Oquendo guilty of murder
Jurors quickly convict man of killing his stepdaughter
Johnny Oquendo was found guilty Friday of murdering his stepdaughter, stuffing her body into a suitcase and tossing it into the Hudson River.
It took a jury of eight men and four woman around 2 1/2 hours to reach their verdict.
Oquendo was convicted of beating, strangling and suffocating 21-year-old Noel Alkaramla in his 3rd Street apartment Nov. 22, 2015. Alkaramla’s body was found more than five weeks after her disappearance in the river near the USS Slater in Albany.
Oquendo was convicted of second-degree murder, criminal obstruction of breathing and unlawful concealment of a corpse. Oquendo is scheduled to be setenced Dec. 21, when he is expected to receive 25 years to life in prison.
“Thank you, Jesus,” Debra Napoli, Alkaramla’s mother and Oquendo’s ex-wife, said after the verdict was announced. “May he rot in hell.”
Oquendo, 40, showed little emotion as the verdicts were read, looking straight ahead or at the floor, only looking at the jury once. Alkaramla’s family and friends, however, cried as her stepfather was found guilty.
Napoli, sitting in the front row, was comforted by Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove, who sat by her side during Friday’s proceedings. Abelove said while most of the evidence
brought against Oquendo was circumstantial, it was strong enough to result in a guilty verdict.
Abelove said during the more-than-two-week trial, he told Napoli to keep relying on her faith to get her through this difficult time and that Oquendo would be found guilty of her daughter’s murder.
“The defendant knows what happened … and now the whole world knows what happened,” Abelove said. “His day of reckoning is coming.”
The trial was marked by some unusual revelations, including the discovery that witness Amanda Whitman, Oquendo’s ex-girlfriend, had been photographed and videotaped while having sexual contact with a dog. Defense attorneys also questioned the credibility of Whitman, said to be key to the prosecution’s case, because she broke up with Oquendo days before Alkaramla’s death and may have had an ulterior motive to accuse the defendant.
Assistant District Attorney Andrew Botts, who prosecuted the case, admitted in closing arguments Thursday his case was based primarly on circumstantial evidence, but said “those arrows all point to one person, the defendant.”
Defense attorney William Roberts slammed the case against his client, saying during his closing arug-ments that the jury was expected to “take leaps of faith because there’s no evidence.”
Abelove called Botts a “top-notch prosecutor” and said he didn’t doubt his ability to get a guilty verdict, despite the lack of physical evidence.
“[Botts] puts his heart and soul into every case,” Abelove said.
Napoli was only allowed in the courtroom starting Thursday because Roberts included her on his witness list, though she was never called to testify.
Napoli mourned the fact she will never have a future relationship with her daughter or “never be a grandmother,” but she expressed relief her ex-husband was held accountable.
“Justice has been done,” she said.