The murder trial of a 25-year-old man accused of murdering his girlfriend last October and burying her body in their backyard has been postponed until Aug. 28.
It was to have started Monday.
Because evidence against Marvin Dominguez in the strangulation death of Patricia Ann Haumacher, 30, has not been returned from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab in Washington, D.C., a government prosecutor last week asked Territorial Court Judge Alphonso Andrews for a continuance until the end of August, according to the V.I. Daily News.
Because of the postponement, Dominguez’s court-appointed attorney, Richard Daley, asked that the defendant, who is being held on $250,000 bail, be released until the trial starts. Because no detention hearing was held, Dominguez could be released from jail if his bail amount can be raised and the prosecution agrees.
Although Dominguez turned himself in to police in late November in connection with Haumacher’s murder, he has pleaded not guilty.
Haumacher’s family in New Jersey reported her missing on Nov. 9 after not hearing from her for more than a month. On Nov. 13 V.I. police interviewed Dominguez, who told investigators she was having family problems and had left the island. Acquaintances of Dominguez and Haumacher said she was last seen around Oct. 8.
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 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.