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An investigator last week found a condom inside a glove that was among the items that authorities said Pedro Gutierrez left in a bag in his car at JFK Airport in Queens following the Oct. 4, 2011 killing, sources with direct knowledge of the case told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Shaday Betancourth
A judge in Hackensack adjourned the trial — which began in late September — until Jan. 21 so that the evidence could be examined.
Gutierrez, 27, was about to hop a connecting flight to Colombia when authorities grabbed him in Orlando, a prosecutor told jurors during opening arguments.
Besides the gloves, his bag contained what Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Wayne Mello called “instruments of death” — a cut-up T-shirt that Shaday Betancourth had worn to bed the day she was killed, a black bra sliced in half, zip ties that detectives said were used to bind her, a kitchen knife with her blood on it, a roll of tape, condoms, latex gloves (one of which Mello said was bloodied) and a bloody pair of men’s jeans.
Authorities have said that Gutierrez confessed but told investigators that his estranged wife stabbed him first.
They said the brutal murder was sparked by the 23-year-old woman’s desire to end the marriage. Gutierrez once even told friends that if he saw her with another man, he would kill them both, they said.
After breaking into his brother-in-law’s Teaneck apartment on Oct. 4, 2011, Gutierrez slashed the woman six times, “each capable of causing her death,” Mello told jurors, noting that her carotid artery was severed.
Gutierrez was well-prepared. Mello said: He brought a knife, zip ties, latex gloves and condoms to Betancourth’s brother’s apartment in Teaneck and took them with him when he left.
Pedro Gutierrez
“The beautiful young woman, who was in bed sleeping when Gutierrez broke in, was bound with zip ties and savagely raped,” Mello told the eight female and five male jurors.
“She was bound hand and feet, symbolically and all too terrifyingly real, before her death,” he added. “She was sexually assaulted…and she was brutally murdered by a knife held in the hand of this man, her estranged husband — the man who promised that she would be loved, she would be cherished, and in an act of ultimate domestic violence took that knife and slashed her throat.
“Six times.”
Andres Bentancourth found his bloody, unconscious sister and, with a neighbor’s help, rushed her to Englewood Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, Mello said.
Defense attorneys have asked the jurors to keep open minds and not presume guilt before they’d had an opportunity to be presented with all of the facts in the case.
Gutierrez remained held on $3 million bail in the Bergen County Jail.
PHOTO, TOP: Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Wayne Mello, defense attorney S. Emile Lisboa, defense attorney Brian Neary, Gutuierrez (FILE PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
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