Details emerge in Soledad killing - Detective testifies on hair, blood evidence

A Soledad man stabbed in the throat in July died with what appears to be the hair of his live-in lover and accused killer clutched in his hand.

A Soledad police detective testified Thursday that strands of hair found in the left hand of Adolfo Coronel Uribe appeared to match the "dark brown, reddish orange" hair of Maria Catalina Rodriguez, who is charged with his July 31 murder.

According to testimony in Rodriguez's preliminary hearing, the 36-year-old woman told police she married Uribe in Mexico earlier this year and that the night before his killing he told her he was leaving her and returning to his wife in Salinas, whom he had never divorced.

Soledad police detective Thomas Marchese testified that investigators found Uribe's belongings packed in his truck outside the couple's Rockrose Street home, and that Rodriguez's hands, feet and legs had a large amount of dried blood on them when he arrived at the scene.

Rodriguez variously told police she and her husband were attacked by one or two intruders who entered the home through a sliding glass door or window. Police found all the windows and the sliding glass door locked from the inside when they arrived.

Questioning by defense attorney Tom Worthington indicated he will argue the blood on Rodriguez was the result of her kneeling beside Uribe as he lay dying on their bedroom floor, the hair in the victim's hand the result of a "death grip" before he took his last breath.

Ruben Garcia, an investigator with the Monterey County Sheriff's Coroner Division, testified that he arrived at the scene about 11:30 p.m. to find Uribe lying dead on his back in a pool of blood. Blood stains indicated the attack happened while Uribe, 35, was in bed.

The gaping stab wound in Uribe's neck was 3? inches deep and had severed his carotid artery and jugular vein. The wound, Garcia told prosecutor Elaine McCleaf, would have proved fatal within 15 minutes.

Upon questioning by Worthington, Garcia agreed that such a wound also could have sprayed blood on a person kneeling nearby before the victim's heart stopped beating.

Marchese testified that he asked Rodriguez to show him where and how she knelt. She at first showed him that she had squatted next to Uribe. When he asked her how she got blood on the top of her feet and her calves, she changed the demonstration to show she had knelt with one leg down.

While there was a large amount of blood on one side of the victim, Marchese said, the only blood on the side of the body in which Rodriguez knelt was her bloody foot prints.

Marchese said Rodriguez told him she had awakened that night to someone pulling her out of bed by her hair. She screamed and the intruder, wearing a striped shirt, ran off.

Marchese said a medical responder, one of the first on the scene, told him Uribe's body was cold when he arrived and that he was struck by the lack of emotion Rodriguez showed when she told him she and her husband were attacked by two intruders.

In the five to six hours he interviewed Rodriguez at the Soledad Police Department on Aug. 2, the detective said, the only time she became emotional was when he told her she was being arrested and taken to jail.

Testimony Thursday revealed why Soledad police have said there may have been another person involved in the murder. In addition to bloody prints made by bare feet, police found bloody prints left by a set of Converse tennis shoes leading from the master bedroom to the front door.

Marchese said he interviewed Rodriguez's roommate, who was sleeping in another room and was awakened by Rodriguez's screams.

The man said Rodriguez was on the phone to police when he ran into the master bedroom. He never saw intruders, nor saw Rodriguez kneeling beside Uribe, Marchese testified.

Testimony in the hearing is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. today. At the conclusion of the hearing Judge Gary Meyer will rule if there is probable cause to order Rodriguez to stand trial.

She turned on the light in the bathroom, walked around the bed, saw Uribe on the floor and turned on the closet light before kneeling to cradle his head in her arms for one to two minutes. She then called police.

The detective testified that both of the light switches had blood on them.