Defendant in Cliffside Park dismemberment case pleads not guilty

Thursday, January 13, 2011
Last updated: Thursday January 13, 2011, 7:37 PM
BY KIBRET MARKOS AND MONSY ALVARADO
The Record
STAFF WRITERS

The live-in boyfriend of a man whose butchered body parts were found stuffed in garbage bags in Cliffside Park last week pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Thursday.

Pedro Garcia, 33, said nothing during the hearing in state Superior Court in Hackensack as prosecutors formally charged him and an alleged accomplice, Wilfredo Sanchez, with murdering Francisco Gonzalez Fuentes on Saturday.

Garcia and Sanchez, who also pleaded not guilty, also were charged with unlawful possession of a knife, desecration of human remains and hindering apprehension.

Several of Gonzalez’s family members sat quietly on the other side of the courtroom. Security was tight, with nearly a dozen sheriff’s officers present.

Maureen Parenta, a spokeswoman for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, said Gonzalez’s relatives had met with members of the Office of Victim Witness Advocacy.

She said the family has also been told that funds from the state Victims of Crime Compensation Office may be available to help pay funeral expenses.

Gonzalez’s older brothers have said they would like to take his remains to El Salvador, where his mother and other siblings live.

Judge Edward Jerejian ordered Garcia and Sanchez to remain in custody at the Bergen County Jail on $2 million bail each.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor John Higgins said he believed Garcia, a native of El Salvador, is in the country illegally and that he was facing deportation before the incident occurred.

Defense lawyers Robert Kalisch and John Weichsel declined to comment except to say that they were assigned to the case by the Public Defender’s Office on Thursday and that they know very little about it.

Authorities said they found human remains stuffed in several garbage bags in Cliffside Park on Monday. They later identified the victim as Gonzalez and arrested Garcia and Sanchez.

Sanchez, 34, also of Cliffside Park, witnessed the attack and later helped Garcia dismember the body, they said.

Prosecutors offered little details on the motive for the killing, saying only that Garcia stabbed Gonzalez during a domestic argument after a party on Saturday night. Some neighbors said the couple had a volatile relationship fraught with frequent arguments.

The case now will be presented to a Bergen County grand jury for indictment.

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