The 25-year-old man charged with killing his girlfriend last October and then burying her body in the yard of their Frederiksted home plead not guilty to murder Wednesday.
Marvin Dominguez plead not guilty to murdering Patricia Ann Haumacher, 30, in the first degree. Dominguez was granted a request to have a jury trial, which Judge Edgar Ross scheduled for early March.
Haumacher’s family in New Jersey reported her missing on Nov. 9. Acquaintances of Dominguez and Haumacher said she was last seen around Oct. 8. Her parents filed a missing person report on the mainland after not hearing from their daughter for more than a month.
After Haumacher’s disappearance, Dominguez told the acquaintances she had moved back to the mainland. Dominguez turned himself in on Nov. 29, soon after authorities queried him about Haumacher’s whereabouts.
The next day officials exhumed Haumacher’s body, bound and gagged inside of a duffel bag, from a shallow grave in the yard of the house the two had shared in Estate Two Brothers. An autopsy concluded that the victim was killed by manual strangulation and had been dead for one to two months.