A GRIM PILE OF DEATH
Tale of slay-suicide find
THE FIRST CLUE that something was wrong was the white smoke engulfing her Brooklyn apartment. Then she saw the bodies, one on top of the other.
Lucy Gomez, 28, came home around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday to find the couple she lived with, Silvia and Mauricio (Mauro) Papulla, on the floor of their apartment on Flatbush Ave. near Glenwood Road in East Flatbush.
“I was horrified,” Gomez said Wednesday. “At first I couldn’t see anything because there was white smoke everywhere. But then I saw the two bodies on the kitchen floor.”
Five knives were strewn across the floor and a scorched pot of lentils was smoking on a lit burner.
“He was laying on top of her. I saw a cooking knife next to them, the same knife we use to cook,” Gomez said. “There must have been blood, but I couldn’t see it because of all the smoke.”
With her sleeping 11-monthold baby in her arms, Gomez reached for her phone.
“I called 911 right away, because I wasn’t sure if they were still alive. I told them, ‘There are two bodies in the kitchen! Hurry,’” she recalled.
Cops investigating the gruesome deaths believe Mauricio Papulla stabbed his wife to death before slashing his own throat, police sources said Wednesday. The couple had been having arguments over infidelity.
Silvia Papulla, 30, had multiple stab wounds to her chest and the man, whose age was unavailable, had a deep laceration to his neck.
The Papullas’ 11-year-old daughter was at school while the horrific crime was being committed, authorities said.
Gomez, who had lived in the apartment for a year, said despite the couple’s problems, she never imagined that violent end.
“He always looked calm. I never thought he would do something like this,” she said. “She was a good person, a good mother. Everyone loved her.”
Gomez said the couple looked to be in good spirits when she left the house that morning. Silvia had been cooking lentils.
“My guess is that she was in the middle of cooking when he attacked her. That’s why there was smoke all over the apartment,” she said. “My little girl was sleeping. Thankfully she didn’t see anything. I can’t erase the images out of my head. It was a horrible thing to see, to find the bodies.”
Another housemate, Joanna Ruiz, 19, said the pair had been arguing for months. The woman had kicked her husband out because he was increasingly jealous. But he returned to the home about two weeks ago.
“She told me they had problems, but I never thought it would end like this. He was gone for a week and only came back two weeks ago,” said a distraught Ruiz. “Then this happened.”
Ruiz said she heard the couple argue constantly in the last four months she lived here.
“They would fight a lot. He was always jealous of her. He would insult her a lot and hit her. He would call her a slut,” she said. “She was scared of him.”
The teen said she came home at 5 p.m. and saw that police had cordoned off her home.
“I wasn’t sure what had happened. Then I asked the police. I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t deserve this,” Ruiz said. “We had to tell (their daughter) what happened. She’s very sad. We’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen to her.
“I don’t want to live here anymore. It’s scary.”
The couple’s daughter is staying with Gomez while social workers decide her fate.