Thread: ILLEGAL MURDERS WOMAN

This is practically in my backyard and is only a blip on the media radar screen!! Most of the press has NEGLECTED TO MENTION....ILLEGAL in their coverage!

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/p...WS03/505030393

Accused killer lived here illegally
By STEVE LIEBERMAN
slieberm@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: May 3, 2005)


A Guatemalan citizen charged with murdering a New City woman had lived illegally in the United States since 2001 after his six-month tourist visa expired, Clarkstown police said today.

Police detectives yesterday confirmed the identity of the accused killer as Ronald Douglas Herrera Castellanos, 29. The police contacted federal agencies in Guatemala and spoke with San Francisco police officers.

As police investigated the background of the man accused of killing 42-year-old Mary Nagle, officers found her cell phone and wallet dumped in the woods behind Georgetown Oval, not far from Nagle's Tamarac Avenue house.

The accused killer allegedly made 51 calls Friday from her cell phone to Nagle's friends and family, making threatening comments and providing lurid details of his sexual attack on Nagle, police said.

Police still were searching today for a black plastic garbage bag. Police believe the bag contained the clothes the accused killer wore when Nagle was strangled, beaten and stabbed while being raped Friday inside her house.

When police arrested Herrera on Friday, his California driver's license gave the name of Douglas Martin Herrera, 39.

A man by that name in San Francisco told homicide detectives there that he didn't know the accused killer or how his personal information came to be on someone else's driver's license, Clarkstown Detective Lt. Charles Delo said today.

Delo said Herrera entered the United States in October 2000 on a tourist visa, which allowed him to stay for six months before he had to return to Guatemala.

Herrera's visa didn't expire until 2010, which meant he could have returned to the United States.

Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, said it was common for people to overstay their visas. He said a good portion of the estimated 8 million to 12 million people in the country illegally probably were those who overstayed their visa.

"If you can get a visa to enter the country for six months and even ask for an extension, why would you enter the country illegally?" Saucier said.

Herrera has been charged with murder in the first and second degrees and being held without bail in the county jail.

A Ramapo warrant for his arrest under the name Ronald Douglas has been active since 2002 when he didn't show up in court to answer a misdemeanor assault charge accusing him of beating up a former girlfriend.

And NOW THEY'RE GETTING CONCERNED? Looks like this might get some more American's to open their eyes....hope their fear continues to grow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/ny...tml?oref=login

Killing Leaves Suburbanites Wary of Immigrant Workers
By JANON FISHER

Published: May 3, 2005


EW CITY, N.Y., May 2 - When Pablo Sandoval, a 42-year-old Guatemalan contractor with many years in this middle-class town and a long list of references, showed up on Saturday with his crew for a scheduled job, he was told to leave.

"The lady told me, 'Pablo, I don't want to see you today,' " said Mr. Sandoval, who has run a painting and construction company in this area for 22 years. She was not the only one; three other clients have called to cancel since Saturday.


In this bedroom community in Rockland County 45 minutes north of New York City, the sight and sound of immigrant men trimming lawns is a spring ritual as reliable as the sight of the first robin, but it has generated a new fear that was not there just a few days ago.

On Friday, Mary Nagle, a 42-year-old housewife and mother of two, was found raped and killed in her bedroom.

After a three-hour search, the police arrested Douglas Herrera, 39, the employee of a painting company that the Nagles had hired to paint their deck. An autopsy report released Monday by the Rockland County medical examiner's office determined that Mrs. Nagle was raped, beaten and choked to death.

Mr. Herrera, a Guatemalan immigrant, who had been left alone by his boss at the Nagle home, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder in the first and second degree.

The police say that just 13 minutes after the crime was committed, friends and relatives whose telephone numbers were on Mrs. Nagle's cellphone began to receive taunting calls from Mr. Herrera.

Suburbanites preoccupied by work, soccer practice and other obligations rely on local contractors to mow their lawns, repair their porches and paint their house trim.

In New City, one of the small, quiet towns near the Tappan Zee Bridge, at this time of year it is common to see pickup trucks pulling flatbed trailers laden with weed trimmers and lawn mowers idling at traffic lights.

The crews who ride the trucks and do the work are largely immigrant, some legal and some not, who live in towns like Spring Valley, where Mr. Herrera lived in a dilapidated house on crime-ridden Union Road.

The relationship between Spring Valley and New City seemed, if not fully equitable, at least functional until Mrs. Nagle was killed. Now, as Mr. Sandoval's cancellations seem to indicate, a wariness has developed.

"I hold the contractor liable," said Justin Santos, 32, an engineer who lives in New City, referring to the companies like Color On Painting, which employed Mr. Herrera. "They should have background checks. Right now they go down to the McDonald's on Route 45 and pick up a guy for the day."

Mr. Herrera was hired by Color On Painting based on the referral of another employee, according to the New City police.

One contractor said he could not research the background of all his employees.

"They don't even require background checks at the schools," said Mark Kogan, a Spring Valley landscaper. "I can't watch these guys all the time. I wouldn't make any money."

Mr. Sandoval said he feared that the backlash would not go away any time soon.

"People don't feel safe these days," he said. "There aren't any white people who are going to feel safe now. I don't blame them. My wife feels the same way."

Mr. Sandoval happened to know Mr. Herrera. He hired him to paint several rooms in his own house.

"He was quiet; he was a good worker," Mr. Sandoval said. "I left for lunch and when I got back he had finished the room."

Still, Mr. Sandoval said, if the charges against Mr. Herrera are true, he shudders at the memory.

"I have a 15-year-old daughter and he was in my house," he said. "It's terrible."

Unfortunately another 2 tears in a bucket.