Laguna man sentenced for axing his mother

By Tom Purdom
Staff Writer

PUEBLO OF LAGUNA — A 44-year-old man who chopped up his mother with an ax and then burned the body parts in the family wood stove was sentenced to six and one half years in prison.

In a plea agreement, Louis P. Romero pleaded guilty in federal court to voluntary manslaughter, court documents show. The federal government had insufficient evidence of premeditation to make a murder charge stick.

According to federal law, the case must have distinct premeditation in order for a charge to be murder. If premeditation cannot be proved, then the next lower charge is voluntary manslaughter.

The plea bargain was brokered by Assistant United States Attorney Jerry Massie and Romero's attorney John Butcher, according to Department of Justice files. Romero pleaded guilty before United States District Judge Bruce D. Black in United States District Court in Albuquerque.

Romero lived with his 72-year-old mother Maria Sophia Romero in a small two-bedroom wood-framed home on the Pueblo of Laguna, previous police investigations show. In January 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered that Maria Romero had been chopped into pieces with an ax, the parts put into a wood-burning stove in the living room of the home Louis Romero shared with his mother and her remains were reduced to charred piles of ash and bone.

The remains were dumped in the dirt around the house and also in a nearby abandoned corral.

According to the government's concurrence with the pre-sentence report, Romero pleaded guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter on July 9, 2004. The document states that Romero admitted to the government's facts about the case saying they were "indeed true." The six and one-half years in federal prison sentence plus three years of supervised probation after his release is the maximum sentence allowed by federal sentencing guidelines.

Romero was sent to the Phoenix Federal Correctional Institute to begin serving his sentence.

The gruesome crime had its beginnings on Jan. 8, 2004, when John Romero, the defendant's brother, reported to the authorities that his mother was missing and he was concerned. Maria Romero was last seen alive on Jan. 5.

Court documents show that tribal police and family members went to the Romero home on Jan. 12, to check on the missing woman. After knocking on the front door, police got no response. At that point, family members told tribal police to get inside the house, but instead of finding Maria Romero inside, Louis Romero was found in the house, apparently drunk, court documents state. The police ran a background check on Louis Romero and found he was a fugitive from the Pueblo of Laguna Judicial System; so the 44-year-old man was taken into custody on unrelated charges.

Meanwhile, Maria Romero was still missing.

On Jan. 13, Laguna Police called the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Albuquerque about the missing woman and the fact her son had been taken into custody on unrelated charges. Because it was crime on an Indian reservation, the FBI became involved in the case.

A search of the home on the night of Jan. 13, revealed blood-stained clothing and a blood-stained butcher knife.

The FBI interviewed John Romero on Jan. 14, and at that time he told investigators he feared his brother may have harmed his mother, according to court documents. In addition, court documents show John Romero told the FBI his brother and mother argued and that sometimes the arguments turned so violent that he, John Romero, had to intervene.

Also on Jan. 14, investigators peeked inside the wood stove and noted it appeared to be"scrubbed clean."

The cleaned stove alarmed the FBI, who called an Emergency Federal Response Team into the investigation. The team took additional looks at what appeared to be piles of ashes in the yard and then one of the investigators found a pair of burned, wire glasses in one of the piles of ashes. Court records state the glasses were the same kind worn by Maria Romero. Bone fragments were also discovered in the ashes and on Jan. 15, a forensic anthropologist from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque confirmed that the bone fragments were human. The fragments were later found to belong to Maria Romero.

At that point the FBI brought its Crime Scene Investigators to the Pueblo of Laguna and the Romero household. There, according to court documents, investigators used Luminol inside the house to find almost all rooms splattered with blood.

Romero was placed into the custody of the United States Marshals Office and on July 9, he pleaded guilty to the charge of voluntary manslaughter.