How Texas mother turned essential witness in her OWN homicide investigation

A younger mom’s remaining diary entry helped persuade a jury she didn’t kill herself, however was really murdered by her dishonest husband.

Maria Munoz, 31, was heartbroken when husband Joel Pellot walked out of their Laredo dwelling leaving her to maintain their two younger sons.

He claimed she had overdosed on prescription drugs when police discovered her useless of their dwelling after he returned for a ‘coronary heart to coronary heart’.

But the nurse anesthetist had injected her with poisonous medicine stolen from the hospital the place he labored in a bid to keep away from an costly divorce.

And Maria’s diary and cellphone recordings helped investigators uncover her husband’s abuse, monitoring her journey by means of grief to restoration and a renewed religion sooner or later.

‘What is it that I would like?’ she wrote the day earlier than she died, ‘#1 Move Forward!!’

Maria had met her husband when she was a younger nurse in Puerto Rico and he was an formidable medical pupil eleven years her senior.

They married in 2011 and made their dwelling within the Texas border city the place she gave up her profession to assist her husband.

But in 2020 Maria found her husband was dishonest on her when she discovered an airline ticket for a European vacation he deliberate to take with a colleague from his hospital.

Matters got here to a head on September 19, the Saturday earlier than her demise, when Maria noticed his automotive outdoors the house of his lover Janet Arredondo.

Arredondo known as police who in flip known as Maria as she travelled dwelling together with her husband.

‘Hey, I’m f***ing speaking to you proper now,’ they heard Pellot inform her as she took the decision, ‘Hang up the f***ing telephone.’

He had damaged the windscreen with a punch earlier than they arrived dwelling, and she or he texted him the subsequent morning to inform him she was hiring a lawyer.

‘We can do that with minimal lawyer intervention. It’s an excessive amount of cash,’ he shot again.

Hours later there was a change of tone.

‘I’m so unhappy I’m hurting inside,’ he emailed her.

‘I need to sit down with you to speak, w/o arguing. A coronary heart to coronary heart.’

Maria was nervous as she ready for what could be their remaining assembly.

‘I simply ask when you can pray for me,’ she messaged her good friend Yazmin Martnez on the Monday, ‘tonight we’re going to speak.’

Police obtained one other name within the early hours of Tuesday morning, this time from Pellot who instructed them his spouse was not respiration and will have taken some prescription drugs.

They discovered him wearing surgical scrubs and performing CPR on his now useless spouse because the couple’s two younger boys slept within the subsequent bed room.

Pellot went to a toilet cupboard to get the prescription clonazepam he mentioned she had overdosed on, however pocketed the bottle as police tried to resuscitate his spouse.

‘Yeah, she’s been tremendous depressed,’ he instructed them.

Pellot was taken to the police station for interview the place surveillance cameras caught him crying, screaming and pushing furnishings round when left alone.

He admitted that syringes and intravenous tools present in the home have been his however they have been a part of his on a regular basis work tools.

Investigators have been additionally interested by a puncture mark on Maria’s arm however it was 4 months earlier than toxicology outcomes got here by means of and so they had little to go on.

In the meantime Pellot attended his spouse’s funeral the place he wept over her coffin.

‘What made me really feel indignant was him close to the casket,’ Martinez instructed CBS 48 Hours.

‘Crying over her, giving her kisses. Like why now? You have made her endure and cry a lot and also you’re doing this now?’

But what detectives did have have been Maria’s journals.

‘Life is so unfair,’ she wrote in a single entry, ‘My husband the person I really like a lot is inflicting me a lot ache.’

‘I do not need to be unhappy anymore, I do not need my coronary heart to harm, I do not need my thoughts to be in torture,’ she wrote in one other.

And they spoke of a continued hope that her marriage could possibly be saved.

‘Lord this can be a lot for me,’ she wrote, ‘All I actually need to do is see change in him.’

Police additionally discovered cellphone video recordings Maria had made together with one indignant trade of their automotive.

‘What is it that you really want me to do?’ she requested Pellot at one level, ‘what are the expectations you will have on this marriage?

‘You stroll out that door, we’re getting a divorce,’ she warned him.

‘Alright positive, you bought it,’ Pellot shot again, slamming the automotive door.

The medical expert had discovered medicine in Maria’s physique however the diaries and recordings have been sufficient for her to rule out suicide.

Pellot’s boss on the hospital, anesthesiologist Dr John Huntsinger, was suspicious on the outcomes and urged police to analyze additional however it was 4 months earlier than the toxicology report revealed there was no clonazepam in Maria’s system.

Instead there have been seven different medicine sometimes used throughout surgical procedure, together with Propofol which might solely be administered by injection.

‘I used to be very shocked to see Propofol, mentioned Dr Huntsinger, ‘Hers was the best degree I’ve seen.

‘I imagine this was demise by Propofol.’

Arredondo had been interviewed by police and admitted that Pellot had routinely introduced medicine, together with Propofol, again from the hospital.

She additionally revealed that Pellot had admitted to injecting his spouse on the night time she died.

‘He wished to uh, simply calm her down,’ she instructed them, ‘so he did it with remedy.’

Pellot was arrested and claimed in court docket that he gave her Narcan, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose.

‘Someone tried to convey her again to life, and it wasn’t the paramedics, it wasn’t the police. It was Joel,’ his legal professional Roberto Balli instructed the court docket.

‘So he didn’t need her useless. This was a horrible accident.’

But the jury took lower than an hour to search out Pellot responsible of his spouse’s homicide and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in March this 12 months.

Prosecutor Marisela Jacaman mentioned an important witness at trial was Maria herself by means of the journals which confirmed she had gotten over her husband.

‘I’ve heard of emotional abuse, I’ve seen it, I’ve labored round it however I by no means realized how prevalent it’s even in our lives the place you may relate to a number of the issues that Maria was experiencing,’ she defined.

‘And she was an awesome mom, she was simply a tremendous particular person.

‘And that vitality? We felt it.’

‘She cherished him, and she or he adored him,’ mentioned Maria’s good friend Angela Montoya.

‘She simply cherished him an excessive amount of.’