Here's a wrap up of what happened this week
-
Christopher Otero-Rivera -
Angel Rivera -
Nicole Montalvo
More than a dozen witnesses testified this week in the Nicole Montalvo murder trial, which picks back up Monday at the Osceola County Courthouse.
Montalvo, 33, went missing Oct. 21, 2019, after dropping off her young son at the home of her estranged husband, 33-year-old Christopher Otero-Rivera, and father-in-law, 64-year-old Angel Rivera.
Both men are charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a body and evidence tampering in Montalvo’s death.
Phone records showed Montalvo got to the Rivera home about 5 p.m. and never left, Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams told the jury in his opening statement Tuesday. The Hixson Avenue home sits on a 4.7-acre property in rural St. Cloud.
The men spent the next two days “cutting up her body, burning it and burying it,” and later attempted to “deceive and mislead law enforcement about what they had done,” Williams said.
They made her “disappear” because they wanted custody of the couple’s son, he said.
The father and son have pleaded not guilty and are being tried together but have separate defense attorneys.
In opening statements, Otero-Rivera’s attorney, Kim LaSure, said there’s no “definitive evidence” on how Montalvo died. “There’s no smoking gun.”
The state’s case is based “almost exclusively on circumstantial evidence,” all of which points to Angel Rivera, the “last person to see Nicole Montalvo alive,” she told jurors.
The “overbearing” patriarch was angry that Montalvo had previously refused to let him see his grandson, who he treated like a “possession,” LaSure said. “That made Angel furious — so furious he never forgot what she did.”
“These two gentlemen are tried together, but by no means are they together,” LaSure said about the father and son seated next to each other in court.
Frank Bankowitz, Angel Rivera’s attorney, declined to give an opening statement.
In a recorded interview played in court Wednesday, Otero-Rivera told the lead detective two days after the mom went missing that he didn’t know where she was and that “she might have been seeing somebody.”
“I just don’t understand why she would do that ... and to leave her son?" he told Osceola County Sheriff’s Office Det. Cole Miller two days after the mom went missing.
Otero-Rivera also told Miller about a text his father received from Montalvo asking him to care for the couple’s child.
Angel Rivera later showed Deputy James Dekle the text which read: “I’m really sorry about everything. I should have listened to you. I made a bad mistake. I need you and Wanda to take care of Elijah for a few days until I get things figured out.”
Witnesses said Montalvo never mentioned leaving town, had just rented a new apartment and was an attentive and loving mother. They text didn’t sound right because she never wrote in full sentences and often misspelled words.
On Thursday, Emily Seda, forensic unit supervisor for the Osceola Sheriff, testified that she and her team uncovered a human head with hair, a severed hand and feet on the sprawling Rivera property.
The discovery came after the team spotted a flat-bed trailer, foliage and fencing that seemed out of place. After removing the trailer, they began excavating and discovered "fleshy material."
The last witness called Friday was the victim’s mother, Elaine Montalvo.
She recounted details about a violent beating her daughter received from Oterro-Rivera in 2018 when he jumped her after forcing her to drive him out into the country.
According to the arrest affidavit, Otero-Rivera slapped her repeatedly, threw her to the ground, tried to gag her, robbed her and then tried to break her neck before letting her go.
While deputies were interviewing Montalvo, St. Cloud police found Otero-Rivera and local resident Toni Rocker together in a car around the corner from Montalvo’s home.
Otero-Rivera later pleaded no contest to hindering a witness’ ability to communicate with law enforcement, unlawful possession of a credit or debit card and battery. Charges of kidnapping, robbery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon were dropped in the deal.
He was sentenced to a short stint in jail, followed by two years of supervised probation.
A few months after the incident, Nicole Montalvo filed for divorce.
She told her mother that her estranged husband said during the attack that he would take her son away.
Angel Rivera’s younger son, Nicholas Rivera, testified as a witness for the prosecution on Wednesday.
Shackled and dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, he said he woke up to a loud noise in the early morning hours of Oct. 22. He then saw his dad and brother washing off a cart in the middle of the night. An expert testified that Montalvo's DNA was on that cart.
Angel Rivera’s attorney asked Nicholas Rivera on the witness stand if he saw what his father was washing off the cart to which he responded no.
Oterro-Rivera’s attorney didn’t question Nicholas Rivera.
Once a person of interest in the case, Nicholas Rivera previously told detectives he heard his brother and father arguing with Montalvo in the garage and later saw her dead on the floor in a growing pool of blood. DNA later disproved that claim and it was not presented to the jury.
Nicholas Rivera is serving a 10-year sentence for possessing child pornography, which was found during the course of the investigation into Montalvo’s disappearance.
He was forced to testify as part of his plea deal with prosecutors.
