A pregnant woman’s body was discovered beneath the ice in a pond in Rhode Island, and two men were later detained and charged with her murder.
The arrests of Gary R. Gromkiewiczpreg and Michael P. Lambert on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the passing of Leila Duarte Da Luz were made public on Tuesday by the Rhode Island State Police.
On December 21, 2022, Rhode Island State Police officers responded to a report of a dead woman in the pond and discovered Da Luz’s body.
The unidentified woman had multiple slashes on her skull, according to the officers on the scene, and they instantly concluded that the death was suspicious. The Rhode Island Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy the following day and discovered Da Luz was expecting. Her death was classified as a homicide.
The body of Leila Patricia Duarte Da Luz, 34, of Brockton, Massachusetts, was recognized as her on December 27 after the Brockton Police Department received a report of a missing person.
Prosecutors stated during a probable cause hearing on Wednesday that Da Luz was alive when she was placed in the water and that her corpse had been submerged for several hours, according to WLNE. Authorities claim that the person later drowned.
Gromkiewicz, who was present at the court on Wednesday with Lambert, is the father of Da Luz’s unborn child. Both males have committed violent crimes in the past.
The tweet below confirms the news:
Two men were arrested and charged with the murder of a pregnant woman whose body was found beneath the ice in a Rhode Island pond.https://t.co/w7FY3m3N0E
— Court TV (@CourtTV) May 12, 2023
Paroled murderer and probationer accused of killing fiancée in a dispute over diamond ring
Lambert was on parole at the time of Da Luz’s death for a murder conviction from the 1990s, and Gromkiewicz was on probation at the time of Da Luz’s death for a 2015 felony assault with a deadly weapon. The two men supposedly met while incarcerated.
The arrests took so long, according to state police, because they had to execute 53 search warrants for materials used in the murder investigation and examine vast volumes of data.
Prosecutors claimed at the court on Wednesday that Da Luz was killed after she and Gromkiewicz, to whom she was engaged, quarreled about how much money he had spent on a diamond ring, according to WLNE.
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On December 21 at 2:30 a.m., Da Luz’s landlord observed her leaving her Brockton residence with Gromkiewicz before entering a dark SUV with Rhode Island license plates. Gromkiewicz allegedly sat in the front passenger seat of the car, while Da Luz allegedly took the backseat.
According to The Providence Journal, cell phone data brought into evidence at the hearing on Wednesday showed Da Luz’s phone with Gromkiewicz and Lambert leaving her home in Brockton and traveling to Rhode Island.
Gromkiewicz was approached by officers in the days after Da Luz vanished to check whether he had seen her. Police claim that he said to them, “If you locate her, don’t call me. I don’t care,” he said, according to WLNE.
Da Luz was discovered wearing a wedding band that Gromkiewicz had bought for her two days before, according to WPRI. On December 24, according to the prosecution, Gromkiewiciz made another marriage proposal.
It was decided to hold both guys without bail. There was no entered plea.
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