The awful thing, to me, is that Saddam was our creation and learned many of his skills at the School of the Americas.
New York Post | 13 May 2004 | LAURA ITALIANO
http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/20789.htm
MAN JAILED FOR BEHEADING WIFE
By LAURA ITALIANO
May 13, 2004 --
Oscar Pilamunga was 15 and Beatrice Yually was 13 when they married nine years ago in their native Ecuador.
Yesterday, Pilamunga, now 24, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for brutally decapitating his childhood sweetheart in a jealous rage inside their Corona, Queens apartment.
The horrific slaying caused a sensation a year ago, when the wife's headless body turned up stuffed in a suitcase, sitting on a Harlem street.
"I lost my head," Pilamunga later explained to cops.
His wording was awkward, to say the least. It is the wife's head Pilamunga lost - it has never been recovered.
Pilamunga was a kitchen worker. His wife sold ice cream on the streets of Brooklyn. The story of their young love's tragic unraveling was recounted by the murderer himself, in his graphic confession.
"She had her bags ready, and I asked her where she was going," Pilamunga explained when he was caught last summer.
"She told me that she did not have any feelings for me, and that she wanted to leave. But I closed the door, and she told me she felt more love for Bolivar."
Bolivar apparently was Yually's lover. His identity was not fully disclosed in Pilamunga's police statement.
"At that moment, I lost my head and I punched her in the head," Pilamunga said. "She was sitting in the bed when I hit her. She got up and grabbed me by my shirt. I then grabbed her by the neck with both of my hands, and I squeezed her," he said.
"We were already on the floor. She stopped breathing and moving. At that moment, I saw that she had no life."
After an hour went by, Pilamunga said, he "took the handsaw and cut her head off."
Then he took a nap. He stuffed the head in a Dumpster on 35th Avenue in Corona.
Pilamunga kept the headless body in a black bag behind his refrigerator overnight before stuffing it into a suitcase and taking it - by taxi - to a Harlem street corner.
Pilamunga was caught easily. Although he had apparently tried to hide the identity of the body - by removing the head - he made the mistake of leaving an incriminating phone number in the corpse's clothing.
He pleaded guilty to the depraved killing last month.