Informant: Father-in-law twice offered money to make Nicole Montalvo ‘disappear’
A jailhouse informant told jurors Monday that he thought it was a joke when Angel Rivera offered him $500 to make Rivera’s daughter-in-law, Nicole Montalvo, “disappear.”
“I kind of laughed it off and told him, ‘You don’t get that for $500,’ ” said Dustin Gonzalez during the trial for Montalvo’s estranged husband and father-in-law, who are accused of killing and dismembering the St. Cloud woman in October 2019.
“[Angel Rivera] told me he’s got money,” Gonzalez added.
Gonzalez, who is currently in prison, said he met Montalvo’s husband, Christopher
Otero-Rivera, while both of them were incarcerated at the Osceola County Jail in October 2018. Otero-Rivera offered to help Gonzalez get out of jail in exchange for planting drugs on Montalvo, who had “refused” to let Angel Rivera see the couple’s shared son while Otero-Rivera was incarcerated, Gonzalez said.
“I was going to plant drugs on Nicole and make her look like a drug addict, so his father could get custody,” he said.
Gonzalez was released from jail in January 2019 after his father testified to receiving bond money from Angel Rivera.
Gonzalez said Angel Rivera pressured him to plant the drugs soon because he “missed his grandson.” He realized the elder Rivera wasn’t kidding about making Montalvo disappear after he offered Gonzalez more money during a second meeting.
“He told me, ‘I’d much rather her just disappear so we don’t have to deal with this,’ ” Gonzalez said. “I told him, ‘I’m not in that line of work.’ ”
Otero-Rivera, 33, and Angel Rivera, 64, are charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a body and evidence tampering in Montalvo’s death. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say Otero-Rivera and his father desired custody of the couple’s shared child.
Jurors also heard Monday from some of the state’s final witnesses at the Osceola County Courthouse, including the family’s matriarch, Wanda Rivera. Prosecutors dismissed charges against Wanda Rivera last month after a review of evidence cast doubt on her role in disposing of Montalvo’s car after the killing.
She said she was “close” to her daughterin-law, often texting her about the couple’s son.
Before Montalvo went missing Oct. 21, 2019, she called her mother-in-law briefly around 4 p.m., Wanda Rivera told jurors.
“Was there any indication she was going to leave town?” Assistant State Attorney Jamie McManus asked.
“No,” Wanda Rivera replied.
After Montalvo dropped off her son at the Riveras’ home on Hixon Avenue, Angel Rivera said she sent him a text asking him and Wanda Rivera to take care of their grandchild for a few days.
Prosecutors say the text was sent by someone other than Montalvo.
Investigators later found her body parts burned, mutilated and buried across properties that belonged to the Riveras. Wanda Rivera said she learned Montalvo’s remains were found her family’s property by hearing it on the news.
“Do you know how she ended up there?” McManus asked.
“No,” she responded. Location data from an ankle monitor on Otero-Rivera showed he was near a site where Montalvo’s dismembered remains were buried.
The movements captured by Otero-Rivera’s ankle monitor on Oct. 22, 2019, coincided at the burial site with GPS data from an excavator, said Donna Sita, a crime analyst supervisor at the Osceola County Sheriff ’s Office.
The excavator later traveled to another family property nearby, where more of Montalvo’s remains were buried, Sita said. On the excavator, investigators found two water bottles with DNA that matched Otero-Rivera’s father, witnesses said.
Prosecutors hoped to rest their case Monday but said they still had four more witnesses who needed to testify before they could finish on Tuesday.