Jury to decide whether girlfriend's death was heart attack or murder

SALT LAKE CITY — No one close to Thomas James Valdez questioned whether he loved his girlfriend, Maralee Andreason. 

"He treated her real good," Valdez's uncle, Raymond Garcia, testified in 3rd District Court Tuesday. "He did everything for her." 

Yet Valdez is on trial, accused of killing her. He is charged with murder, a first-degree felony, and possession of a firearm by a restricted person, a third-degree felony. Andreason, 55, was found dead March 9, 2010, in the West Valley apartment the couple shared near 3827 W. Rockwood Way (3390 South). 

"Maralee Andreason died a slow and painful death," prosecutor Yelena Ayrapetova told nine jurors during opening arguments Tuesday.

Police arrived at the couple's residence nearly 24 hours after Andreason died and found the woman's body amid "blood, lots of blood," Ayrapetova said. The prosecutor detailed stab wounds to Andreason's cheek and abdomen and a large laceration across Andreason's forehead before pointing out that Valdez never sought help from police or emergency responders. 

"(Valdez) didn't make a single 911 call," she said. "What he did was go into damage control. He wants you to think it was a fall followed by a heart attack."

Defense attorney Manny Garcia, however, was adamant that his client was only trying to help Andreason after a fall at the time she died. He said his client heard Andreason fall in the shower and found her clutching her chest and asking for heart medication. 

"Thomas Valdez didn't kill Maralee Andreason," Manny Garcia said. "He didn't cause her death or leave her to bleed to death. ... He tried to save her. She died and he sat with her, holding her for six hours after she died trying to figure out what to do."

He said Andreason had a history of heart problems, leading Valdez to assume she was having a heart attack. He brought her nitroglycerine pills after she asked for them, not knowing they would increase blood flow that would extend to the wound on her head, Manny Garcia said.

"There is another witness in this case, a silent witness," the defense attorney said. "The physical, actual and circumstantial evidence. It corroborates what Thomas said. ... He always pleads guilty to crimes when he was guilty. He's pleading not guilty (in this case) because he didn't do this."

Valdez's uncle, Raymond Garcia, and Valdez's sister, Sandra Valdez, offered differing accounts of a phone call his sister placed in the early morning hours of March 9, within hours of when the crime is alleged to have occurred.