Murder suspect changed stories during police interview

Thursday's testimony in the murder trial of a Mount Prospect woman included a videotaped interview in which she changed her story from saying her boyfriend stabbed himself to her own confession of it.

But the trial of 25-year-old Maria T. Lazo also included a veteran pathologist's contention that Lazo's boyfriend was an alcoholic who killed himself accidentally as a result of an impulsive act.

Lazo is accused of killing her live-in boyfriend, 30-year-old Oscar Martinez, with a single stab wound to his chest in the early hours of April 16, 2007.

Lazo had moved to the United States from the Philippines the previous July and met Martinez shortly after.

In her videotaped interview with Mount Prospect detectives, Lazo originally said Martinez had stabbed himself with a knife from a set purchased less than two days earlier.

This was also what she told the 911 operator she called for help after the stabbing.

According to her story, she and Martinez had spent most of the previous day apart before coming together at their apartment in the early morning hours.

Their conflicting plans for the previous day triggered an argument, she said, which ended with Martinez asking "You know what? You know what?" and walking away into the kitchen. She said she next heard his voice behind her asking "Is this what you want?" and she turned to see him pushing the knife into his chest.

After going over the account once, detectives read Lazo her Miranda rights but told her she wasn't under arrest.

Throughout the hours-long interview, Lazo was not told that Martinez had died less than two hours after paramedics were called.

Detectives instead began to tell Lazo that they were in communication with Martinez at the hospital and that he was telling them she had stabbed him.

Lazo stuck to her story for some time afterward, though detectives repeatedly told her that Martinez and the doctor at the hospital were saying something different and they needed all the stories to match.

An increasingly exhausted-looking Lazo finally confessed to stabbing Martinez, going so far as to physically demonstrate how she was able to take the knife from his hand without hurting herself on the blade.

However, she said it was still Martinez who brought the knife from the kitchen and that she didn't feel he was threatening to stab her with it.

Werner Spitz, a professor of pathology in Michigan who's worked in the field for more than 50 years, testified that Lazo's original story was more in line with the evidence he analyzed.

"My opinion is that this individual died as a result of a stab wound and that that stab wound was self-inflicted," Spitz said.

He added that Martinez had a 0.1 percent blood-alcohol concentration at time of the autopsy and a liver that demonstrated a history of binge drinking.

Spitz said the angle of the knife wound made it more likely that Martinez rather than Lazo had caused it.

He said Martinez also had an unusually enlarged heart for a 30-year-old which was likely caused by high blood pressure. A heart that was not enlarged would not have been cut by the knife wound.

"I believe he didn't mean to kill himself either," Spitz said. "That it was an impulsive act, trying to show her he could perform this act."

The trial will resume Friday with prosecutors' cross-examination of Spitz.