Man Held After Body Parts Found in Trash
A severed left leg found in a Hialeah trash bin led detectives to a convicted killer who they say dismembered a Hollywood jeweler with a machete last week.
Guillermo Denis Gonzalez, 63, was booked into Miami-Dade County Jail early Wednesday on a charge of first-degree murder.
In 1992, at the age of 47, Gonzalez was convicted in Miami-Dade County of second-degree murder, records show. He was released in 2004 from the state Everglades Correctional Institution in South Miami-Dade.
Gonzalez is now accused of slaying Sergio I. Quintero, 58, in an argument that may have been drug related.
”It was a gruesome crime,” said Hialeah Police Chief Mark Overton. “I’ve never seen anyone dismembered like that.”
Someone digging through trash Saturday afternoon found Quintero’s left leg in a commercial trash bin in a warehouse alleyway at East 10th Avenue and 15th Street.
The rest of his body parts were found in six black garbage bags in three Dumpsters on Hialeah’s east side, police said.
”Gonzalez cut off Quintero’s head, both legs, both arms, both hands and torso,” Detective Jose Proveyer wrote in his report. Proveyer investigated the case with Detective Joe Elosegui.
Gonzalez confessed to killing Quintero, Overton said.
Hialeah investigators gave this account of the events leading to Gonzalez’s arrest:
About noon on Friday, Quintero was at Gonzalez’s Hialeah home sitting in his kitchen when the convict ”became enraged” and punched the jeweler. With a kitchen knife, he stabbed Quintero.
”Quintero began to bleed profusely from his neck and collapsed and began gasping for air,” an arrest report said.
Gonzalez stabbed him twice more in the torso, the report said.
As he dismembered Quintero, Gonzalez ”periodically” crushed the corpse’s face. Police say he used a mallet.
Then he drove his 1998 white Dodge Caravan through the warehouse district of east Hialeah to dump the remains.
Fingerprints from the severed hands helped identified the remains as Quintero.
Detectives found two fingerprints on the garbage bags that belonged to Gonzalez, including two separate matches left on the bag that held the man’s head and right leg.
Gonzalez’s fingerprint was also discovered on a blood-soaked comforter stuffed in a bag. That bag was inside a Dumpster next to another one containing the man’s left foot.
Also, Quintero’s last five cellphone calls were traced to Gonzalez, detectives learned. Grainy surveillance video showed a man in shorts in the white van — with side panel damage — placing the garbage bags inside the bin.
Detectives found the damaged Dodge parked at Gonzalez’s home.
Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney David Waksman — who prosecuted Gonzalez on the 1992 conviction — was enlisted to help. He helped prepare search warrants for the Dodge and home, both later signed by Circuit Judge Israel Reyes.
Detectives found a bloody knife and machete inside the home.
Source: MiamiHerald.com
It appears that the time spent in prison for second degree murder was inadequate for him to repent of his evil ways.
