Ecuadoran judge orders man sought for questioning in Brockton slayings held pending trial

Posted by Janet Walsh February 19, 2011 08:32 PM


By Maria Sacchetti and Peter Schworm, Globe Staff

A judge in Ecuador yesterday ordered the man wanted for questioning in the slayings of a Brockton mother and her toddler son be held for 30 days while he awaits trial in that country for allegedly using a fake passport.

Luis A. Guaman Cela, a 40-year-old immigrant from Ecuador who shared an apartment with the victims and is believed to be the last person to have seen them alive, was arrested in Ecuador on Friday after an intensive manhunt.

Guaman, who according to authorities uses several aliases and birth dates, was charged with possessing and using a fake Ecuadoran passport with the name Segundo Antonio Castro.

Authorities in Massachusetts said Guaman used the false documents to fly to Ecuador, just hours after the bodies of Maria Avelina Palaguachi-Cela, a 25-year-old Ecuadoran national, and her 2-year-old son, Brian, were found in a trash bin behind their home. Both died from blunt force trauma to the head.

News of the arrest brought a measure of comfort to the victims’ relatives. Outside his Highland Street home yesterday afternoon, just around the corner from Palaguachi-Cela’s apartment, relative Segundo Caguana said the family was relieved that Guaman was in custody.

‘‘To know they got him, it just makes everything feel more light,’’ said Caguana, a cousin of Manuel Jesus Caguana, the slain boy’s father. Manuel Jesus Caguana, who speaks little English, declined to comment.


Caguana was in Virginia on a short-term construction job at the time of the killings. He returned home early when he wasn’t able to contact Palaguachi-Cela.

Beatriz Almeida de Stein, Ecuador’s consul in Boston, said the family is distraught.

‘‘They are crying, crying, crying,’’ she said.

She said Caguana and Guaman were friends, and that Guaman had lived in the house for nine months. Caguana trusted him enough, she said, to leave his wife and son alone with him for days at a time.

‘‘He didn’t see anything wrong,’’ she said.

A funeral will be held in the next few days for the two victims and for a third relative — the nephew of Palaguachi-Cela — who was killed last week after falling from a roof in New Bedford. The service will probably be held in St. Patrick Church in Brockton. Burial will be in Ecuador, according to the funeral director handling the arrangements.

At a hearing yesterday in Cuenca in southern Ecuador, a judge granted a prosecutor’s request that Guaman remain in jail while authorities investigate the charges against him.

Guaman will be transferred to the Center for Social Rehabilitation for Men in Cuenca, a Judicial Police officer said and could stand trial within three months. The officer discussed the case on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The Judicial Police officer said he alerted Massachusetts officials yesterday that Guaman would be detained for 30 days and urged them to act quickly through diplomatic channels to advance the investigation.

‘‘I told them to please coordinate quickly,’’ he said in a phone interview. ‘‘We did all we could.’’

Because Ecuador’s constitution bars extradition of its citizens, authorities have voiced skepticism that Guaman could be returned to the United States. But a spokesman for the country’s US embassy said the government would ‘‘cooperate entirely’’ with Massachusetts authorities.

The spokesman, Bill Hamilton, said he did not know how the matter could be resolved if Guaman were to be charged with the homicides.

Almeida de Stein said Guaman was evidently not cooperating with authorities in regard to the Brockton crime.

Plymouth prosecutors, who are investigating the slayings, did not return several calls seeking comment yesterday. District Attorney Timothy Cruz previously said he was frustrated that Guaman was able to leave the country with a fake passport, flying to Ecuador from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York around midnight, hours after the bodies were discovered.

Guaman, who was in the country illegally and worked as a roofer, has not been charged in the Brockton slayings, and authorities have not named him as a suspect. Authorities have said that Guaman was heard arguing with the victim. Another housemate, Aparicio Valencia de La Cruz, told authorities he heard Palaguachi-Cela tell Guaman she did not love him.

Guaman is also wanted on multiple warrants in New York and Massachusetts, including more than one accusing him of assaulting his estranged wife. That woman helped police apprehend Guaman by providing a tip to his whereabouts.

According to the officer in Ecuador, Guaman called his estranged wife shortly after he arrived in Ecuador and allegedly threatened to harm her parents unless she sent him money.

Working with police, she agreed to send him money. Police arrested him outside the money transfer agency.

www.boston.com