This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Ogden • The last time Victor Hernandez saw his mother, he was an 11-year-old boy who had just awakened in the early morning on Christmas Day.
It was 2008, and Noemi Rodriguez kissed him on the forehead and told him "Merry Christmas," said a goodbye and left for work.
The following day, the 26-year-old mother of three was found stabbed to death in a Huntsville cemetery.
Prosecutors have charged her ex-boyfriend, 40-year-old Gutberto Heras-Corrales, with first-degree felony murder, accusing him of killing the woman in the upper Ogden valley area that Christmas Day seven years ago.
Hernandez, who is now 18, testified on Monday during a preliminary hearing for Heras-Corrales, detailing the weeks of escalating physical abuse he witnessed prior to his mother's violent death.
"In the beginning, they were happy," the teen testified. "They cared for each other … Going into December, he was getting violent after my sister was born. He was hitting my mother a lot."
The 18-year-old recalled witnessing much of the abuse, including an incident in early November 2008 when he said Heras-Corrales held a knife to his mother's stomach and demanded that the children not say anything to anyone about the violence. Once, when Rodriguez grabbed a broomstick to defend herself, Hernandez said his mother's boyfriend told her in Spanish, "I'll get revenge."
Rodriquez's body was found in the Huntsville Cemetery on Dec. 26, 2008, by a snowplow driver who was clearing the roads for a funeral, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
She had been stabbed 32 times, primarily in the neck, chest and face, according to Deputy Weber County Attorney Branden Miles, and the snow around her body was stained red with her blood.
"This was a violent, very personal, very intimate method of killing somebody, by repeatedly trying to plunge a knife into their neck," Miles said Monday. "And that is what the defendant did in his rageful fit of vengeance as he took the life of the mother of one of his children."
After hearing from several witnesses, 2nd District Judge Joseph Bean ordered Heras-Corrales to stand trial for the murder. The defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge, and is expected in court again on May 12.
In his closing argument, Miles pointed to a cell phone tower analysis that showed Heras-Corrales and Rodriguez meeting up on the afternoon on Christmas Day, and that both of their cell phones were "pinging" a tower in Huntsville in the upper Ogden valley later that same afternoon. The analysis also showed the defendant "beelining it right for the border of the United States" soon after officials believed she was murdered, Miles said.
Lab test results also showed that DNA police gathered from a pair of Heras-Corrales boxers matched DNA found under Rodriguez's fingernails.
The defendant was charged in 2009 with murder, though authorities believed he had fled the country for Mexico. Police found him in Culican, Sinoloa in 2012, but he wasn't extradited to Utah until July 2015.
In addition to the murder case, Heras-Corrales is charged in Davis County with arson for allegedly burning down Rodriguez's mobile home in Layton five days before she was murdered. He is due in court for that case on April 19.