Jurors in Baltimore this week heard testimony of how a military sergeant and his lover plotted to kill his estranged wife, CBS News reports.
Sgt. Maliek Kearney and his mistress, Dolores Delgado, are facing murder charges in the death of Pfc. Karlyn Ramirez. Delgado initially met Kearney when they both served in Iraq more than a decade ago.
She took the stand and cried at times, testifying that she was afraid of Kearney following the killing.
“I was having nightmares that he was choking me or he would hurt me in some way,” Delgado said. “I was having nightmares about getting arrested.”
Authorities arrested Delgado and Kearney more than a year after the murder. She supplied the gun Kearney used and let him drive her car to and from the scene.
“I lied to give him an alibi so he wouldn’t get into trouble,” Delgado testified.
Police found Ramirez cradling her young daughter, who hadn’t been harmed. Delgado suggested that a possible motive for the killing was to ensure he was the sole father figure in his daughter’s life.
“If he couldn’t have his family back together, no man was going to raise his daughter. He was,” Delgado said.
Dolores Delgado testified as a government witness in the case against Army Sgt. Maliek Kearney, a soldier accused of killing his wife three years ago in Maryland.
https://t.co/zV46YMu5Kr— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) July 19, 2018
She also said she was distressed about how Kearney interacted with Ramirez’s relatives after her death.
“He was visiting his dead wife’s grave. Her family was welcoming him in, and I was not comfortable with that happening—the family not knowing who he was,” Delgado said. “I was upset he was playing this role of ‘poor him, a widower’ and letting her family comfort him. They should’ve been the ones being comforted.”
In the course of the trial, prosecutors displayed text messages and screen shots that were sent before and after the murder.
One image was of a meme Delgado sent Kearney several days before the killing, which read, “Remember if we get caught, you’re deaf and I don’t speak English.”
This is the meme Dolores Delgado told jurors she sent her lover—Army Sgt. Maliek Kearney—just days before prosecutors believe he murdered his wife in Severn with Delgado’s assistance @wjz pic.twitter.com/YoytNCFqXN
— Mike Hellgren (@HellgrenWJZ) July 19, 2018
Delgado said she stayed at Kearney’s residence in South Carolina while he committed the murder in Maryland. During that time, she said she was going through Kearney’s phone and became angry when she found pictures of other women
Still, the couple’s sexual relationship lasted until the pair was arrested.
Delgado, who has struck a plea deal with prosecutors, said she recognized what happened was wrong.
“I realized something bad had happened, and I should have done something about it,” she said.
As for Kearney, he still asserts that he had nothing to do with the crime. His defense attorneys will cross-examine Delgado when the trial resumes July 30.
[Feature Photo: Karlyn Ramirez/Facebook]
