3 days ago
Idaho woman's death was a suspected suicide. Then police noticed her toenails
In our Reality Check stories, Idaho Statesman journalists seek to hold the powerful accountable and find answers to critical questions in our community. Read more. Story idea? Tips@
Reyna Quintero was getting dressed for a girls' night out that she had planned for days. Earlier in the day, the 34-year-old had called her sister several times to talk about what they'd wear and had just gotten off the phone with her teenage daughter, her family testified in court. Quintero had asked to use her eyelash curler.
By all accounts from her family, she was excited to go out and celebrate.
So when her daughter came home and found her choking on her own blood, with a gun resting in her mother's hand, she told police she knew it wasn't suicide, according to a probable cause affidavit. The daughter had been out grabbing McDonald's with her grandfather when she received a distressed call from her father, who had sent them out for the food, at their house about an 'accident.' Quintero's body was lying in her daughter's room underneath the vanity.
The Caldwell Police Department was called to the subdivision off of South Florida Avenue in Caldwell and found Quintero with a gunshot wound to the left side of her head. But detectives weren't convinced it was a suicide. Months after the shooting, the Canyon County Coroner's Office wasn't able to rule the shooting a suicide, leaving the manner of death undetermined, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Michelle-Rene Kilgore Marmolejo, a criminologist from the Canyon County Sheriff's Office, testified in court that it's 'rare' for someone to kill themselves with their non-dominant hand, according to court records. Though the gun was found in Quintero's right hand, the bullet wound entered on the left side of her head.
Dozens of court filings obtained by the Idaho Statesman showed how a nearly yearlong investigation by law enforcement focused in on Quintero's husband, Gerardo Francisco Torres-Rodriguez, whom she had been planning to divorce him after he had an affair with a 17-year-old in Mexico, according to interviews with family and phone records.
Caldwell Detective Oscar Martinez reviewed the crime scene and autopsy photos again and again, until an open bottle of nail polish on the vanity table made him look at Quintero's toenails, according to the affidavit. Her toes were only partially painted.
It was that detail, the unscrewed bottle of nail polish on her daughter's vanity table, that prompted Martinez to believe Quintero was in the middle of painting her toenails when she was shot — and that the crime scene had been altered before law enforcement arrived.
Caldwell police publicized Quintero's death for the first time this week, because of the sensitive nature of the investigation, spokesperson Char Jackson told the Statesman. Police were concerned that the investigation could have been compromised by releasing case information, she said.
Law enforcement agencies typically release information to the public when a homicide occurs or when someone is charged with a severe crime, such as first-degree murder.
Torres-Rodriguez was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of his wife in June 2024, 10 months after the homicide.
Third Judicial District Magistrate Judge Gregory Frates allowed Torres-Rodriguez's case to move forward to trial after the prosecution presented half a dozen witnesses, including law enforcement, during a preliminary hearing at the Canyon County Courthouse last year. Frates concluded, based on the evidence, that there was probable cause that Torres-Rodriguez killed his wife.
He said like many homicides, the evidence was 'circumstantial,' but Torres-Rodriguez was the only one at the house, the blood splatter was 'certainly conspicuous,' and the scene was altered. The location of Quintero's body, along with the trajectory of the bullet, also made it clear she was kneeling over when she was killed, he said.
'It was effectively an execution,' Fates added.
Torres-Rodriguez faced more than a weeklong trial where witnesses testified about his 'odd demeanor' after the killing. Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Stephanie Morse urged the 12-person jury to find the 41-year-old guilty, the Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney's Office said in a news release.
'He earned the verdict you are about to deliver when he decided Reyna's life was expendable,' she told the jurors. 'He earned it when he jammed the gun into her head. He earned it with his utter disregard for life.'
Jurors agreed that Torres-Rodriguez staged his wife's murder as a suicide after shooting her in the head, and convicted him of first-degree murder, the Prosecuting Attorney's Office said in a news release. Witnesses in their testimony said Torres-Rodriguez manipulated his daughter into finding her mother's body and noted his nonchalant demeanor on a surveillance video camera outside the house, which showed him smoking a cigarette as he waited for his daughter to arrive.
The girl's aunt also testified about the way her niece and nephew had been manipulated by their father.
'She is very fearful for herself, for her brother's safety,' Quintero's sister, Dulce Madera-Madriz, said in court last year.
Torres-Rodriguez sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Aug. 8, court records showed. Under state law, he could face up to a life sentence, but he will have to spend at least 10 years in prison.
Quintero's daughter was likely one of the last people to speak to her mother. The prosecution asked her daughter in court if she remembered what her mother said to her before hanging up the phone after calling to ask to borrow her eyelash curler.
'That she loved me,' her daughter said.
