Gerardo Marquez found guilty in 2018 slaying

PORTALES - An emotional week of jury trial ended Friday with the second-degree murder conviction of Gerardo Marquez for the slaying last year of Erika Zamorano, a crime prosecutors described as an "intimate killing" borne of "drugs and paranoia."

Zamorano, 32, was found April 19, 2018, inside her Portales residence on the 900 block of East 2nd Street, where she lay dead from a single gunshot wound to the head for what investigators estimated to be almost 12 hours. Family became concerned after she had failed to pick up her two children from school that afternoon.

A key witness and a trail of bullets matching those from the crime scene - including one found inside Marquez' sock - gave police their suspect, who was arrested the following morning in Clovis and charged with an open count of murder. Prosecutors said Marquez and Zamorano had been in a relationship.

Defense attorney Dan Lindsey told The News he was "disappointed" in the verdict and intended to appeal, but noted his client at least avoided a life sentence. A grand jury in June 2018 indicted Marquez on the charge of second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of fifteen years. A one-year enhancement for the use of a firearm brings his potential exposure to sixteen years, of which he will be required to serve no less than 85% since it was a crime of violence.

Judge Donna Mowrer will determine his time in prison at a sentencing hearing yet to be scheduled.

Prosecutor Jake Boazman told The News "we were going forward on first-degree" but declined to speculate as to the grand jury's decision for a lesser charge. District Attorney Andrea Reeb stated the same and said "15 years is not enough," but noted generally that one signal difference between first- and second- degree murder is the element of pre-meditation.

Testimony presented during trial described an argument between Marquez and Zamorano about their house at the Portales residence around 10 a.m. the day of her death. Pedro Pena told the court in testimony Tuesday that he heard a single gunshot from inside the house after their argument, followed by Marquez returning to his black Chevrolet single-cab pickup track and leaving with Pena for Clovis.

The two stayed the night in a Clovis hotel and were detained the following morning when a New Mexico State Police officer identified the truck from a "Be On the Lookout" advisory issued in the meantime. Family and investigators were concerned when Marquez, 35, hadn't picked up his own children from school that afternoon or stayed at his own residence in Portales that night.

Court records show Zamorano's mother told police that Marquez had "threatened Erika by pointing a handgun at her head" less than a month earlier.

Inside that car, investigators found a .45 caliber round in the floorboard and a Smith and Wesson handgun with a print matching Marquez's little finger on the magazine. While inside the police unit, the NMSP officer testified to hearing a "tinking or clinking within the vehicle," said Boazman, and later discovered four rounds of ammunition inside the vehicle. Marquez resisted an ensuing search at the police station, shouting at officers in a body camera video shown Friday to the court. After his clothes were cut off and a DNA swab taken from his cheek, officers discovered another bullet inside his left sock.

"The same caliber bullet that was used in the commission of this crime," Boazman said in his closing argument. It matched the "full metal jacket .45 caliber bullet" found at the crime scene, he added.

Days later in a jail phone call attributed to Marquez and played Friday in court, Marquez said he had "(messed) up...(really) bad" and that Zamorano had been "scamming" him out of his house, according to District Attorney Investigator Adriana Munoz.

"Why did this happen?" Boazman asked the jury. "Drugs and paranoia."

Boazman referred to testimony from a secretary at Western Dairy Transport who said Marquez expressed fears that "he was concerned about people watching him through his television," and the fact that drug paraphernalia was found on Marquez during the execution of a search warrant.

"That's paranoia. That's paranoia that will drive you to commit murder," Boazman said in closing arguments. "Extreme paranoia that his house was being taken from him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a woman died well before she should have," he continued, 'because an individual who could not control his temper. ... That is an intimate killing. This didn't happen out in an alley, out in the streets ... this happened in a bathroom in a residence in which (Zamorano) was living."

Lindsey pushed back on those points in his closing defense statement, calling the state's case "a terrible, grasping at straws" argument and questioning the credibility of key witness Pena, who also testified in court to telling police that he had been awake for two days at the time of the incident.

"He was high, he was tweaking, he was up for two days," Lindsey said. "(Pena) cannot be trusted at all for any fact."

Lindsey also took issue with material evidence - asserting Marquez's fingerprints on the gun's magazine don't connect him directly to firing the gun - and reminded the jury of the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Both Lindsey and Boazman agreed that the complete truth as to everything that happened cannot be known.

"It's a tragedy what happened here," Lindsey said. "(But) there's not enough evidence to decide what happened in this case other than that (Zamorano) was tragically killed."

The jury took a little over 30 minutes in deliberating before returning the guilty verdict just before 5 p.m. on Friday. Marquez, who has been in custody without bond since his April 20, 2018 arrest, was immediately handcuffed by sheriff deputies after the pronouncement.

Family and friends of both Zamorano and Marquez sat in the court gallery throughout the week -- approximately ten for the former and two dozen for the latter.

"It was a very long and detailed week," said Boazman, who prosecuted along with Deputy District Attorney Quentin Ray. "We feel like we accomplished what we set out to do, we feel like justice was done today."

Mowrer on Friday denied a motion from Lindsey for a directed verdict on the basis of insufficient evidence, but Lindsey said he intended to file a motion for verdict notwithstanding judgment in the next two weeks.

"We do plan an appeal," he told The News. "We're disappointed in the verdict of course, but my client was facing life in prison and now it's just 16 years."