Girlfriend found not guilty of Mount Prospect murder

Jurors late Friday found a Mount Prospect woman not guilty of killing her live-in boyfriend more than two years ago.

The verdict triggered distinctly different sobbing and hugs among the families of defendant Maria T. Lazo, 25, and Oscar Martinez, who died of a single stab wound to his heart on April 16, 2007 at the age of 30.

Family and friends of Martinez said they've known for some time that Lazo's attorneys were contending that Martinez had stabbed himself, but they considered those arguments unconvincing and still believed their loved one was murdered.

Though the Cook County medical examiner ruled Martinez's death a homicide, defense attorney argued that his fatal wound was self-inflicted during the same domestic argument both sides in the case acknowledged.

In a lengthy videotaped interview with Mount Prospect detectives, Lazo repeatedly stated that Martinez had cut himself, but later changed her story to say that she had stabbed him.

In court Friday, Lazo denied remembering making such a confession to police, though it was part of the evidence jurors heard.

Werner Spitz, a forensic pathologist for more than 50 years, testified that Lazo's story that Martinez had stabbed himself in the heat of an argument was supported by the physical evidence.

Spitz said the autopsy of Martinez revealed that he was an alcoholic with high blood pressure and an enlarged heart who was intoxicated at the time of his death.

Spitz contended that Martinez had not intended to kill himself, but that in his desire to win his argument with Lazo had cut himself with a kitchen knife in a part of the chest which would have missed a normally sized heart.

Prosecutors spoke to the Cook County medical examiner's finding that it was unreasonable for Martinez to have stabbed himself in the manner that caused his death.

Prosecutors further characterized Spitz as a hired gun whose job it is to attempt to inject reasonable doubt into murder cases. Spitz earns $5,000 for each day spent away from his Michigan office and $400 per hour for his preparatory research in the cases he takes on.

Defense attorneys acknowledged Lazo's change of story in her videotaped interview, even if her own testimony did not.

Assistant Public Defender Calvin Aguilar said that police never told Lazo that she was under arrest during her interview, or even that Martinez had already died.

Rather, they told her that Martinez was telling them that Lazo had stabbed him and that Lazo would not be permitted to see him at the hospital until she told a story that matched his, Aguilar said.

He added that in Lazo's interview, she told detectives that agreeing with Martinez would be a way of making him feel better.

Assistant state's attorneys, however, argued that Lazo's interview showed her to be an obsessive, depressed woman who was seeking revenge on Martinez for breaking their plans to spend the previous day together after he went to visit his family instead.

Lazo's own 911 call to paramedics marked the first instance of her contention that Martinez had stabbed himself.

She testified Friday that during their disagreement in the early hours of April 16, 2007, Martinez had walked up behind her with one of the knives they'd bought only two days earlier and asked her, "Is this what you want?"

"When I looked over my shoulder, I saw blood on his shirt and he was holding a knife," Lazo said.

She said she then ran to get towels to stop Martinez from bleeding from the wound in his chest and called 911. Martinez was immediately unable to talk and appeared to be struggling for breath as he collapsed against the wall, she said.