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Background: The Home Depot in Cypress Park, California, became a crime scene when Valentino Gutierrez allegedly burned a suitcase with his wife’s remains inside (KABC). On the left is Valentino Gutierrez (Los Angeles Police Department), and on the right is Tiana Alfred (LAPD).
A murder trial involving a man from California, accused of killing his wife, dismembering her body, and setting it on fire inside a suitcase has been put on hold. This pause comes after his legal team questioned his mental competence. The man reportedly took the suitcase on public transport before igniting it in a Home Depot parking lot.
In 2018, Valentino Gutierrez, aged 64, was accused of the “especially shocking” act of murdering and dismembering his 31-year-old wife, Tiana Alfred, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. He faces charges of murder and property arson for allegedly strangling Alfred and burning her body parts at a Home Depot located on Figueroa Street.
Prosecutors told Law&Crime on Wednesday that Gutierrez’s lawyers raised a doubt of mental competence at a hearing on July 17. He is scheduled to appear on July 31 for his mental-competency hearing.
Gutierrez is accused of traveling on a Gold Line Metro train in Pasadena with a bicycle and the suitcase after Alfred’s murder. He allegedly got off the train at the Lincoln/Cypress Station stop and rode his bike with the luggage to a Home Depot in the 2000 block of Figueroa Street, where he tried torching it.
“Once the fire was put out, the firefighters found human remains,” according to a DA’s office press release. “Surveillance video allegedly led investigators to Gutierrez who was later arrested.”
Alfred’s murder was believed to have occurred on or around Jan. 31, 2018, at a Pasadena restaurant that had been closed for several months. Gutierrez allegedly dismembered her there, with cops saying they never discovered an official motive.
“To dismember an individual like that is pretty grotesque and it takes an awful lot of effort and determination by an individual, which is pretty cold,” LAPD Capt. Billy Hayes, an investigator on the case, told reporters at a February 2018 press conference after Gutierrez’s arrest, per the Los Angeles Times.
The slaying was a “particularly disturbing homicide because of its sheer brutality,” according to Deputy Chief Justin Eisenberg.
Prosecutors believe Gutierrez and his wife were allegedly homeless and living at a shelter for several months leading up to the murder. Gutierrez has a lengthy criminal history, including arrests and convictions for robbery, battery, domestic violence and possession of a deadly weapon.
