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Mercado’s household reported him lacking quickly after. He wasn’t discovered till 2022, when the person who testified Friday, Spicer’s most up-to-date boyfriend Waylan Gentry, advised police that Spicer had admitted to him eight months earlier than that she had entombed Mercado’s physique in a storage space in her yard.
Mercado’s nostril and eye socket had been “obliterated,” San Bernardino Police detective Tiffany Montez testified.
Judge William Jefferson Powell IV made his ruling after protection legal professional Gary W. Smith’s withering cross-examination of Gentry, who admitted he couldn’t bear in mind what number of felonies he had dedicated in his profession dealing medicine or any particulars — such because the weapon he used — about an assault he had dedicated.
Family members of 42-year-old Mercado mentioned he and Spicer had been courting for 3 years and that they gave the impression to be getting alongside properly whereas dwelling collectively earlier than he vanished in 2014. In an interview after the invention of the physique, Mercado’s mom and sisters puzzled why the Davidson Street residence had not been searched years earlier.
Mercardo’s mom, Guadalupe Plascencia, thought Mercado’s background might have initially steered police away from Spicer as a suspect. He had been “out and in of jail” however had “settled down,” she mentioned.
San Bernardino police introduced on Sept. 6, 2022, that they’d obtained a tip a couple of murder sufferer on the residence. They served a search warrant on Aug. 23 and located Mercado’s physique in a “makeshift tomb.”
Spicer was arrested on Sept. 2 in Yucaipa and charged with homicide. A police investigatory report later disclosed that the tip got here from Spicer’s present boyfriend.
Spicer has pleaded not responsible.
