In the early hours of September 22, 2020, Gregorio De La Cruz, a police officer in Laredo, Texas, received a phone call from an anesthesiology nurse named Joel Pellot, who said emotionally that his wife had overdosed on drugs and was no longer breathing.
Police officer De La Cruz was the first to arrive at the scene and found Pellot somehow still wearing a surgical gown and resuscitating his wife, while their two young sons were still sleeping in the next bedroom, most unaware of what had happened......
(事发当天的Joel Fields)
The wife, Maria Eugenia Muñoz, a 31-year-old housewife, was not rescued and was pronounced dead at 3:58 a.m. that day.
(死者Maria Eugenia Muñoz)
The grieving Pellot told police De La Cruz that his wife had been very depressed lately.
On the surface, it was supposed to be a suicide, but De La Cruz noticed a lot of suspicions......
For example, he asked Pellot to find his wife's medication, and Pellot went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and took out clonazepam, which is used for anxiety and insomnia.
This is not logical, according to De La Cruz's previous experience, if a person dies of an overdose, the drug usually falls near the body, how can it be in another room?
(Bottle of charge)
In addition, De La Cruz found needles, syringe packaging, and medical kits containing intravenous equipment in various locations in their home.
Most suspiciously, investigators also found a pinhole in Maria's right arm......
(Maria Eugenia Muñoz身上的针孔)
Pellot's state isn't quite right, either. He was sweating profusely and was hesitant to answer questions. De La Cruz immediately became suspicious of him and took him back to the police station for questioning.
Pellot, sitting in the interrogation room, was still emotional, crying, screaming, and pushing the table, seemingly in extreme grief over his wife's loss. But in reality, he is far from being as affectionate as he appears......
The police learned that he had cheated on his female colleague Janet Arredondo a few years ago and had moved out of the house to live with the other party.
He said that the reason why he went home this time was to discuss marriage issues with his wife. After the conversation, my wife took an overdose of clonazepam and lost consciousness.
When asked about the medical supplies at home, he said that he used them himself, but he could not explain the needle holes on his wife's body.
(Police surveillance captured Joel Pellot crying in the interrogation room)
After the interrogation, Pellot's suspicion only increased.
It just so happened that the autopsy results came out, showing that Maria had died of drug poisoning, however, no clonazepam tablets were found in her stomach......
Of course, this is not enough to prove whether she died by suicide or homicide.
The police tend to favor the latter, because since Maria's death, they have received phone calls from her family, friends, and Pellot's colleagues, all of whom accuse Pellot of being the murderer, most likely because of the conflict caused by his cheating.
Even Pellot's former leader, anesthesiologist Huntsinger, urged the police to conduct a toxicology screening as soon as possible and provided a reference for the name of the drug.
With a four-month wait for the test results, Pellot continued to act as a good husband, weeping at his wife's funeral while the police scrambled to examine other evidence, and learned that Maria had been suffering from the marriage......
(死者Maria Eugenia Muñoz)
Maria worked as a nurse in Puerto Rico as a young girl, and by chance met Pellot, who was 11 years her senior, and the two got married in 2011 and settled in Texas. Maria loves her husband so much that she decides to give up her career and return to her family.
They also had a happy time and gave birth to two lovely children, but in 2020, Maria accidentally discovered that her husband had bought a plane ticket and planned to secretly go on vacation to Europe with a female colleague from the hospital, and he cheated on him......
(Maria Eugenia Muñoz和Joel Pellot)
On September 19, a few days before Maria's death, she saw her husband's car in front of the female colleague's house and immediately called the police.
Later, the couple took the car home together, and Maria tried to save the marriage, but Pellot didn't mean it at all, and in a fit of rage, she smashed the window of the car with a punch.
Perhaps waking up by the punch, Maria texted Pellot early the next morning, saying that she was in the process of getting a divorce from a lawyer.
Pellot was still not satisfied, he felt that it was too expensive to hire a lawyer, and he didn't want to spend money.
But after a few hours, he relented and took the initiative to email Maria to say that he was very distressed and wanted to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her.
Maria agreed, and then she died mysteriously......
(Joel Pellot和Maria Eugenia Muñoz在车里交谈)
Is it possible that she really committed suicide?
After reviewing Maria's diary, the police ruled out this possibility completely.
Maria usually insists on recording her life in words, and her love for her husband is always revealed between the lines, but later, love turned into grievances:
"Life is so unfair. My husband, the man I love dearly, has caused me so much pain. ”
"I don't want to be sad anymore, I don't want my heart to ache anymore, I don't want to let my heart be tormented anymore. ”
"I want to see him change. ”
It is clear that Maria is depressed, but she never shows any suicidal thoughts.
The diary also reveals her transformation, and after accepting the reality of a broken family, she has begun to work hard to get out of the gloom, look forward to the future again, and plan to try more things with her children.
In her last diary before she died, she wrote: "What do I want? The diary was later brought to court as evidence.
(Maria Eugenia Muñoz部分日记的截图)
As it turned out, the police were right.
In January 2021, the results of the toxicology screening came out, and Maria's body was detected with 7 drugs commonly used in surgery, except for clonazepam, which Pellot lied about......
It is worth noting that one of these drugs is Propofol, an anesthetic that can only be administered intravenously and in much higher levels than normal in Maria's body.
After interrogating Pellot's mistress, the police learned that Pellot had regularly taken medication from the hospital, one of which was propofol, and that he had admitted to himself that he had injected Maria on the day she died.
Now, the pinhole in Maria's arm, propofol, diary, divorce...... All the clues are correct. Law enforcement immediately arrested Pellot and formally charged him with murder.
According to prosecutors' speculation, on the day of the incident, Pellot may have sedated Maria's favorite coffee, and then injected her to ensure that she was completely dead, before calling the police.
(Joel Fields)
Pellot, who is still dying, says he injected Maria with a life-saving drug to twist the murder into an accident.
However, all was in vain, and the jury found him guilty of murder in less than an hour. Finally, on March 30 of this year, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
(Joel Fields)
Recently, the case appeared on foreign criminal record shows, and many people who participated in the investigation were interviewed.
The fact that the case was solved is undoubtedly the result of the joint efforts of many people. However, the prosecution said that the most important "witness" was Maria herself......
Through her diary, investigators could clearly feel her energy and what kind of person she was, even if they never knew her.
Everyone agreed that Maria was a great mother, loving and full of wisdom.
It was her words that gave her the strength to persist before her death, and after her death, she helped the police sort out the direction of the investigation.