‘I will never be able to fix it.’ Lexington man sentenced for brutally killing wife
When he was sentenced to life in prison, a Lexington man told the judge that since his arrest he has not thought of anything other than the pain he caused his family.
Jose Antonio Rivera, 41, previously pleaded guilty to murder, second-degree assault, violation of a protective order, stalking, evidence tampering and terroristic threatening, according to court records. The life sentence on the murder charge imposed Tuesday will run concurrently with sentences for the other charges.
Karina Gutierrez, 38, died of blunt force trauma after Rivera attacked her in the early morning hours of Oct. 9, 2017. She had an active protective order out against Rivera, her estranged husband, at the time of her death. Gutierrez was beaten to death reportedly with a bat.
Rivera gave an emotional statement during his sentencing hearing Tuesday in which he apologized for taking his children’s mother away from them and expressed remorse for what happened. In his years in jail, he said he has thought of nothing but the pain he caused his children and family.
“Killing my wife was a mortal sin and I will never be able to fix it,” Rivera said through an interpreter at the hearing. “I would no doubt give my life if I could bring her back. She was a good woman and she was the only woman I loved in my entire life.”
During a vigil for domestic violence victims held by the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office in 2017, Gutierrez’s family said that she’d done everything she was supposed to do to protect herself from violence. She’d left her husband and gotten a protective order against him.
After moving out in 2015, “he is stalking me, sending me threatening text messages where he said he wants to harm me in many ways,” Gutierrez wrote in January 2016. “He had used violence in the past towards me and I am sure he will do that again.”
“He won’t stop hurting me,” Gutierrez said in the protection order.
In a long sentencing memorandum from Rivera’s defense attorneys that included several letters from Rivera’s family members, his attorneys detailed his difficult childhood and alcohol dependency problems. The issues helped contribute to Rivera’s attack against his wife, much of which he says he does not remember.
Rivera said he remembers going to confront his wife the night of the attack. He said he doesn’t remember anything clearly until he heard his daughter tell him to stop and looked down to see his badly injured wife, according to his sentencing memorandum.
When Rivera was growing up in Mexico, his family was impoverished and he often saw his father abuse his mother, and was the victim of some abuse himself, according to the memorandum. That combined with the trauma of traveling to the United States alone on a fraught journey when he was 14 years old, and other subsequent physical and emotional traumas, contributed to the state Rivera was in, the memorandum argued.
In a letter written to Fayette County Circuit Court Judge Lucy VanMeter, Rivera said he could not say exactly how he lost his way, but that he knew he had made bad decisions and become a jealous and angry man.
During his statement Tuesday, Rivera said that he accepts his punishment in hopes of helping people heal, and that he will repent for his wife’s death for the rest of his days.
Rivera’s attorney, Warren Beck, told VanMeter during the sentencing that his client looked forward to being transported to a state prison so he could take advantage of the programs provided there.
This story was originally published July 22, 2020 at 7:24 AM.
