I just posted a portion of the article. This reporter Jeff Procter has been doing really terrific writing on this trial. Look for his articles from the ABQ Journal for anyone that may be knew to the trial or just want good recaps because this has not been an easy one to follow that is for sure.
http://www.abqjournal.com/main/212497/news/levis-alibi-on-trial.html
BERNALILLO – Testimony in the Levi Chavez murder trial Wednesday honed in on the former APD officer’s alibi – a claim that he was at a girlfriend’s house when his wife died of a gunshot wound to the mouth.
Chavez has maintained he discovered his wife’s body in their Los Lunas home around 9 p.m. on Oct. 21, 2007. He told a 911 operator that she appeared to have been dead “at least a day.”
Chavez’s version of events is that he spent Friday night, Oct. 19, at Deborah Romero’s home in Albuquerque and then worked on Saturday, Oct. 20, from 2 p.m. to midnight, before going back to Romero’s house.
He told investigators that he hadn’t been to his home since earlier that Friday.
Defense attorney David Serna tried repeatedly Wednesday to pin Romero to a specific time that Chavez arrived at her home on Oct. 21.
And every time, Romero’s answer was essentially the same.
“I don’t know what time he got there,” said Romero, who was testifying on the eighth day of Chavez’s murder trial in Sandoval County District Court.
Once, in response to an attempt by Serna to suggest Romero has maintained for nearly six years that Chavez couldn’t have arrived any later than 1 a.m., Romero said: “You’re kind of twisting that around. Please don’t try to twist it and turn it. I don’t know what time he got there.”
Chavez, a former Albuquerque police officer, is charged with killing his 26-year-old wife, Tera Chavez, with his department-issued handgun in the couple’s home near Los Lunas and making it look like a suicide.
If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Levi Chavez and Serna maintain Tera was depressed about her failing marriage, which was collapsing in part because of Levi’s affairs, and that she killed herself.
One of those affairs was with Romero, who also was an APD officer in October 2007.
Romero testified Wednesday that Levi Chavez told her he was “going through a divorce” when she began dating him and that “he was not a married man.”
“Otherwise, I would not have been in that relationship,” Romero said, after having testified earlier through tears that “this whole thing was just so disgusting and such a disgrace – that made me upset, and I’m upset now.”
Serna hammered away at Romero about previous statements she made to Valencia County Sheriff’s detectives and to Serna himself during a pre-trial interview in April.
During those interviews, Romero answered “yes” to questions about whether Levi Chavez had arrived at her home in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights around 1 a.m. She also answered “yes” to a statement Serna made in the April interview that Chavez couldn’t have arrived as late as 3 a.m.
But during questioning by prosecutor Bryan McKay, it came out that Romero also had said, “I don’t know what time he got here; that’s the bottom line” during both interviews.