Salem homicide suspect has history of domestic abuse
Vicente also failed to attend court hearings dating back to at least 2014, records show
Less than two months before Pablo Vicente, 33, was arrested for strangling his girlfriend to death in Salem, he was released from jail on assault and battery charges in connection to a four-year-old domestic violence case against the same woman.
Vicente’s history of domestic violence against 20-year-old Nayeli Nieves — part of an assault record dating back nearly a decade — illustrates a pattern of repeat abuse that women’s rights advocates have called tragically familiar, and has Nieves’s family decrying an absence of accountability from the justice system.
Law enforcement “didn’t do what they were supposed to do. They didn’t do their job,” said Janessa Sosa, who described herself as Nieves’s sister-inlaw at a press conference outside the courthouse where Vicente was charged with murder Tuesday.
“Mothers, especially young moms of little children, they need to be more watched and taken care of,” she added.
Vicente’s lawyer, Denise Regan, declined to comment on the ongoing case, or the defendant’s history. Family members of Vicente also declined to comment.
The first reported charge against Vicente by Nieves dates back to an afternoon in October 2019, according to court documents. A Salem police report said officers viewed video footage showing Vicente hit Nieves multiple times before “drag[ging] her off of the picnic table bench she was sitting on.”
At Salem District Court two days later, Vicente was charged with seven assault and battery charges and released on $750 cash bail. He skipped court the next month and was not arrested again until April 2023 in Lowell. That’s when Nieves called police and warned officers she was living “‘in fear’ of Pablo and ‘did not want to be abused again,’ ” the police report said.
She told police that Vicente pushed her out of the house during an argument that started when he saw she listed her relationship status on Facebook as “single,” according to a police report.
Lowell police arrested Vicente on an open warrant from 2019, and he was booked in Middleton Jail where he stayed until at least June 20, according to court records.
Prosecutors asked District Court Judge John F. Coffey to revoke Vicente’s bail because he had previously violated bail orders when he failed to
show up to court in 2019. But the judge denied the motion and did not set bail, court records show.
Less than two months after his release, Vicente confessed to strangling Nieves to death inside her home with her two children present, according to Salem police. He is currently being held without bail in an Essex jail, but Nieves’s family say his imprisonment is too little, too late.
“If Lowell would have done their job and kept Pablo in custody like he belonged, Nayeli would probably still be here today,” Sosa said. “He was abusive towards her, [people were] already well aware there was cases about it going on.”
Vicente previously evaded law enforcement in 2014 after being arrested in Lynn for alleged assault. Court records show he “failed to appear” for nearly every one of his 10 court dates, including avoiding his original February 2014 arraignment date for nearly a year. (That case was not connected to Nieves, and he completed probation in June.)
Attorney Victoria Spetter, who has represented both abusers and survivors of domestic violence, said that while case outcomes can “vary a lot from court to court, and judge to judge,” it was “unusual” for a judge not to set bail in a case where the defendant “had prior allegations against the same person, and he had disappeared.”
“It’s possible the judge didn’t set bail because they thought he was going to be held on the other case, so they didn’t think it would be necessary,” she said. “But given the circumstances as I understand them ... I don’t really understand why [he was] released.”
Judges will frequently set bail for repeat offenders, she said, “especially in domestic violence cases because of exactly this issue. If something else happens [to the survivor in the meantime], none of the prosecutors or judges want to be working that case again.”
Advocates stressed that for women who may feel trapped in similar patterns of abuse, internalizing that freedom is possible is a critical first step.
“The number one thing for anyone in an abusive relationship to know is that, even though in this moment it feels impossible to extricate yourself, there is always a way to find a path where you are no longer dependent on them,” said Sara Stanley, executive director of domestic violence agency Healing Abuse, Working for Change, or HAWC.
Stanley said organizations like HAWC can provide support with housing, employment, and childcare for parents looking to leave dangerous situations, all accessible through their hotline at 1-800-5471649.
In the past year, Essex County had nearly 2,000 domestic violence cases, while Middlesex had more than 2,300, numbers that have stayed fairly consistent since 2018, according to Massachusetts Trial Courts. While these are the highest numbers across counties in the state, both Essex and Middlesex have comparatively low rates of reported domestic violence cases per capita.
Emily Rothman, a professor at Boston University’s Sargent College, urged friends and family to be understanding of the emotional and psychological ties that can develop in abusive relationships, and to remember that “there’s a long list of reasons why somebody might think, ‘It makes more sense for me to stay in this relationship, even though I’ve gone through things I know aren’t right.’”
“A lot of people want to believe the person perpetrating the abuse is capable of change; they may have moments when they are a great father or they do a nice thing that gives hope that maybe they’ve changed,” she said. “But what we know statistically is that for somebody who has started using a pattern of controlling and abusive behavior, the likelihood that will continue is high, even if they are engaged in counseling. It’s heartbreaking, and can be hard to accept, but it’s true.”
The National Domestic Violence hotline (1-800-799-7233) and the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence hotline (1-877-785-2020) are available to connect people with services, including legal assistance, medical care, and counseling.