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In pleading guilty to witness tampering, Fernando Carrero Jr. accepted seven years atop the 75-year, no-parole sentence he’s already serving for killing Jose Hall in the kitchen of his girlfriend’s parents’ home.
In exchange, Marlene Ortiz will be accepted into a Pre-Trial Intervention that will clear her record of any criminal charges if she stays out of trouble.
In the time leading up to his trial, which last December, Carrero continually plotted to frighten witnesses into changing their testimony to clear him, prosecutors said.
He wrote several letters to Kerrilynn Lowenstein, his former girlfriend, threatening to “kill [her] and [her] entire family” if she didn’t change her testimony.
Ortiz also received letters from her brother in jail, instructing her to contact Lowenstein and Corey Hicks, another witness and friend of Lowenstein’s, and convince them to change their stories, CLIFFVIEW PILOT has learned.
Ortiz kept the letters and later told investigators from the prosecutor’s office who were searching her home where they were, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
A condition of the arrangement worked out with prosecutors is that neither Carrero nor Ortiz ever have contact with Lowenstein again.
Carrero is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 30.
STORY / PHOTO: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A judge in Hackensack today sent “baby-faced killer” Fernando Carrero Jr. to prison for life for gunning down an aspiring police officer in Lyndhurst during a dispute over his girlfriend. READ MORE….
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