Defendant: Esdras Marroquin Gomez AKA “Victor” (DOB 04/02/85)

June 13, 2019 -- Westchester County District Attorney Anthony A. Scarpino, Jr. announced that the defendant in the 2015 brutal murder of 83-year-old Lois Elizabeth Colley of North Salem—Esdras Marroquin Gomez— was sentenced to 22 years to life in state prison. He appeared before Westchester County Court Judge George Fufidio.

Marroquin Gomez, known as Victor, pleaded guilty in May to Murder in the Second Degree, a class A-1 felony.

In Court, family members, the victim’s son, Bryan Colley, and granddaughter Christine Colley, told the court of the impact the murder has had on family members. The son asked the Court, to keep the defendant in jail “until the day he dies.” ADA Julia Cornachio read a letter Lois’ husband, Eugene Colley, sent to the judge.

Background
On Nov. 9, 2015, around 5 p.m., a farmworker found the body of Lois Colley lying in a pool of blood in her home laundry room, bludgeoned to death. Mrs. Colley suffered severe trauma to the head and face. The elderly matriarch of a prominent family had been alone in the North Salem home when the staff worker found her and called her husband, Eugene Colley, who was still at work.

During the initial investigation, New York State Police found what appeared to be a pin from a discharged fire extinguisher near her body. In searching the 300-acre horse farm, investigators found the extinguisher wrapped in a plastic bag in a pond on the property. Tests by forensic scientists at the Westchester County Crime Lab determined Mrs. Colley’s DNA was present and confirmed it was the murder weapon.

The investigation by New York State Police and the District Attorney’s Office included hundreds of interviews, phone records and video surveillance. In early 2016, a former day laborer, Esdras Marroquin Gomez AKA “Victor,” became a person of interest. Investigators found he had fled the area and had flown to Guatemala Nov. 14, 2015, four days after the murder.

After an intensive international and multijurisdictional manhunt, with the cooperation of the U.S. Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Marroquin Gomez was located ultimately in Mexico and returned to Westchester County.

In the interim, Marroquin Gomez had been indicted by a Westchester County Grand Jury on a charge of Murder in the Second Degree. He was arraigned on the indictment in Westchester County Court in November 2017 and since then has been in custody awaiting trial.

Prosecutors say the motive for the killing stemmed from a dispute with the Colley family starting in 2012, while Gomez was a day laborer on the farm.

Assistant District Attorneys Julia Cornachio, Bureau Chief, Jonathan Strongin, Deputy Bureau Chief, and James Bavero of the Superior Court Trial Division prosecuted the case.

courtroom

Esdras Marroquin Gomez during sentencing

 In compliance with the Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 3.6, you are advised that a charge is merely an accusation and that a defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

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