Intruder
For about a year, my brother Eric lived with our sister Julene in Sandy, Utah. One day during that time they were watching TV and heard someone come in the back door. When they went to investigate they were attacked by an intruder. They were able to get him to leave through the front door and neighbors chased him and caught him on the next street. The guy was a career criminal and it didn't take long before they found out he had committed a murder earlier in the day. I happened to be at Julene's the day the police were there to get DNA from her and Eric. I think the suspect had blood on his shirt and they needed to figure out whose blood it was. I know they searched Julene's yard for a gun. Julene, especially, has really suffered long term effects from this event. Eric had to testify at the trial. I went to one day of the trial. It was interesting to hear how afraid some of the people who testified were of this guy. I remember one witness was planning to move after testifying.
WWW.SLTRIB.COM
MAY
26, 2017
Reece,
killer of Utah mom, gets life without parole
By Aaron Falk The Salt Lake Tribune
Published September 11,
2012 7:33 am
Courts • Cody Alan Reece said the family of 33-year-old Magda
Aleman would find no comfort or closure in his imprisonment.
West Jordan • A Utah man convicted of killing a Sandy mother in
her own home two years ago again proclaimed his innocence Monday, as a judge
sentenced him to life in prison without parole.
Cody Alan Reece said the family of 33-year-old Magda Aleman
would find no comfort or closure in his imprisonment.
"I'm not the killer," Reece said.
In July, a 3rd District Court jury convicted Reece of
killing Aleman, the wife of a Mexican restaurant chain owner and mother of
three, on July 13, 2010. Israel Aleman-Gomes, who owns about a dozen
Rancherito's restaurants around the Salt Lake Valley, came home to find his
wife covered in blood, dead on a love seat.
Prosecutors say Reece broke into the home, beat the woman
with the butt of a handgun and shot her in the forehead at point-blank range.
But at trial, Reece and his defense attorneys said he was a
heavy drug user and the victim of unfortunate circumstances. Reece, who had
been drinking heavily and using drugs for days before the slaying, said he was
in Aleman's neighborhood looking for mail to steal when he came upon the woman's
home. He said he heard a gunshot, looked in Aleman's back window and saw the
woman dead from what he believed was a suicide.
Reece said he does not remember what happened but that he
found himself inside the home, standing over Aleman's body and noticed he had
something on his hand — apparently Aleman's blood —�which he wiped on his shirt. That's when Reece said he saw a man
with a gun. Reece ran from the house, jumped in his car and sped away through
Sandy, causing a car crash and then entering several more homes.
As prosecutor Peter Leavitt held up a crime scene photo of
an "absolutely atrocious and brutal" murder, Reece interrupted.
"How many times is he going to go over this s—-?"
the defendant said.
Following another outburst, officers removed Reece from the
courtroom, after he struggled with three men who slammed him against a door.
"I'm sick of hearing his lies," Reece said after a
break, asking to stay out of the courtroom while the prosecutor spoke. "I
had to sit through the whole trial. I'm sick of hearing him. …There's nothing
he's going to say that will change the fact that I'm innocent of this
crime."
Throughout the hearing, Judge Bruce Lubeck weighed whether
to give Reece a chance at parole after serving at least 25 years behind bars.
The 32-year-old Reece was sentenced earlier this month to 15 years in federal
prison for illegally possessing firearms, and he would be in his 70s before he
could hope for parole.
"There's a lot of time between now and then for Mr.
Reece to behave or misbehave, to show that he has rehabilitated or not, to show
if he's the kind of person who deserves parole or not," defense attorney
Lisa Remal said.
But Leavitt, the prosecutor, said Reece had proven himself a
threat.
Reece was released from prison in April 2003 and arrested
just two months later for a parole violation. In 2010, out on bail and knowing
he was a suspect in Aleman's murder, Reece was arrested twice in eight days,
both times with guns.
"I think we're lucky that we're only here on one
homicide in this case," Leavitt said.
In the end, Lubeck said those arrests weighed too heavily
against a shot at parole. The judge called Reece "dangerous to
people."
"I don't do this lightly," Lubeck said. "It's
an extreme sentence, but in my view it's an extreme crime."
Before he knew his fate, Reece said he would "never see
daylight" with either sentence.
"It's all the same to me," he said. "I know
at night I don't need to pray for my soul."
http://archive.sltrib.com/story.php?ref=/sltrib/news/54866089-78/reece-aleman-parole-woman.html.csp
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