Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2004 | 9:38 a.m.
Prosecutors on Tuesday laid out for jurors a complicated murder-for-hire scheme that began with a lesbian love triangle and ended in the brutal slaying of a UNLV student.
During opening arguments in the capital murder trial of Luis Barroso, Chief Deputy District Attorney Frank Coumou said Barroso's co-worker hired him to kill her former lover and roommate.
Tzatzi Sanchez, 27, was found strangled in her home near Nellis Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue on Jan. 15, 2001. Police suspect she was also beaten and sexually assaulted.
Coumou said the slaying was rooted in a complicated love triangle involving Sanchez and two other women, Marsella Whaley and her lover. The three women had moved to the United States from Mexico.
Coumou said when Sanchez rented both women rooms in her home, Whaley's lover broke off the relationship with her and began a relationship with Sanchez.
Coumou said a jealous Whaley approached Barroso, 25, with whom she worked at a North Las Vegas factory, and ask him to "do a dirty job."
"In return, I'll give you some money, you can take whatever you want and I will have sex with you," were Whaley's words to Barroso, Coumou said.
Barroso took Whaley up on her offer, Coumou told jurors, and Barroso brought along a man named Omed Marroquin, 28.
"One of these men with his own two hands squeezed the life out of (Sanchez)," Coumou said. "A slow and agonizing death by strangulation."
Barroso's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Howard Brooks, did not deny that Sanchez's killing was brutal, but said his client was not involved.
Brooks acknowledged that his client was in Sanchez's house and stole several items, but said Barroso is no killer.
"While the evidence will clearly convict him of some crimes, it will not convict him of them all," Brooks said. "The evidence will fail to show that my client actually killed somebody."
Barroso faces 10 felony charges, including murder, sexual assault with use of a deadly weapon, burglary and robbery. Marroquin will stand trial on identical charges following Barroso's trial.
But Whaley may have gotten away with her alleged role in the crime.
She fled to Mexico after the slaying and got a job as a television reporter. Local authorities tried to have her extradited back to the United States to face charges, Coumou said, but Mexican authorities recently denied the extradition.
A warrant for her arrest is still outstanding and she will be arrested if she ever returns to the United States, Coumou said.
Authorities say Barroso and Marroquin broke into Sanchez's home through a window and tied up Sanchez and two men they found there. During the hourlong incident, police allege, Sanchez was sexually assaulted and gagged before being strangled.
Gloves found in Barroso's residence contained Sanchez's DNA and several items stolen from the home were found in the homes of both Barroso and Marroquin.
"They beat her," Coumou said, showing jurors a picture of Sanchez's lifeless body lying on the bed in the master bedroom. "You can see the blood that resulted from this beating."
Also found on Sanchez' bruised and beaten body was a deliberately placed movie ticket for the film, "What Women Want," Coumou said.
The movie stars actor Mel Gibson as a man who has the power to hear what women are thinking.
Testimony in the trial was expected to continue today.
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