Carlos Montalvo-Rivera and the fire he set that killed his wife in 2010(Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office and WGAL screenshot)
A 55-year-old man in Pennsylvania will spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing his wife inside of their family home, setting the house on fire while their three children were inside, then tying himself up in an effort to fabricate a home invasion.
Lancaster County Judge Dennis Reinaker on Wednesday ordered Carlos Montalvo-Rivera to serve a sentence of life in prison plus an additional 20 years for slaying 30-year-old Olga Sanchez and deliberately setting a blaze in the home to destroy evidence of his crime, prosecutors announced.
“The lame story you concocted and continued to hold on to simply didn’t hold any water,” Judge Reinaker said to Montalvo-Rivera before handing down the sentence. “The jury didn’t believe you and I think that’s how it should be.”
In addition to the life sentence, Judge Reinaker also ordered Montalvo-Rivera to pay $116,975.28 in restitution.
A jury in April convicted Montalvo-Rivera of first-degree murder, arson, risking catastrophe, and three counts of attempted criminal homicide after deliberating for less than two hours following a three-week trial. The conviction came several years after Montalvo-Rivera’s 2019 arrest and more than a decade after Sanchez’s 2010 death.
According to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office, police and emergency medical personnel on the night of Dec. 6, 2010, responded to a fire at a home in the 500 block of Dauphin Street. Three children were rescued from the home with the help of neighbors. After the fire was subdued, Sanchez was found dead inside the primary bedroom of the home.
It was later determined that Sanchez’s cause of death was asphyxia and smoke inhalation. Investigators determined that someone had “doused” Sanchez in an accelerant and lit her on fire while she was still alive but was unable to move from her position on the bedroom floor.
Several witnesses told investigators that Montalvo-Rivera appeared in front of the home shortly after the children were rescued and that his hands were tied. He claimed that “intruders broke into the home, killed his wife, and set fire to it out of retaliation for the victim’s brother, who had cooperated with the DEA in an unrelated case,” according to prosecutors. Montalvo-Rivera told police he was able to escape by jumping out of a second-story window during the fire.
However, during the trial, significant evidence emerged that cast doubt on Montalvo-Rivera’s claims regarding the fatal fire that killed his wife and endangered his three children. Detective Nathan Nickel testified about the critical inconsistencies in Montalvo-Rivera’s various accounts of the incident — which differed with every police interview — as well as the witness statements, medical expert opinions, and evidence at the scene that did not align with Montalvo-Rivera’s changing narrative.
One crucial aspect highlighted by Detective Nickel was the issue of Montalvo-Rivera’s hands being tied. Witnesses reported seeing Montalvo-Rivera outside the burning home without his hands bound. However, moments later, when Montalvo-Rivera appeared at the front of the house, several individuals — including his own daughter — observed his hands tied, indicating that he bound himself after escaping the home.
Another inconsistency focused on the window through which Montalvo-Rivera purportedly jumped out to escape. Detective Nickel testified that the window was found to be closed after the fire and could not have shut on its own. Additionally, before appearing in front of the house with his hands tied, a neighbor told investigators they helped Montalvo-Rivera as he attempted to climb up to the second-story window he claimed to have jumped from and get it opened from the outside “so it could match the rest of his story,” prosecutors said.
Throughout the investigation and trial, additional inconsistencies continued to emerge. For example, Montalvo-Rivera initially portrayed his marriage as happy, but later admitted to marital issues and having moved out for a period of time approximately a month before the fire. A family member testified to hearing him say he would “kill his wife like a dog” after an argument close to the time of her death.
Medical experts also refuted Montalvo-Rivera’s assertion of being knocked unconscious, as they found no evidence of head or brain injuries in a CT scan or observations made by emergency responders who attended to him. Furthermore, Montalvo-Rivera was discovered wearing sweatpants with a removed drawstring; the drawstring appeared to be the “rope” used to bind his hands.
Prosecutors also noted that on the night of the murder and fire, Montalvo-Rivera twice “ran into someone he believed was having an affair with his wife.”
With the culmination of the trial, Judge Reinaker’s sentencing serves as a landmark moment in a case that has haunted the community for years. The imposition of a life sentence underscores the severity of Montalvo-Rivera’s actions, providing a sense of closure to those affected by this tragic event.
“This was an absolutely brutal and heinous crime that involved multiple victims,” Assistant District Attorneys Christine Wilson said during the sentencing proceeding. “It was a cold-blooded murder. Even though the defendant refuses to admit accountability for his actions, he’s been found guilty by a jury of his peers.”
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