GREELEY, Colo.—A former district attorney says prosecutors are taking a gamble by filing murder charges in the 1995 disappearance of a Greeley woman unless they have substantial new evidence.
John Sandoval was arrested Thursday in Las Vegas, where he now lives, on suspicion of murdering his estranged wife in Greeley.
Sandoval, 44, was being held Friday without bail at the Clark County jail in Las Vegas. An extradition hearing is scheduled for Monday.
Tina Tournai Sandoval was last seen on Oct. 19, 1995. Her body hasn’t been found.
Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck has said there were no breakthroughs in the investigation but that the passage of time has weakened the likely defense in such cases: that the missing person decided to move without telling anyone.
“It wasn’t that there was a great amount of new evidence. There was no DNA or anything found,” he said.
Former DA Al Dominguez, who made the original decision not to file charges, said that basing a trial on circumstantial evidence is “a tremendous gamble.”
If Sandoval is acquitted, double-jeopardy protections would prevent him from being retried if new material surfaces later.
“If they think they have enough to gamble on, good for them,” Dominguez told The Greeley Tribune in Friday’s editions. I hope it works. It would be a real shame, if in fact he is the killer, to have him go free.”
Buck said he decided to go ahead with the case after discussing it with the missing woman’s family.
The family was involved in a push at the state Capitol this year to abolish the death penalty and use the millions spent on death-penalty cases to investigate cold cases instead.
The measure was defeated by one vote on the final day of the legislation in the face of strong opposition from district attorneys.
Prosecutors argued more resources could be brought to bear on cold cases without abolishing the death penalty.
Buck said he wasn’t aware of the family’s involvement in that effort and it wasn’t a factor in his decision to push ahead with the case.
