The last witness was called to the stand Thursday for the case of an ex-cop who allegedly shot and killed his wife in Oct. 2007 near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Levi Chavez, 32, calls her death a suicide.
Chavez had been an Albuquerque Police Officer for nine months before the incident. One month after the death of his wife, Tera Chavez, he Valencia County Sheriff’s Office started investigating the possibility that he shot her with his department-issued gun. After a grand jury indicted him on a murder charge and tampering with evidence in April 2011, he was fired.
Joseph Cordova, the father of Tera, 26, was the last witness to take the stand in defense of his daughter. He claimed that Levi never even offered him any of his daughter’s belongings after her death.
Chavez took the witness stand in his own defense Wednesday. He continued to deny allegations and claimed that their troubled marriage was taking an emotional toll on his wife, saying she had left numerous messages on Chavez’s phone days before her death. According to Daily Mail, Chavez’s defense attorney, David Serna, claims the autopsy of Tera shows the death was a suicide.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, questioned why Chavez had sexual relationships with four other women during his marriage and why he only saved one specific message in which his wife talked about feeling extremely depressed.
Although Chavez claims to have been emotionally devastated and shocked by her death, he got engaged to another police officer two months after.
KOAT reports that Judge George Eichwald, the judge of the trial, announced Monday that all evidence hearings from then on would be closed to the public in an attempt to give Chavez a fair trial that is not influenced by the media.
They plan to start closing arguments Friday.