Idaho man convicted of killing wife in ‘cold blood.’ He maintains his innocence
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Gerardo Francisco Torres-Rodriguez received life with parole after 35 years for murder.
- Prosecutors said he staged wife's suicide; motive tied to divorce plans.
- Family impact statements described lasting trauma and emotional devastation.
Gerardo Francisco Torres-Rodriguez killed his wife in September 2023 and didn’t just end one life, but shattered many others, his daughter said.
As Ariana Torres stood before the judge presiding over her father’s criminal case, she said losing her mother, Reyna Quintero, in such a violent way two years ago left a “permanent wound” in her.
“What makes this even more devastating is that the person responsible for her death is my own father,” Torres, now 18, said in court. “That betrayal has created a conflict within me that I wrestle with constantly: I am grieving a loss of one parent while trying to comprehend the actions of the other.”
Quintero was in the middle of painting her toes when Torres-Rodriguez shot and killed her in their daughter’s bedroom, Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Stephanie Morse said.
He then placed the gun in Quintero’s right hand and called their daughter, telling her there was an “accident” at the house, and she needed to get home, Morse said. There, Torres found her mother lying under the vanity in her bedroom, choking on blood, with a gun in hand.
Torres told police she knew it couldn’t have been a suicide, and detectives called to the house weren’t convinced either. Months later, the Canyon County Coroner’s Office couldn’t rule the 34-year-old’s death a suicide, leaving the manner of death undetermined.
During law enforcement’s yearlong investigation, police discovered that Torres-Rodriguez had an affair with a 17-year-old in Mexico, and Quintero had been planning to divorce him, according to court filings. Quintero’s partly painted toenails also led investigators to believe that she was interrupted, and that the crime scene was altered to look like a suicide before police arrived.
Torres-Rodriguez was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of his wife in June 2024, 10 months after the homicide. And in May, he was convicted by a 12-person jury and scheduled to face sentencing.
Quintero’s mother, Ana Madriz, said the loss of her daughter is a deep, constant pain that will stay with her forever. Quintero’s younger sister said she lost her best friend.
“I’d give anything to sit with her again, eating her favorite spicy aguachiles — where she’d sweat profusely and not give up eating them — playing dominoes, going clearance shopping, and picking up our favorite Starbucks,” her sister, Dulce Madera-Madriz, said at Torres-Rodriguez’s sentencing. “But I can’t, because you took that from me.”
Quintero’s daughter described her mother as the “heart of our home,” and as a gentle, loving and strong woman whose loss rocked the foundation of her life.
“The law cannot bring Reyna back,” Morse said at Torres-Rodriguez’s sentencing. “It cannot erase the nights her children cry for her, or the birthdays and holidays that will pass in aching silence. But it can say that the harm done to her and those who loved her demands the strongest response our system allows.”
She argued that Torres-Rodriguez earned a life sentence for taking away something he can never restore.
“He executed his wife in cold blood and then staged a suicide for his daughter to find,” Morse said. “If he could do that to his own wife and his own daughter, what prevents him from doing that to someone else in the future?”
Torres-Rodriguez argued at his sentencing that his wife had a history of depression and wanted to kill herself in the past. He apologized in Spanish to his family for any disrespect or offense he might have caused but maintained his innocence.
“I never murdered my wife,” he said.
His defense attorney, Jeb Bond, said in court he needed to set aside his client’s innocence and accept the jury’s verdict to argue for a lesser sentence.
Bond asked for the minimum punishment of 10 years and a chance of parole. It’s unlikely Torres-Rodriguez, now 41, would have been released from prison because of the parole board’s reluctance to release those convicted of murder, Bond said. But without a potential parole date, the state could classify Torres-Rodriguez as a higher-security prisoner and more likely send him to the state’s maximum security prison, where he would have been placed in more restrictive housing.
Third Judicial District Judge Gene Petty sentenced Torres-Rodriguez to a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 35 years. Torres-Rodriguez will also have to pay $15,000 in fines, part of which will go to his two children.
“It is very clear to me that you killed Reyna, but you failed — up until even today — to take accountability and responsibility for killing her,” Petty said.
Torres-Rodriguez appealed his sentence to the Idaho Supreme Court, online court records showed.
