Ariel's sister: 'I guess we will never have peace'

CLOVIS — Maybe the worst part is the chatter, the "jokes," the curt words overheard that were probably not intended to hurt anybody ... but they cut deep.

"My oldest son is 13," Leanna Montano said. "His friends say things like, 'That girl who haunts the park is going to get you,' not knowing that is my son's aunt.

"You constantly hear people talking about it. Things like that just make you ... I don't know ... sad."

It's been more than two years since Ariel Ulibarri, Montano's sister, was stabbed to death in Goodwin Trails Park off of Prince Street in Clovis.

Family members hoped the trial for her accused killer, Matthew Jennings, would be over by this time next week. Instead, Jennings' mental competency hearing was postponed last week, which also forced the delay of his murder trial, which had been scheduled to start on Monday.

Montano is not just sad about it all. She is angry — angry at the lawyers who keep finding reasons to delay the trial, angry at the police she thinks have been incompetent throughout the investigation, angry about the ghost stories ...

"We never have peace," she said.

"I guess we will never have peace, but I feel like (after the trial is over) then my mom and dad can start healing.

"They keep having to go to court and dealing with everything and hearing about my sister's death over and over and over and seeing pictures ... We just want it over. That's all we want."

Montano said the family has given District Attorney Andrea Reeb their blessing if she wants to reach a plea agreement in the case. But the court has not yet determined if Jennings - who police say confessed to the killing soon after his arrest a year ago - is even competent to stand trial.

That was one of the subjects of last week's hearings. But since the defense had been unable to examine raw data and notes from one of the prosecution's doctors, Judge Drew Tatum agreed to postpone his decision on competency until February.

Prosecution and defense attorneys also learned recently they had not received all of the police reports related to the investigation. Some of those reports were not significant, Reeb said, but one missing report involved the alleged murder weapon, which police failed to recover in their initial sweep of the crime scene.

The Ulibarri family found that knife 24 hours after Ariel's death. They were on their way to visit the site of the young mother's death when Ariel's father, Mark Ulibarri, spotted the bloody weapon sticking in the ground.

Both sides agree everything related to the knife found with Ariel's DNA is important to the case.

"The reports are significant in that they are first hand - that is, the report was done by the officer at the scene doing the investigation as opposed to summaries or interpretations by other officers who received information through briefings," said Defense Attorney Stephen McIlwain.

How those reports failed to make their way into the hands of attorneys before now, Montano believes, is incomprehensible and inexcusable.

And so, unless a plea agreement can be reached, the Ulibarri family will have to wait until the new trial is scheduled to begin on April 17 for any kind of closure.

"It's like putting a Band-Aid on a wound," Montano said. "You expect to rip it off and start healing after a while, but every single time they postpone (the trial), it's like they cover the wound again and you have to wait and wait and wait and it never heals."

Every time they have to go to court, Montano said, "it brings out all of those emotions again."

David Stevens is editor for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at [email protected]