Taped confession of woman charged in May homicide played at trial

Prosecutors played the videotaped confession of Elita “Gaby” Maldonado on Friday at her murder trial in Las Vegas.

“I’m just shamed,” Maldonado told detectives during the June 4 interview. “Just shamed.”

Maldonado, 31, is accused of fatally stabbing 49-year-old William Sanford in his Las Vegas apartment after he paid her $200 for sex. Defense lawyers are seeking a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Jurors spent much of Friday viewing photos of the bloody crime scene.

After the May 29 slaying, Maldonado hopped a freight train that she thought was headed to Phoenix. She wound up in Wyoming before Las Vegas police identified her as the suspect and tracked her down.

The defendant rocked gently back and forth or from side to side in her chair as she watched her tearful confession Friday afternoon. She also occasionally used a tissue to wipe her eyes.

During the June interview, Maldonado told detectives she had been living on the streets of Las Vegas, where she tried panhandling and prostitution, but had left about nine days earlier.

“I had just been there for too long, and I just didn’t do well in that city,” she said.

At one point during the interview, detectives showed Maldonado a photo of Sanford, and she told them he had picked her up “a couple nights.”

When they proceeded with questions about her time with Sanford, Maldonado said, “Tell me what you are trying to ask me.”

One detective told her that something had happened to Sanford and that their investigation had led them to her.

“Is he OK?” Maldonado asked.

“No, he’s not OK,” the detective replied.

Maldonado said she told Sanford she needed help with her daughters.

“I signed over my children in 2000-something in Florida,” she explained to the detectives.

Maldonado said Sanford told her he was willing to help her. She said she went with him to his apartment and immediately heard a voice in her head.

“My little girl told me, ‘Mommy, Mommy, he has toys.’ And I’m wondering why the toys,” she said.

She said Sanford pulled out a sex toy when she asked him about what she had heard.

“Then I heard my baby screaming and calling out my name,” Maldonado said.

She said she also heard her daughter say, “Tell him to stop.”

As the interview continued, Maldonado asked, “Is he alive?”

“No, he’s not alive,” the detective said. “He’s got a family out there that wants to know what happened and why.”

Maldonado sobbed as she later told the detectives, “Ever since I started smoking this drug called crystal meth my mind has been going on these — I don’t know what, but I can hear my children.”

She admitted she grew angry with Sanford and picked up a short barbell.

“He hears my children screaming, and he still goes to lay down and go to bed,” she said.

A detective asked Maldonado whether she hit him in the head, and she replied, “I believe I did.”

She said the two began “wrestling” and “tussling” before they ended up in the kitchen, where she grabbed a knife and began stabbing him.

“I killed a man,” she told the detectives. “I didn’t know that this was going to happen. I didn’t know.”

District Judge Stefany Miley is presiding over the trial, which is scheduled to resume Monday afternoon.

Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Find her on Twitter: @CarriGeer.