Woman says she helped dismember S.A. man
Under a plea agreement with prosecutors in exchange for a lessthan-maximum prison sentence, a woman charged with murder in the 2014 retaliation killing of Jose Luis “Pee Wee” Menchaca testified Monday that she lured him to where he was savagely beaten, suffocated and dismembered.
Candie Dominguez, testifying for the prosecution in handcuffs, told a jury at the retrial of admitted Mexican Mafia affiliate Gabriel Moreno that she participated in the cutting and incineration of Menchaca’s body after he was beaten with baseball bats and a metal pipe.
Moreno, 36, listened passively to her account. Prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their cases Monday. Closing arguments are expected to begin Tuesday at 11 a.m. in the 379th District Court.
Dominguez, 39, said she signed an agreement in June 2016 with Bexar County prosecutors that would limit her prison time to no more than 30 years in exchange for a guilty plea to murder and for her truthful testimony in any legal proceedings against Moreno and her boyfriend, Daniel Moreno Lopez, 32.
Both men were charged with murder. A jury found Lopez guilty earlier this year and he was sentenced to life in prison last month.
If convicted, Moreno also faces life in prison. His first trial ended in a mistrial in March after the jury deadlocked.
Moreno’s defense attorney, Albert Gutierrez Jr., calmly hammered at Dominguez’s credibility on the stand Monday, beginning questions with phrases such as, “In your version of the truth.”
“All four years (since the murder), I’ve never changed my story,” Dominguez testified.
“But you admitted on the stand that you lied to the police,” Gutierrez countered.
“Yes,” Dominguez said, nodding toward prosecutors, “but not in the (court) case.”
Last week, state District Judge Ron Rangel denied Gutierrez’s motion for a mistrial. Gutierrez had charged prosecutors with witness tampering for taking defense witness Lisa Treviño into a private conference to question her hours before her scheduled testimony.
Treviño, who is on parole and did not have an attorney with her during the impromptu interview, was reportedly cooperative with prosecutors in detailing her account of Menchaca’s killing, but later in the courtroom, after Rangel appointed a lawyer to advise her, she declined to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself.
“They had no intention of using her as a witness,” Gutierrez told the court Friday. “And it was only then that her attitude began to change and she wanted to take the Fifth. Now I haven’t been able to talk with her.”
District Attorney’s Office investigator Anthony Rodriguez testified that when Treviño left the courthouse last Wednesday, he watched as she encountered her two uncles, both of whom signed prison documents attesting to their Mexican Mafia affiliation.
“When they saw Lisa, they said, ‘You don’t testify. You take the Fifth,’ ” Rodriguez said.