A man who followed and then murdered Kay Marie Bodway at her Wheat Ridge home on July 2, 1996, pleaded guilty late Wednesday to second-degree murder.
Michael Joseph Muniz, 42, also pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping for the stabbing of a 51-year-old Denver woman outside her home near the Cherry Creek mall about an hour before Bodway was killed.
Investigators said Muniz followed the 46-year-old Bodway from the Target store at Lakeside Mall to her new townhouse in the 4600 block of Independence Street in Wheat Ridge and killed her.
Muniz and Bodway did not know each other.
The murder went unsolved until Aug. 7, 2001, when Muniz was arrested. Less than a month earlier, Muniz called Wheat Ridge police saying he had stabbed and killed a woman at West 46th Avenue and Independence Street about five years before.
“Just to let you know, I’m back,” he told the police dispatcher.
Police traced Muniz to a Denver hotel room.
The pleas late Wednesday in Jefferson County District Court came after two previous trials.
In August 2002, the jury deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. The case was retried in October 2002, and Muniz was convicted of second-degree murder and two violent-crime counts. However, the jury verdict was overturned.
Muniz’s third trial in the Bodway case was to begin next month.
Muniz was previously sentenced to 20 years in prison for making two shivs by filing down plastic toothbrushes while he was held in the Jefferson County Jail.
Muniz appealed that case. But under the plea agreement entered Wednesday, Muniz agreed to drop the appeal and will serve 20 years in prison consecutive to any other sentences imposed in his cases.
He will be sentenced on July 17 in the murder and kidnapping cases. He faces up to 84 years in prison.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
