MANDEL: Wife killer wants a chance at parole after just 10 years
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Hansel Duarte Quintela used a kitchen knife to stab his wife eight times, waited hours before calling 911 and eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
But now he wants our sympathy?
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MANDEL: Wife killer wants a chance at parole after just 10 years Back to video
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For viciously killing 50-year-old Yoleidys “Yoly” Vilar Arroyo, Duarte Quintela, 53, faces an automatic life sentence –– Superior Court Justice Maureen Forestell must decide only on the length of time he has to spend behind bars before he can apply for parole.
And the judge seemed incredulous when his lawyer, Victoria Palermo, suggested he should be eligible after just 10 years.
His sad story includes no family save for his 12-year-old daughter by his first marriage and the “hardship” of being deported to his native Cuba — which he left in 2010.
“He has absolutely no family or friends. He would theoretically become homeless in Cuba,” Palermo argued.
She acknowledged it was at the “lower end” for a domestic murder but given his early guilty plea, allowing him to apply for parole after 10 years would be “neither unfit nor contrary to the public interest.”
The dubious judge questioned how that could be. “The court of appeal has really set the range for parole ineligibility in the context of an intimate partner at 12 to 17 years, hasn’t it?” she asked. “What would take this case out of that range?”
Nothing, it seems.
Court has heard the couple’s seven-year marriage was marred by violence. Her family and friends described Duarte Quintela as jealous and controlling and Vilar had disclosed instances of domestic abuse to them — but never to police.
According to the agreed statement, though Duarte Quintela denies the allegations, her friends and family report that Vilar had bruising on her face caused by her husband a year before her murder and more than once, they confronted him about the abuse.
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“My dearest friend,” wrote Arelis Hernandez-Galloso in her victim impact statement, “you lived unhappily for a long time, innocently hoping that the one who hooked you, and mercilessly took your life, would change.”
But tragically, he did not.
On May 20, 2023, the couple had gone to visit Vilar’s sister and brother-in-law for a barbecue and drinks. At about 12:30 a.m., they walked home to their Harbord St. apartment where a violent argument ensued.
About 11 hours later, Duarte Quintela twice called 911. “I need police … my wife is dead … she is dead, dead,” he said, before hanging up. “My wife is dead, dead … my wife … is dead … my wife is no more in the Earth,” he said in the second.
First responders found Vilar lying face down in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, her jacket still on, her purse still over her shoulder. Rigor mortis had already set in.
She’d been stabbed eight times with a kitchen knife — three wounds to her neck, back and chin and five to her left eye, left cheek, right side of her face and hands.
“We could not even have an open casket funeral because of what you did to her face,” his brother-in-law Mike Spina angrily wrote in his statement.
His shattered wife, Zailyn Cabrera-Arroyo, said her sister was her best friend and her life is now empty without her. “Yoly was a bright light, always with a smile on her face, always thinking of the future that now can’t ever be because a monster with no soul took her life.”
Crown attorney Debra Moscovitz urged Forestell to keep the killer in prison for at least 12 years before he can apply for release.
“The position of the Crown is that the murder involved a level of brutality,” the prosecutor said. “It was a murder of an unarmed, vulnerable female victim using a knife.”
And under the Criminal Code, the murder of an intimate partner is by law considered an aggravating factor that increases the severity of a sentence. “The accused abused his position of trust towards the deceased,” Moscovitz argued. “She was murdered in her own home, a place that was meant to be one of safety and security.”
Offered the opportunity to speak, Duarte Quintela expressed his “remorse” through a Spanish interpreter — words that rang selfish and hollow in the downtown courtroom.
“I am truly regretful,” he said. “If I could go back in time, I would do things differently so I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
The judge will sentence him next week.
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