Prosecutors: ex-husband and his dad killed woman
Nicole Montalvo’s body parts were found burned and buried
A year before she was murdered and dismembered, Nicole Montalvo’s estranged husband, Christopher Otero-Rivera, told others he wanted to kill her and said it might be easier if she “just disappeared,” prosecutors said Tuesday.
His father, Angel Rivera, helped him hatch a plan to plant drugs on Montalvo, which they hoped would cause her to lose custody of the couple’s shared 9-year-old son, Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams said during opening statements at the Osceola County Courthouse.
Montalvo, a hard-working mother who cared deeply for her child, went missing Oct. 21, 2019, after dropping off her son at the Rivera home on Hixon Avenue in St. Cloud, the prosecutor said. Investigators later found her body parts burned, mutilated and buried across properties that belonged to the Rivera family.
Otero-Rivera, 33, and his 64-year-old father are charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a body and evidence tampering in Montalvo’s death. Both have pleaded not guilty.
“We will not be able to tell you exactly how Nicole Montalvo died,” Williams told jurors. “... But
we are going to present you with overwhelming evidence of who, how and why.”
But Otero-Rivera’s attorney, Kim LaSure, said the state’s case is based “almost exclusively on circumstantial evidence” that only points at one person — Angel Rivera.
“These two gentlemen are tried together, but by no means are they together,” LaSure said about the father and son who sat near each other. “... Angel is the last person to see Nicole Montalvo alive.”
The defense attorney said everyone in Angel Rivera’s home was “scared” of him, including Otero-Rivera. The family’s “overbearing” patriarch treated the couple’s son like his “possession” and was upset Montalvo had refused to let him see his grandchild in the past, LaSure said.
“That made Angel furious — so
furious he never forgot what she did,” she said.
Frank Bankowitz, Angel Rivera’s attorney, declined to give an opening statement.
Montalvo’s family members, who have worn purple in the past to honor her, wore shades of the color Tuesday as they listened in the courtroom’s gallery. One man wore a mask that had a purple heart inscribed with the word “Nicci.”
Before she disappeared, Montalvo was seen at work, her son’s school and an apartment complex, witnesses testified.
Her mother, Elaine Montalvo, told jurors her daughter was proud of recently leasing an apartment where she and her son lived. Crystal Bunn, a special education teacher, said Montalvo was highly involved in caring for her child.
“She would give him the sun, the moon and the stars and then some if she could,” she said.
Witnesses said Montalvo never mentioned she was leaving
town. But prosecutors said after she disappeared, Angel Rivera showed Deputy James Dekle a text where Montalvo asked him to take care of her son.
“I’m really sorry about everything,” the text said. “I should have listened to you. I made a bad mistake. I need you and Wanda to take care of Elijah for a few days until I get things figured out.”
Montalvo’s mother, though, said her daughter couldn’t have written that text because she didn’t spell well or write in full sentences, preferring emojis.
Prosecutors said evidence will show Montalvo went to the Rivera’s home Oct. 21 around 5 p.m. and never left.
Otero-Rivera and his father spent the next two days “cutting up her body, burning it and burying it,” and later attempted to “deceive and mislead law enforcement about what they had done,” Williams said.
The prosecutor said a forensic anthropologist will testify that
Montalvo’s body was dismembered in a “methodical way” and spread across properties on Hixon Avenue and Henry J Avenue. An excavator found on Henry J Avenue, which prosecutors believe was used to bury the body parts, had two water bottles where investigators discovered Angel Rivera’s DNA, Williams said.
But LaSure argued dismembering a body would have been a “bloody scene,” and investigators only found small specks of Montalvo’s blood on a cart at one of the properties. Jurors won’t hear “definitive evidence” on how Montalvo died or what weapon was used, she said during opening statements.
“There’s no smoking gun,” she said.
Witness testimony will continue Wednesday at the Osceola courthouse.