Hearing in Montalvo killing gives preview of testimony
The trial of a father and son accused of killing St. Cloud woman Nicole Montalvo isn’t set to start until next month — but the first witness testified Monday, during a hearing at the Osceola County Courthouse.
Cara Baucom, a latent print examiner with the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office and former forensic technician, said she helped look for Montalvo’s dismembered remains on land belonging to her estranged husband’s family and collected several important pieces of DNA, including the victim’s blood from a cart on the property.
Montalvo’s husband, Christopher Otero-Rivera, and father-in-law, Angel Rivera, are charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a dead body and tampering with physical evidence in the 2019 killing.
Baucom’s testimony was videotaped for jurors to watch the recording during the April 5 trial. Circuit Judge Keith Carsten allowed Baucom to testify via video because prosecutors said she will be having a baby soon and may not be available for trial in two weeks.
Montalvo was divorcing Otero-Rivera before she disappeared Oct. 21, 2019 after dropping off her 8-year-old son at the Riveras’ home on Hixon Avenue.
Baucom said Monday she took three-dimensional scans of the property and helped organize the search. She testified she was also part of the team sifting through dirt for Montalvo’s remains on another property belonging to the Rivera
RICARDO RAMIREZ BUXEDA/ ORLANDO SENTINEL family off Henry J Avenue.
Law enforcement found Montalvo’s body parts, bones and tissue at the second property.
Baucom testified she also did a mouth swab on both father and son to collect their DNA less than two weeks after the victim’s disappearance. Under questioning from defense attorneys, the former forensic technician said neither man had any visible cuts, scrapes or scratches during her examination.
Baucom said she later went back to the property to test certain areas and objects with a chemical that indicates the possible presence of blood by glowing a bright blue when it reacts to iron found hemoglobin, a blood component.
The chemical glowed after she sprayed it onto an orange cart outside a workshop on the Rivera property, Baucom said. She took swabs of the cart, where prosecutors say Montalvo’s DNA was discovered.
Otero-Rivera’s attorney, Migdalia Perez, asked Baucom if the chemical could detect cleaning products used on a surface.
“It does,” Baucom said. “... Bleach tends to fluoresce more intensely and then disappear quicker than something that contains iron.”
Baucom testified she sprayed the chemical on the Riveras’ garage floor and tools, including pruning shears, a machete and a saw. The garage floor yielded a positive result for the possible presence of blood, but the tools yielded negative results.
Otero-Rivera’s brother told investigators that he had seen his family members with Montalvo’s bloodied corpse in their garage.
But a DNA report determined blood found on a garage floor at the Riveras’ home did not belong to Montalvo or her estranged husband, records show. Prosecutors have previously said they are not sure how or when she was killed.
Both Otero-Rivera and his father are being held at the Osceola County Jail.