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Details emerge in case of Salem woman, Nayeli Nieves, allegedly murdered in front of her children
Pablo Vicente pleaded not guilty to murdering the mother of his children, but police say he confessed to them in an interview.
Authorities announced Tuesday they had arrested Pablo Vicente, 33, of Salem and charged him with the murder of 20-year-old Nayeli Nieves, his girlfriend and the mother of his two young children.
Vicente pleaded not guilty to murdering Nieves at his arraignment on Tuesday. However, a report by the Salem Police Department says Vicente confessed to officers in an interview. According to the report, obtained by Boston.com, Vicente told officers he choked Nieves to death at her Salem home while their two children were present, and disposed of her body in a dumpster days later.
What authorities say happened
According to the police report, a relative of Vicente’s alerted a Lynn police detective on Aug. 7 that Vicente had confessed to killing Nieves at her Salem apartment and leaving her body in a dumpster nearby. The detective began investigating and found documentation in a police database of a previous domestic violence incident between Vicente and Nieves.
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Based on the information from the Lynn detective, Salem police searched Nieves’ apartment but didn’t find her there. They also searched the dumpsters, and found nothing. Then they spoke with Nieves’ family and learned that they hadn’t heard from her for a week, which was unusual.
Police then tracked down Pablo Vicente. In the report, they write that Vicente was “cooperative” and “voluntarily agreed” to a recorded interview. At first, Vicente told a story about how Nieves had run away with another man and left her children behind. But then, the report says, he admitted to getting into a fight with her.
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He accused her of cheating on him, and said he had found proof on her phone, according to the report. Vicente told police he put his hand around Nieves’ throat and kept choking her until she lost consciousness and fell to the floor, the report says.
Vicente said Nieves woke up and lost consciousness two more times, but he was too preoccupied going through her phone to notice when she didn’t wake up the third time. The couple’s children, a 3-year-old and 9-month-old, were in the room when Nieves died, the report said.
Vicente kept her body in the apartment with the children for three days, police said, before wrapping it in a bedsheet and carpet and disposing of it in a dumpster on the property.
Vicente told police he did not call 911 after his fight with Nieves because “he wanted to spend more time with his children,” according to the report.
After Vicente’s confession and arrest, police say they found security footage apparently showing him taking Nieves’ body to the dumpsters. When police searched the dumpsters again, they found they had been emptied earlier that day.
Vicente’s alleged history of domestic violence
The Boston Globe reported that Vicente was arrested in April for allegedly assaulting Nieves. Prosecutors at the time asked the judge to hold him in jail without bail because he had defaulted on a domestic violence charge before, in 2019. But the judge denied that request and Vicente was later released on bail.
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The Globe also reported that a former partner of Vicente’s, who had a child with him in 2012, described him as “violent only when he was drunk.”
“We do have a past restraining order against each other,” the woman told the Globe. “[But] I was not expecting to wake up to this news.”
What comes next in the case
Vicente was ordered held without bail at his arraignment on Tuesday.
He is due back in court on Sept. 8 for a probable cause hearing, according to the Salem District Court Clerk’s office.
Meanwhile, Nieves’ children are in the custody of the Department of Children and Families. Police are still searching for her body.
“We are actively searching,” Salem police chief Lucas Miller said at a press conference following Vicente’s arraignment. “We have found what I would call evidence, but I don’t want to say whether that is her.”
Nieves’s brother, Angel Nieves, and his girlfriend, Janessa Sosa, were also present at the arraignment. They said their family was devastated.
“She was a very good mother and she did not deserve what happened to her,” Sosa said.
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