Francesca Pagliasotti took the witness stand Friday afternoon to retell in gruesome detail the three-day process of dismembering the body of 16-year-old Alicia Martinez after she had been murdered.
Pagliasotti’s defense attorney Victor Stazzone led his client through three hours of meticulous testimony that moved many in the courtroom to tears or caused them to leave the room.
The 26-year-old is being tried in Denver District Court as an accessory to murder.
Pagliasotti said that she returned home late on the night on Friday, Oct. 22, 2010 and was told by her boyfriend Edward Timothy Romero that he had shot and killed Martinez.
What unfurled from there, Pagliasotti said, was a multi-day saga of lies, coercion, body mutilation and methodical attempts to hide the evidence.
Pagliasotti cried as she testified that she saw nearly every step of the process.
Aside from brief moments when she left to check on their two children or his grandmother, who was living in the house with them, or to fetch supplies he demanded, she and Romero were not apart from the moment he showed her the body that Friday night, until she and the children were taken into police custody two days later. The children were ages 2 and 4 at the time.
Pagliasotti said that Romero brought her to their garage when she returned home Friday and showed her Martinez’s body laying unclothed on a couch, with blood covering her face. She said she repeatedly questioned him as to why he would do such a thing. He told her he had “blacked out and she was dead when he came to.”
She said Romero swore her to secrecy and then told his grandmother what he had done as well. Both of the women were frantic, Pagliasotti said, but Romero threatened them both to keep quiet.
He then went to the garage, and according to Pagliasotti, instructed her to fetch tools and supplies while he cut up the body.
Throughout the retelling, the courtroom rippled with moans, hands covering heads, and sobs from Martinez’s family and others in the room.
Throughout the testimony, the defense questioned Pagliasotti as to why she did not call 9-1-1 at any point, each time emphasizing her mental and emotional state at the time.
“You’re going to help me or you’re f—— next,” Pagliasotti said, quoting what Romero said when she tried to resist his demands that night. “I was scared for my life. I was scared for my children’s lives. I was scared for his grandma’s life.”
Stazzone questioned the nature of Romero and Pagliasotti’s 10-year relationship, which is a linchpin of her defense.
The final hour of the day was spent chronicling Romero’s habitual abuse of Pagliasotti, including testimony that he had taken a piece of broken glass and sliced her arm, whipped her with a straightened coat hanger, beaten her with a baseball bat, and fired bullets as she kneeled on their bed.
Judge Shelley Gilman adjorned the court and 14-member jury for the weekend. The defense will resume its examination of Pagliasotti on Monday at 10:30 a.m.
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638 or kpainter@denverpost.com
