An ex-police colonel on Wednesday denied he was responsible for torturing his wife to death.
Former colonel Jose Joaquin Aldana, who turned himself into authorities Tuesday, declared himself innocent of the charges placed against him for his alleged responsibility in the torture and murder of his wife Erika Generis Gutierrez.
In a hearing that lasted some ten hours the prosecution claimed that Gutierrez was “tortured, disfigured and dismembered alive, with a box-cutter knife,” reported news station Radio Santa Fe.
During the hearing, prosecution lawyer Alvaro Jose Galindo Cruz asserted that the crime had occured in the couple’s house and it was believed to have been committed for reasons of passion.
Cruz indicated that the woman’s body had been disfigured in order to make identification more difficult and had been dumped in a warm location so that it might decompose faster.
Cruz also noted that this treatment could only have been carried out by somebody with extensive knowledge of criminality, such as former policeman Aldana.
Aldana’s defence presented ten pieces of evidence to disprove the accusations. One of these involved Aldana carrying out an exercise which demonstrated that he had chronic arthritis in his right hand, which prevented him from closing the hand fully or gripping anything (such as a knife) with great force.
The trial is unfolding.