Woman who killed aunt with meat cleaver, raped relative under 15, sent to prsion for 23 years
QUEENS, NEW YORK: A 32-year-old woman was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being convicted of killing her aunt with a meat cleaver two years ago.
Elizabeth Sanchez, who also went by the name Digna Sanchez-Ortiz, pleaded guilty to manslaughter for killing Maria Palaguachi, 50, in June, earning her a plea-deal, Queens District Attorney’s Office confirmed in a statement to People magazine.
At the time, she had also pleaded guilty to a second-degree rape charge concerning sexual relations with a boy under 15. She raped the minor, whom she was related to by blood, three times between December 2016 and March 2017.
Sanchez's sentence on the rape charge, which was two years and four months to seven years in jail, will run simultaneously with her prison term for murder. “The sentences are to run concurrently and to be followed by five years’ post-release supervision,” the statement from the DA's office noted.
The victim was killed in her home in Jamaica, Queens in March 2017, after she offered the accused a place to stay after learning that she had nowhere to live.
“This defendant brutally took the life of her close relative, someone who took her into her home when the woman did not have a place to stay,” acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan said Tuesday, New York Daily News reported. “This was a brutal attack that has traumatized an entire family.”
After the killing, Sanchez hid the bloody meat cleaver in her attic. Palaguachi's hacked body was found by her daughter after “the victim was struck multiple times on the head, back and shoulder” with the murder weapon.
The police responded to the victim's house after receiving reports of domestic violence. After placing Sanchez under arrest, they ran a background check on her. That was when they found out that she had a criminal past.