Posted on 05/04/2005 10:36:52 AM PDT by chris1
Murder suspect living in U.S. illegally, police say
By STEVE LIEBERMAN slieberm@thejournalnews.com THE JOURNAL NEWS
Age: 29.
Education: High school graduate from Quesada, Guatemala.
? October 2000: Entered the United States legally on a tourist visa, which allowed him to stay for six months. He overstayed the visa.
? Came to Rockland from California within the past three years.
? July 2002: Charged with misdemeanor assault in Ramapo, under the name Ronald Douglas. He was accused of beating his girlfriend.
? September 2002: Justice Court warrant issued for his arrest when he missed a court date.
? 2005: Worked steadily for another contractor before joining Coloron Painting of New Jersey a month ago.
(Original publication: May 4, 2005)
A Guatemalan citizen charged with murdering a New City mother had lived in the United States illegally since 2001, when he overstayed his six-month tourist visa, Clarkstown police said yesterday.
Detectives confirmed the identity yesterday of Ronald Douglas Herrera Castellanos, 29, accused of Friday's slaying of Mary Nagle, 42. Police received the identification information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Herrera has been charged with first- and second-degree murder in Nagle's slaying.
Herrera entered the United States in October 2000 on a tourist visa, which allowed him to stay for six months before he would have to return to Guatemala, Detective Lt. Charles Delo of the Clarkstown police said yesterday.
The suspect's visa didn't expire until October 2010, which meant he could have returned to the United States at any time until then.
Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, said it was common for people to overstay their visas, probably accounting for a good portion of the estimated 8 million to 12 million people living illegally in the United States.
"If you can get a multi-entry visa to enter the country for six months and even ask for an extension, why would you enter the country illegally?" Saucier said. "If someone doesn't leave within six months, they are in violation of the terms of the visa."
Herrera's legal status in the United States is secondary to the slaying, Delo said.
"His legality in the country is not an issue in this case," Delo said. "Getting the suspect caught and seeing that justice is done is our concern."
Other officers found Nagle's cell phone and wallet yesterday in the woods behind Georgetown Oval, about a mile from the Nagles' Tamarac Avenue house.
During a nearly four-hour police manhunt Friday, 51 calls were made from Nagle's cell phone to her friends and family by a caller scrolling through the telephone numbers stored in the phone's memory. The caller threatened some with death and told others lurid details about raping Nagle, Delo said.
Herrera is being held in the county jail without bail. A grand jury will hear the case tomorrow for a possible indictment.
Yesterday, police again scoured the banks of Lake DeForest and the grounds along the Reservoir Drive area for a black plastic garbage bag that Herrera was seen carrying from Nagle's property.
Police said they believe the bag contained bloodstained clothes worn by the person who strangled, beat, stabbed and raped Nagle inside her house. When arrested, police said, Herrera was wearing clothes owned by Nagle's husband, Daniel, 41, a Manhattan accountant.
"We don't know if he buried the bag or threw it into the water," Delo said. "We were out on a boat about 80 feet, and the water was crystal clear. We'll go up again in the helicopter."
Nagle, the mother of two elementary school children, was home alone Friday, preparing for a tennis game with her sister, Ann Fallon.
For the past month, Herrera had worked for Coloron Painting of New Jersey. He had driven to the Nagles between 8:30 and 8:45 a.m. Friday to power-wash the Nagles' back porch.
Police said Fallon and Nagle were talking on the telephone at 8:50 a.m. when Nagle told her a worker wanted to speak with her.
Herrera is accused of entering the house through the back door and killing Nagle in her upstairs bedroom as she tried to fight him off, police said. All other doors to the house were locked, Delo said.
Coloron's owner drove up at 9:20 a.m. and when he didn't see Herrera, he power-washed the porch and left, taking the keys to the company truck in the Nagles' driveway.
When her sister didn't call back, Fallon drove to the house at 10:20 a.m. and saw Herrera outside, police said. When Fallon questioned him about her sister's whereabouts, he gave vague answers, claimed not to speak English well and left carrying a black plastic bag.
Fallon then went inside and saw a trail of blood upstairs and her sister on the bed, partially clothed with her tank top pulled up across her chest.
Nagle's slaying has had a chilling effect on the hiring of immigrant workers for landscaping, house repairs and maintenance.
Pedro Velasquez, a Guatemalan day laborer, and a number of other men said about 11:30 a.m. yesterday that they normally would have been picked up for work by contractors by about 11 a.m. They said this had been the situation since the weekend and attributed the lack of work to fear rising from Nagle's killing.
"It hurts us all," Velasquez said, standing with more than two dozen men on Spring Valley's Maple Avenue.
Leaders of the Jornaleros Project, an immigrant advocacy and assistance group, remained hopeful that Rockland residents would not turn their backs on day laborers.
The Rev. Angela Boatright of the Jornaleros Project said she hoped the tragedy would not prejudice residents against immigrant workers, though she understood the trust had been damaged.
"We regularly open our doors to workers ? handymen, painters, meter readers, food deliverers and the like ? and our trust in them is seldom violated," Boatright said.
"There is no race, class, or ethnic group that is exempt from the temptation to take a life," she said. "But for every horror committed and drilled into our memories, there also are dozens of acts of kindness. ... We must not lose our perspective. And, most of all, we must not fear each other."
Herrera, a high school graduate from Quesada, Guatemala, had worked steadily for another contractor before joining Coloron Painting, a Park Ridge, N.J.-based company that had worked for the Nagles and other Rockland families for more than 10 years.
Herrera came to Rockland from California within the past three years. In July 2002, he was charged with a misdemeanor assault in Ramapo, under the name Ronald Douglas, after he was accused of beating his girlfriend. A Justice Court warrant was issued for his arrest in September 2002 when he missed a court date.
When police arrested Herrera on Friday, his California driver's license gave the name Douglas Martin Herrera, 39.
Delo said the real Douglas Martin Herrera lived in San Francisco, and police there had spoken to him on Monday. He told police he didn't know the suspect or that his information was being used
I agree with you to a degree, but this problem has grown so out of control that something needs to be done now or we are going the way of Rome very quickly.
I suggest you read Gibbons' "The Fall of the Roman Empire"
The similarities are scary!
Of course not, Murder is murder.
But the "We gotta git rid of dem der Mexicans"/Economic Nitwits on here are just downright boring to me anymore.
Sincerely,
Bush Immigration Policy Supporter and Well-Educated Economist.
The Republican party (with a very few exceptions, duly noted) wants an open door policy with essentially no enforcement of the immigration laws. The demonrats want an open door policy with a couple express lanes thrown in.
I do not know how I will vote in 2006 or 2008. But I am not happy about the loss of control of our borders. There are third parties that oppose this nonsense, but third parties are more a protest vote than anything else. Do I vote third party and risk a 'rat? Or do I continue to reward those who keep the border open to these criminals?
And it may get worse - Mexico is getting ready to elect a president, and it just might be Obrador that wins. If so, the present migration will be as nothing to what will flood over the border.
We should be concerned. Actually, we should be melting the phone lines with demands that our elected representatives fix the problem. Sadly, that doesn't appear to be happening.
ping
Yeah, I agree. I just wish that we would deport them and THEN CLOSE THE DARNED BORDER! While I think the public is waking up to the problem, I think we are in a race against time.
I have been watching this problem grow since back in the 80s when I lived in Midland TX. We had lots of women illegally coming across the border to have their American babies at our very good hospital. I was told this by a friend who was a labor and delivery nurse. It was not even on the radar screen in the media at the time.
susie
I agree 100 percent. I have noticed one thing that seems to be a very common trait among those that come to these threads and tell us how good Illegals are for us.
If they would have taken care if this guy when he was charged with assault in 2002 this woman would never have been murdered.
Therefore, the lax immigration policy directly contributed to her death.
Flash bunny was teasing you.
I was referring to the overwhelming effort from people on here to lynch Hispanics.
I don't approve of illegal immigration, but I do improve dramatically increasing the quotas of legal immigrants. It's an absolute necessary.
Would it make you feel better if the woman was killed by a legal immigrant from say.. India?
Before 9-11, illegal aliens were a societal problem, and an economic load, and a few other things that may have been arguable.
Post 9-11, there are, in addition to all that, an intolerable security breech.
We simply can't take the risk, or bear the cost, of choosing to look the other way.
>>>>Coloron Painting, a Park Ridge, N.J.-based company
Illegals are illegals. Legal immigrants are sponsored by two people who sign personal gurantees. Indian and Asian immigrants rarely come here to mooch off the system, it is a fact of life. Plus, they do not take up about 25% of the prison population.
I'm bored with the loyal Republican argument that illiterate, non-English speaking illegal immigrants are a net gain to our economy.
>>>>Coloron Painting, a Park Ridge, N.J.-based company
I just searched the NJ business DB, https://accessnet.state.nj.us
No Color On Painting and no Coloron Painting.
There is an entire network like the underground railroad. There are safe houses and phony businesses. They pay no taxes and corrupt people get rich off of the illegals.
You just can't shut the boarders without investigating and breaking the corrupt network.
>>>>I have been watching this problem grow since back in the 80s when I lived in Midland TX.
Would be a hoot to look over the votes that got Clinton in 2 terms to see how many voters were illegals.
>>>>We had lots of women illegally coming across the border to have their American babies at our very good hospital.
Saudi women did that in the 70s too.
Came to Rockland from California within the past three years.
You can choose to get bored with it all you want. It's a fact of life.
If you really want to attack the issue efficiently, attack the social programs that the illegal immigrants are using, i.e. Democratic Party.
Illegal Immigrants are not the problem. Big Goverment Social Programs are.
Also, you don't have the slightest whiff of a clue, of what would happen to our lives if every illegal immigrant were thrown out of the country today.
Does anyone else think this is a little odd?
No, but that would make the tragedy much more of a curiosity.
"I hope some slick fast talking LAWYER gets a hint and goes for the EMPLOYERES ... one good hit and the bottom would fall out for the illegal market."
Along those lines, as the feds are doing nothing, state legislatures can pass laws mandating that general liability insurance contracts must exclude coverage for the negligence of employed illegal aliens, therby making them an uninsurable risk. States that failed to follow suit would suffer increases in their illegal population, which would put even more pressure on the government "to do something".
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