Martin Novotny was convicted Friday in the stabbing death of Brazilian au pair Ana Elisa Toledo and immediately sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Toledo, 24, was stabbed 74 times in the early hours of Dec. 13, 2005, in a Denver home where she was caring for two children.
As the jury watched, an ashen Novotny, a former au pair, went to the microphone and apologized.
“I’m sorry about what happened,” he said. “I loved Ana.”
Novotny said he couldn’t come up with any words in English, or his native language of Czech, to express his feelings.
The couple had met in the fall of 2004, and had dated and traveled together for about 14 months prior to the murder.
Toledo’s family, present through most of the trial, was not present for the verdict.
Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, who tried the case with prosecutor Verna Carpenter, said the family was exhausted and was at Denver International Airport to catch a 3:30 p.m. flight back to Brazil.
During the trial, Morrissey and Carpenter repeatedly referred to the wounds inflicted around Toledo’s eye.
“What it signifies to me,” Morrissey said, “was that he was either torturing her or disfiguring her.
“He was torturing her if she was alive, and disfiguring her if she was dead,” he said.
The district attorney said that the 74 stab wounds showed how obsessed Novotny was with Toledo and the possibility that he would lose her to another man.
Following the murder, Novotny drove to the Pepsi Center, where he had first met Toledo, called police and told them he had just killed his girlfriend. During a 45-minute confession to Denver Detective Shane Webster, Novotny said he had stabbed Toledo “many, many times.”
During closing arguments, Carpenter said that Novotny told the 911 operator that he killed Toledo because “she was cheating me out.”
Novotny was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder, felony murder and first-degree burglary.
Judge Morris Hoffman merged all the charges in handing down the life sentence.
