Nabbed in slay, toss
Bx. vic’s body still missing
HE WOKE UP next to his sleeping girlfriend, thought about how much he hated her and then stabbed her to death — taking a break from his carnage at one point to listen to music on his phone.
The cold-blooded ex-con resumed the knife attack and put a towel over her face. He stashed the woman’s lifeless body in a closet in their Bronx apartment, leaving it there until the summer heat made the smell unbearable.
Miguel Bonilla finally bundled the body of Juana Alvarez, put it in a shopping cart and wheeled it down the street to a Dumpster. Prosecutors say he tossed the body like trash after the July murder.
The grisly details emerged in Bronx Criminal Court Tuesday, as prosecutors shared the dark narrative from Bonilla’s videotaped confession.
“I f---ing hate her,” Bonilla, 44, said he thought before plunging the knife into her chest inside the Grand Concourse pad.
Authorities charged the maniac with killing Alvarez, despite never finding her body.
Neighbors said Alvarez, 52, was a recovering drug addict who was trying to get her life back on track.
Bonilla, also an addict, had threatened to kill his longtime girlfriend in the past, neighbor Maria Nevarez said.
“I used to tell her, ‘Throw him out. Throw him out. Something’s gonna happen,’ ” said Nevarez, 48. “And now look! She was a sweetheart. She didn’t deserve that.”
Alvarez has not been seen since July 11, officials said. She was reported missing Aug. 9 by a social service worker who hadn’t seen her in some time.
Detectives got a tip that Bonilla confessed to a friend he stabbed Alvarez to death, stuffed her body in a plastic bin and left it in a Dumpster outside the building.
Police found blood stains inside the apartment on Monday, according to law enforcement sources. They also retrieved surveillance video showing Bonilla wheeling what they believe is Alvarez’s body out in a shopping cart.
As cops searched for the murder suspect, he was arrested for jumping a subway turnstile at Penn Station about 11:30 p.m. Monday.
“Detectives probably want to talk to me about a homicide,” he reportedly told cops as he was cuffed.
A stone-faced Bonilla was held without bail at his arraignment on murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon charges. He’s due in court Aug. 26.
Bonilla served 10 years in prison for attempted robbery beginning in 2003. He has 25 prior arrests, cops said.
Bronx prosecutors will have to navigate a difficult road in getting a murder conviction if Alvarez’s body isn’t found, according to former Brooklyn and Manhattan prosecutor Abe George.
“It’s been traditionally very hard to prosecute these cases because instead of direct evidence you have to rely on circumstantial evidence,” George said. “But if you have evidence of him wheeling out the body, that makes the DA’s job a whole lot easier.”