GOLDEN, Colo.—A man about to stand trial for a third time in the 1996 stabbing death of a Wheat Ridge woman has pleaded guilty.
Michael Muniz pleaded guilty late Wednesday to second-degree murder in the death of Kay Marie Bodway, 46. Prosecutors say he followed her home from a Target store and killed her on July 2, 1996.
He faces between 73 and 84 years in prison at his July 17 sentencing.
Muniz also pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping with a deadly weapon for stabbing a 51-year-old woman in Denver on the same day an hour earlier near Cherry Creek Mall.
Prosecutors didn’t release her name.
The jury deadlocked in his first trial in Bodway’s slaying. He was convicted of second-degree murder in his second trial in 2002 and sentenced to 48 years in prison, but that conviction was overturned on appeal.
Muniz became a suspect when he called police in 2001 and said he had killed a woman five years before. Defense lawyers later argued that it was a prank call.
Bodway had moved to Wheat Ridge from Denver a month before her death after her children insisted it would be a safer neighborhood. Her new home also was closer to her 4-year-old grandson.
