Address:http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-26-Fri-2001/news/17309101.html
Friday, October 26, 2001
Woman won’t be charged in death of common-law husband Prosecutors view
her use of gun after repeated torture as self-defense By RYAN OLIVER
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Prosecutors have decided not to charge a 32-year-old woman who killed
her common-law husband after he held her captive and tortured her with a
scalding-hot butter knife for four days.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Ron Bloxham said Maria Cruz’s life was
threatened repeatedly by Francisco Olvera and added that she was acting
in self-defense when she shot him Oct. 9.

“She had been held, been beaten and been burned,” Bloxham said. “She
said he was going to kill her.”

Las Vegas police responded to the couple’s home at 830 N. Lamb Blvd.,
near Washington Avenue, shortly after the shooting and found Olvera, 32,
dead on the floor.

Cruz was taken to University Medical Center and treated for numerous
burns. Neighbors say she has moved out of her mobile home.

Police said Cruz was tied up for at least part of the four days she was
held captive in front of the couple’s three children — ages 12, 2 and
1.

Her husband tortured her by heating a butter knife over a gas stove and
burning her hands, legs, breasts and vaginal area with it, a police
report said.

Cruz also was bruised from numerous beatings, and Olvera repeatedly held
a .25-caliber gun to her and threatened to kill her, the report said.

Police said the woman told her husband at one point that she needed to
care for her children.

She then fired the handgun five times, killing her husband, police said.

Bloxham said Olvera was upset because he thought his wife was cheating
on him.

Investigators, however, found no evidence of an affair.

Millie Baisdon, who lives at an adjacent mobile home, said Cruz had two
black eyes on the day of the shooting when authorities took her out of
the house to the hospital. On her face below her eyes, “it was nothing
but a bloody pulp,” Baisdon said.

“I’ll never forget that face when she came out of there,” Baisdon said.
“She was just walking around like she was in a state of La La Land. She
looked up at me, and I just put my arms out, and she came to me.”

Baisdon, who baby-sat the couple’s two younger children, said she never
knew Olvera to beat his wife. But she said Cruz always seemed to be in a
rush to get home and, like the rest of the family, was rarely seen
outside.
“You couldn’t be friends with that family,” she said.

Olvera recently had lost his job and started using methamphetamine
before holding his wife captive, Bloxham said.

He also had a history of domestic violence and would threaten to kill
her if she ever reported it to authorities, he said.

“You could always argue, ‘Why didn’t she just leave him before?’ “
Bloxham said. “But we have to ask if we have a prosecutable case, and,
no, we do not.”

“This is one of the more clear cases of abuse, and it would be extremely
difficult to prevail in a case like this.”

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