A prosecutor says he is confident there is enough evidence to try a man accused of killing his estranged wife, even though her body was never found.
John Sandoval, 44, appeared in Weld County District Court this week after he was extradited Monday from Las Vegas on a first-degree-murder charge in the October 1995 murder of his wife, Kristina “Tina” Tournai-Sandoval.
District Attorney Kenneth Buck said this morning that 89 percent of murder cases brought without the body of the victim end in convictions.
He said although no significant new evidence has surfaced in the case in 14 years, the likelihood that Tina Sandoval left and never returned becomes less plausible.
“We have discovered over the past 14 years that it also takes a village to bring comfort to a grieving family and to bring justice for our daughter, sister and aunt,” Tina Sandoval’s family said in a statement released today.
The statement acknowledged the efforts of Greeley detectives “who instinctively knew at the outset that Tina’s disappearance represented not just a person missing but a victim of domestic violence.”
Tina Sandoval disappeared the day she was to meet with her estranged husband to settle finances. Police were watching Sandoval’s house when he returned there early the next morning.
Inside his car was a white 5-gallon bucket, a new shovel with mud on the spade, a loaded 9mm handgun, a rope and a flashlight with a holder that allowed it to be worn around the neck. In his home, they found his wife’s credit cards. He had fresh scratches on his neck and upper chest.
Sandoval has been arrested numerous times in California and Colorado on charges that included sexual assault, burglary and peeking into college students’ windows.
Howard Morton, director of Families of Homicide Victims and Missing Persons, said there are still more than 1,400 unsolved homicide and missing-persons cases in Colorado dating back to 1970.
“We celebrate every time one of these comes to prosecution,” Morton said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
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