Illegal alien convicted in death gets 20 years
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic ... 90369/1001
Illegal alien convicted in death
Home News Tribune Online 05/9/06
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a1...3a/Rosales.jpg
STAFF REPORT
MIDDLESEX COUNTY — A 21-year-old Mexican national was convicted yesterday of the aggravated manslaughter of a Perth Amboy woman whose decomposed body was found two years ago in an apartment building basement next to the hotel where she lived.
Assistant Prosecutor Judson Hamlin said Graciano Martinez Rosales was found guilty of aggravated manslaughter and hindering apprehension.
Hamlin said Rosales was acquitted of a knife charge.
Rosales, an illegal alien from Oaxaca, Mexico, faces between 10 to 35 years in state prison when he is sentenced July 8, Hamlin said.
He was remanded to the Middlesex County Adult Correction Center in North Brunswick where he will be held without bail while he awaits sentencing.
Hamlin said he and the family of 38-year-old Carolyn Arrington, who was stabbed 42 times, are pleased with the verdict.
Hamlin said the verdict came yesterday after the jury deliberated for about three and half days following a weeklong trial before Superior Court Judge Frederick DeVesa, sitting in New Brunswick.
During the trial Hamlin argued Rosales stabbed Arrington 42 times after she struck him during an argument about money for sex.
Arrington's badly decomposed body was found Aug. 5, 2004, in the basement of an apartment house at 285 Bertrand Ave., Perth Amboy. The apartment house is adjacent to the Remington Hotel, where Arrington lived in a $160-a-week room.
An autopsy by the Middlesex County Medical Examiner's Office estimated Arrington died seven to nine days prior to the discovery of her body by the owner of the apartment building, who detected an odor inside the three-story, six-unit building on Aug. 3, 2004.
A cleaning staff was directed to get rid of the smell, but the odor was still present two days later. Arrington's body was discovered at the foot of the basement stairwell.
Rosales was arrested and charged with Arrington's murder on Aug. 9, 2004. Authorities said he confessed to the murder after being questioned during a series of interviews over about 15 hours.
Rosales, represented by William Fetky of New Brunswick, tried to have his statement suppressed during a hearing in February.
He claimed he was tricked into making the confession when police told him he would be subject to immediate execution in the electric chair unless he told them when they wanted to hear and confessed to the murder.