Prosecutors have said that 54-year-old Miguel Ventura died in a robbery gone bad, but the defense attorney for one of the men accused of killing him says that the real motive was sex.
In closing arguments Thursday, defense attorney Liyah Brown said her client, Alexander Gomez-Enamorado and his friend, Jose Reyes, were with Ventura the day he was murdered to perform sexual acts at his restaurant in exchange for money.
“They were there to have a paid threesome, and something went wrong,” Brown said. “When Mr. Gomez entered that restaurant, he didn’t know what he was signing up for.”
Ventura was found Nov. 8, 2010, at approximately 4:00 pm suffering from multiple stab wounds in a restaurant he owned in the 1200 block of 11th Street Northwest. He was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead. Gomez-Enamorado, 23, was arrested on May 31, 2012, after calling police to say he had information about the case. Reyes, the alleged accomplice, is believed to be in Mexico.
The statements about sex were made as part of Gomez-Enamorado’s defense’s closing arguments. The case concluded and jurors were sent to deliberate at about 1 p.m. Thursday. Closing statements from prosecutors were given Wednesday afternoon.
Gomez-Enamorado, 23, is charged with three counts of felony murder while armed, conspiracy, robbery, burglary, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice.
During trial, prosecutors said that Gomez-Enamorado and Reyes had been planning to rob Ventura four days before his death.
But Brown’s accounting for the events leading to murder was different.
In closing arguments she told jurors that Gomez-Enamorado and Ventura were friends who had a sexual history together, and that Gomez-Enamorado would often go to the restaurant to “have sex, drink some beers,” and sometimes recruit young men like him to have sex with Ventura.
The day Ventura was murdered, Brown said Gomez-Enamorado brought Reyes to meet Ventura and have sex in exchange for money. Gomez-Enamorado had no idea what Reyes was going to do, she said.
According to Brown, Reyes and Ventura watched pornographic videos together shortly before Ventura was stabbed. Brown said Gomez-Enamorado was apart from the others, sitting at the bar watching a movie and drinking beer, when Reyes and Ventura got into the struggle that led to Reyes stabbing Ventura over 10 times.
“This is all in the interview transcripts of Mr. Gomez talking to the police during the investigation,” Brown said. “These are hundreds of pages of transcript that the government doesn’t want you to see.”
In a police interrogation video shown at trial, Gomez-Enamorado can be heard telling detectives that Ventura offered him and Reyes money for sex. He said the three of them drank beer and watched a sex tape in the back of the restaurant.
Gomez-Enamorado said that he didn’t like the sexual acts Ventura had proposed, so he went to the front of the restaurant and sat at a table. Five minutes later, Gomez-Enamorado said, Ventura charged from the back of the restaurant yelling that Reyes had stabbed him.
Jury deliberations are scheduled to continue Friday morning.
