ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Jurors deliberated less than three hours Thursday morning before finding Lee Cuellar guilty of first-degree murder for strangling his wife in 2021.
The 2nd Judicial District Court jury reached the verdict following eight days of trail before Judge Britt Baca.
A first-degree murder conviction requires Cuellar, 45, to serve at least 30 years in prison before he is eligible for parole. Baca has not scheduled his sentencing.
Prosecutors told jurors that Cuellar strangled his 26-year-old wife, Rosalejandra "Alex" Cisneros, because he felt threatened by his wife's burgeoning modeling career and widening circle of friends.
Cuellar's attorneys argued that the U.S. Army and Iraq War veteran struggled with untreated mental illness and believed his wife was a demon who intended to hurt Cuellar and his family.
Prosecutor Christine Jablonsky told jurors in closing arguments Wednesday that Cuellar felt he was losing control over his younger wife, leading to stress in the marriage.
"I think he loved her and needed that control over her so badly that when he felt it slipping away, that's when he lost it," Jablonsky told jurors.
She described Cuellar's method of killing his wife by strangulation as "complete and utter overkill."
The trial was Cuellar's second on the same charge. His first trial in January ended in mistrial after Baca found that jurors heard statements that should have been excluded.
On the day Cisneros was killed, May 23, 2021, Cuellar flagged down an Albuquerque police officer by throwing a bottle of pills at her car near Tiguex Park in Old Town.
Cuellar told police he had killed his wife and said they could find her body at the couple's home in the 9900 block of Rio Madre SW, near Dennis Chavez and 98th. Police found Cisneros' body in the couple's bedroom.
Cuellar retired eight months before the killing after 22 years of service in the Army and the Army National Guard. At the time of his wife's killing, he was teaching ROTC classes at Kennedy Middle School.
Cuellar's attorney, Amy Williams, told jurors that Cuellar suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions as a result of military service and had struggled to find treatment services.
"He's a good but a very broken man," Williams told jurors Wednesday.
Cuellar's mental health deteriorated rapidly in the week prior to the killing, and he had resolved to commit suicide by self-immolation, Williams said.
"When you look at the terrible way that Ally died, I would want you to consider that the brutality of this murder is direct evidence of the psychosis that (Cuellar) was suffering," Williams said.
Jablonsky focused on Cuellar's statements to an Albuquerque police detective who interviewed Cuellar following the killing. Prosecutors last week played for jurors video recordings of the hourslong interview.
Cuellar told the detective that he first choked his wife with his hands, then "dropped my knee on her head," before strangling her with a tourniquet consisting of a muscle shirt and a wooden stick.
"I choked her, but she wouldn't stop fighting," Jablonsky said, reading from a transcript of the interview. "The body is a machine — it keeps fighting back. So I choked her again, and then I choked her again. And then I got a tourniquet and I choked her again."
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