A 29-year-old Burien man is accused of killing his girlfriend after she broke up with him last week and then killing their roommate when she tried to intervene during the deadly knife attack, according to King County prosecutors.
Marvin Ortiz-Montecinos was charged Monday with two counts of premeditated first-degree murder, with prosecutors alleging both killings were crimes of domestic violence and that his conduct manifested deliberate cruelty to the victims, an aggravating factor that, if proven, could provide a basis for an exceptional sentence if he is found guilty.
Killed were Victoria Aparicio Cruz and Yaneth Gomez-Hernandez. The women suffered major injuries to their necks, dozens of stab wounds and defensive wounds to their hands, the charges say.
“Only one hour prior to this shocking act of extreme violence, the defendant complained of Victoria breaking up with him,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Thomas O’Ban wrote in the charging papers.
Gomez-Hernandez, who was found naked with a towel covering part of her leg, was likely taking a shower before she was violently killed “simply for trying to intervene,” O’Ban wrote. “Simply put, this crime was horrific.”
Ortiz-Montecinos’ wife, children and other relatives live in Guatemala and one of his siblings, who was in the Seattle area at the time of the double homicide, has since returned there, “indicating a present financial ability for the defendant to leave the country as well, if released,” O’Ban wrote in charging papers, asking the court to set bail at $10 million.
The charges say Ortiz-Montecinos blamed the attack on an intruder and suffered superficial knife wounds to his head, back and chest. King County sheriff’s detectives found a filet knife with a curved, 7-inch blade buried in the ground outside his apartment building, according to the charges.
The investigation
A man who lives at the Montrose Apartments in the 200 block of South 152nd Street called 911 just before 9:30 p.m. on Sept. 8 and reported he had found a man lying in the grass, covered in blood, with an apparent injury to his neck, the charges say. Deputies arrived minutes later and one of them heard the injured man say “my fiancé” in Spanish but nothing else intelligible.
As he was treated by medics, deputies found the man’s Washington state identification card identifying him as Ortiz-Montecinos, according to charging papers. His bloody clothes and a single black sandal were left at the scene when he was taken to Harborview Medical Center.
Deputies followed an apparent blood trail from the grassy area where Ortiz-Montecinos was found to a third-floor apartment, where they could see blood on the floor inside the open front door, the charges say. They entered the apartment to look for other potential victims and found Cruz and Gomez-Hernandez dead on the floor of one of the bedrooms, according to the charges.
The kitchen drawers and cabinets were found open, as if they had been searched, but nothing else in the apartment was apparently disturbed, the charges say. Deputies seized two cellphones from the apartment and a third from where Ortiz-Montecinos was discovered.
While deputies were still at the scene, a couple who also lived in the apartment returned home from work at a Seattle restaurant and told investigators Ortiz-Montecinos, Cruz and Gomez-Hernandez moved in several months ago and shared one of the apartment’s two bedrooms, while another roommate slept in the living room, the charges say. Ortiz-Montecinos and the two women worked together at a fish shop in Ballard, the couple told deputies, according to the charges.
A search of the cellphones showed Ortiz-Montecinos called Cruz but she declined the call on the morning of Sept. 8, according to the charges. That night, he texted Cruz, writing in Spanish, “Tell me, you broke up with me, I want to tell you something,” and she responded a minute later, writing, “I don’t want to know anything anymore,” the charges say.
The last text from Ortiz-Montecinos to Cruz was sent 61 minutes before their neighbor called 911, according to charging papers.
Technicians from the Washington State Patrol crime lab applied a chemical agent to the floor between the bedroom where Cruz and Gomez-Hernandez were killed and the front door and found a single set of footprints — one bare footprint and one soled footprint with markings that visibly matched the sandal left outside in the grass — along with blood inside the deadbolt on the apartment’s front door, the charges say.
“The single set of footprints and the blood on the deadbolt together indicate that the door was manually locked from the inside at the time Marvin — and only Marvin — left the apartment during the incident,” a detective wrote in charging papers.
The next day, detectives interviewed Ortiz-Monecinos at Harborview and he told them he and Cruz had arrived home the previous night around 7 p.m.. He said he fell asleep on the couch and was woken by Cruz’s screams, according to the charges. Ortiz-Monecinos told detectives by the time he got to the bedroom, both women were dead and he was attacked by an unknown male who had been hiding in the bathroom, then fled out the front door, the charges say.
“Detectives found several inconsistencies throughout his interview,” including the text messages that showed he wasn’t asleep or home with Cruz when he said he was, according to charging papers. There were no signs of forced entry and no blood evidence found in or leading to the bathroom, as would be expected if someone had been hiding there, the charges say.
Ortiz-Monecinos is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday.