecution's case is based on "circumstantial
evidence" and founded in part on testimony from Natalie Mirabal's
brother, who "has questionable credibility."
He also told the judge the detectives' investigation failed to
completely probe the possibility someone else committed the murder.
During examination, one detective admitted there were cigarette butts
near the crime scene and other evidence investigators did not test
because it did not appear relevant to the investigation.
The judge reduced Mirabal's $1 million bond to $750,000.
Hale said he was reducing it only because Mirabal does not have a prior
record. If Mirabal is able to post the bond, he will be required to
wear an electronic monitor and will not be allowed to leave Boulder
County.