XPost: fl.politics, alt.killers.serial, sac.general
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A grand jury has indicted the estranged husband and father-in-
law of Nicole Montalvo, just more than a month after Gov. Ron
DeSantis took the case away from Orange-Osceola State Attorney
Aramis Ayala amid a feud with Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson.

Christopher Otero-Rivera, who Montalvo was in the process of
divorcing before she was found dead in October, is now charged
with second-degree murder, abuse of a dead body and evidence
tampering, court records show. He faces up to life in prison if
convicted.

His father, Angel Rivera, is charged with being an accessory
after the fact, which carries up to a 15-year prison sentence.
Both men are scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

The indictment comes months after the St. Cloud mother’s remains
were found at her in-laws’ Hixon Avenue home and at a nearby
vacant lot on Henry J Avenue. Otero-Rivera and Rivera were
arrested Oct. 27 by Gibson’s detectives on first-degree murder
charges, but a judge later ruled they couldn’t be held after
Ayala’s office missed a deadline to indict them.

Thursday’s indictments came after prosecutors for Ocala-based
State Attorney Brad King took the case to a grand jury ahead of
a looming speedy trial deadline in April, which legal experts
told the Orlando Sentinel would have freed both men on charges
related to Montalvo’s death, had it passed.

Otero-Rivera and Rivera were already being held in the Osceola
County Jail on other charges. Otero-Rivera is scheduled to
appear in court March 19 for a violation of probation hearing
regarding an October 2018 case in which he was accused of
kidnapping and beating Montalvo.

King’s Fifth Circuit State Attorney’s Office, which was assigned
the case by DeSantis following the public feud between Gibson
and Ayala over her handling of the case, declined to comment on
the charges filed Thursday.

Gibson reached out to Tallahassee seeking to remove Ayala after
months of calling on prosecutors to pursue first-degree murder
charges, which would carry the possibility of the death
penalty.In his request for DeSantis to intervene, he accused
Ayala of “hindering the continued collection of evidence and
investigation” due to her opposition to the death penalty.

In response, Ayala told reporters and wrote in a letter to
DeSantis the sheriff had rushed to arrest Otero-Rivera and his
father to boost his re-election bid. She called Gibson’s
comments about her political in nature and “riddled with
inaccurate facts.”

At an press conference about another case Thursday, Ayala said
she didn’t know the details of the indictments in the Montalvo
case, but noted the threshold of evidence to indict is “a very
low level.” Grand jurors need only to find probable cause for
charges, while jurors in a trial have to find proof beyond a
reasonable doubt.

“I don’t think that should surprise anyone, especially with the
level of pressure that came from the governor to make certain
there was an indictment, but at this point, now the real work
matters — you know, the things that our attorneys were working
toward to get the evidence,” Ayala said. “At the end of the day,
I can say that me and my team certainly hoped that there was
justice for this community and justice for the family.”

A press conference scheduled for 5 p.m. Thursday was canceled
shortly after it was announced on social media by the Sheriff’s
Office. When asked why it was canceled, spokeswoman Bethzaida
Garcia told the Sentinel in an email the agency is “waiting for
details to become public.”

She did not respond to further requests for comment about the
case or whether the press conference will be rescheduled.

Legal experts told the Sentinel prosecutors would have faced an
uphill battle had they indicted Otero-Rivera and Rivera for
first-degree murder, due to a lack of concrete evidence
connection one or both of them to Montalvo’s killing.

The 33-year-old went missing Oct. 21 after dropping off her 8-
year-old son at the Riveras’ home.

Investigators said she never left the property and was
dismembered and buried on both lots owned by the family using a
rented excavator. GPS data from Otero-Rivera’s ankle monitor
showed him moving around the area of the property where
Montalvo’s remains were discovered.

But according to other evidence made public in the case, DNA
tests determined blood found inside the Hixon Avenue garage
didn’t belong to Montalvo. Deputies were also unable to find
witnesses directly tying one or both men to the killing except
for Nicholas Rivera, Otero-Rivera’s brother, who told
authorities he saw his brother and father standing over
Montalvo’s lifeless body in the garage.

The youngest of Angel Rivera’s sons, he was charged with eight
unrelated counts of possession of child porn. Wanda Rivera, the
family matriarch, is only facing a misdemeanor charge of lying
to deputies after a felony case for tampering with evidence was
dropped, court records show.

“It’s 100% circumstantial, and in a [first-degree murder] case
like that, the jury has to decide whether those facts support a
theory of guilty or a theory of innocence. And if it supports
one theory of innocence, the case falls apart," said Jason
Fiesta, a University of Central Florida legal studies professor.

The Medical Examiner’s Office has not released an autopsy report
for Montalvo, nor have authorities released a cause of death.

And like Ayala, some experts agreed it’s possible deputies
rushed to charge the two suspects after finding Montalvo’s
buried remains.

“There’s an argument to be made they rushed to arrest a little
bit,” H. Scott Fingerhut, a defense attorney and former
prosecutor who teaches law at Florida International University,
said in January. “But you also have to look at the circumstances
and the evidence they already have.”

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