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A Riverside woman who fatally stabbed her boyfriend 24 times and dismembered him was sentenced to 26 years in state prison on Monday. Carmen Montelongo, 54, was convicted on Aug. 29 for first-degree murder of her 62-year-old boyfriend, Samuel Wiggins, in 2011, according to KTLA.
Authorities began looking into Wiggins' whereabouts after his family reported him missing in April 2011. They then investigated his longtime girlfriend, Montelongo; however, she delayed the investigation because she told police he was alive and she was still keeping in touch with him. They arrested her in May 2011 in Ontario after they found her pushing a trash can containing his body parts down the street in a residential neighborhood, Daily Bulletin reported.
When the Ontario Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated the case, they discovered that Montelongo had stabbed Wiggins twice in his chest and 22 times in his back in his Diamond Bar home. Just days after her arrest, they found Wiggins' body parts—his head and arms—hidden in large flower pots at Montelongo's cousin's home in Bell Gardens. There were also other parts buried in an Ontario home close to where Montelongo was arrested.
"We are pleased that the jury saw the case for what it was—a heinous crime—and that justice was served for the victim and his family,” county prosecutor Erica Gallegos said in statement from the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office.
