Diana Casado killing: Ex-boyfriend Luis Alturet-Rivera starts trial in 2017 Yonkers case

Cellphone records and video place a "jealous, controlling, abusive" Luis Alturet-Rivera near the scene of his ex-girlfriend's execution-style slaying five years ago, a Westchester prosecutor said Monday at the start of Alturet-Rivera's murder trial.

The phone records will refute the defendant's alibi and prove he was in Yonkers and not in the Bronx when Diana Casado was shot in the head while sitting in her car in a Palisade Avenue parking lot early on Jan. 22, 2017, Assistant District Attorney John O'Rourke told the jury in Westchester County Court.

And, the prosecutor said, the video will show Alturet-Rivera dumping Casado's pocketbook in a large trash bin around the corner on Ashburton Avenue shortly after the shooting.

"What you are going to see throughout this trial is that Luis Alturet-Rivera committed a calculated murder out of jealousy, out of his control of his ex-girlfriend," O'Rourke said in his opening statement. "And what he did is he tried to stage it to make it look like 29-year-old Diana Casado had been robbed."

But defense lawyer Allan Focarile said that "conjecture, guesswork and inferences" based on a tumultuous relationship are not proof of murder and that the case against his client amounts to "character assassination."

"Perhaps he's possessive. Perhaps he's a bad boyfriend," Focarile told the jury of his client. "Because he's a bad boyfriend and the family doesn't like him, they added up that he must have been the one who killed her. It doesn't match. It doesn't follow automatically.

"There is no evidence that he shot Diana. The evidence is that he might have been in the area."

Focarile said a shell casing found inside the car is inconsistent with the prosecution's theory that the shooter fired into the car from outside. And he said that a bloody palm print on the passenger side of the car came from the real killer because it does not match Alturet-Rivera, Casado or her mother, who discovered the body.

Alturet-Rivera, now 47, was arrested in February 2019 after Yonkers cold case detectives tracked him down in Vancouver, Wash. He initially faced theft charges related to Casado's pocketbook but an indictment eight months later added the charge of second-degree murder. He faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

The couple had been living together in 2017 when Casado sought to end their decade-long relationship by moving to Florida without telling Alturet-Rivera. She eventually moved back to Yonkers, moving in with her mother, and tried to keep her distance from Alturet-Rivera.

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O'Rourke said the relationship was further complicated because Alturet-Rivera had remained close with some of her relatives. The week before Casado was killed, he was staying at her father's apartment.

On Jan. 20, Casado's mother did not let him into her apartment. The next day, Casado saw Alturet-Rivera when she went to welcome her father back from a trip. That night, she had a date with a man she had met.

She left the date to go home, but before parking in the Palisade Avenue lot, O'Rourke said, she was "lured" by Alturet-Rivera to go see him. She soon returned to the lot and parked. But she never got out of the car.

Authorities believe Alturet-Rivera accompanied her to the lot and shot her from outside the driver's door. There is no video of the shooting and no one reported it. A neighbor reported later that day that she heard what sounded like a gunshot right around 3 a.m.

Casado's mother was worried when she did not return. Shortly after 7:45 a.m., she went to the lot and found Casado mortally wounded.

Family members were aware the couple had a tumultuous relationship and urged police to find Alturet-Rivera.

Before obtaining the video of the man dumping the pocketbook, detectives interviewed Alturet-Rivera and he insisted he had been in the Bronx early that morning with another girlfriend, who seemed to provide an alibi for him covering the early morning hours .

By the time they got the video, Alturet-Rivera had gone to stay with relatives in Connecticut and then moved to Puerto Rico.

Among the trial's first witnesses was Special Agent Nathan Wright, a member of the FBI's Cellular Analysis Survey Team. Wright mapped out how the cellphones of both Alturet-Rivera and Casado were in Yonkers around the time of the shooting and that both phones made their way to the Bronx after 3:30 a.m.

Phone records showed that the last call to Casado's phone was at 5:03 a.m. and that the signal bounced off a cell tower near Alturet-Rivera's girlfriend in the Bronx. The caller was Casado's mother, who had been trying to reach her before going out to look for her.

The phone was never found and O'Rourke suggested that Alturet-Rivera had taken it from Casado and gotten rid of it to keep authorities from learning about how he lured her that morning.

Jurors will not hear what happened to a new girlfriend of Alturet-Rivera's in Puerto Rico. Ilia Milan Melendez disappeared in late March 2018. She and Alturet-Rivera had been scheduled to take a vacation that week but he went alone and used her credit card. Her body was discovered a week later along a river in San Lorenzo, 20 miles from where she lived in Fajardo.

Melendez was last seen leaving a bar with Alturet-Rivera but he claimed that he dropped her off at home and never saw her again.

Authorities have said that Alturet-Rivera remains a suspect in that case but no charges have been filed.

Twitter: @jonbandler

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Luis Alturet-Rivera goes on trial in Yonkers slaying of Diana Casado