Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

ADEL, Ia. — Erica Clark held up an autopsy photo of Lourdes Flor De Leake during her closing argument Tuesday morning in a Dallas County courtroom.

"This isn't love," the assistant Dallas County attorney said. "These actions were butchery."

Leake was struck around 40 times with a machete and had a hand severed during the Oct. 29 attack that also killed her teenage daughter and the elderly landlord of their small home in Perry.

Jurors deliberated for just two hours before convicting Leake's boyfriend, Carlos Hernandez-Ventura, of three first-degree murder counts. He faces a mandatory life-in-prison sentence.

The weeklong trial included tearful testimony from Hernandez-Ventura, 25, who admitted during his testimony to killing Leake, 34, Melany Barazza, 14, and Juan Jimenez Tejada, 78, by using a machete in the home where they all lived.

Hernandez-Ventura claimed that he was ordered to kill the three people by his girlfriend's estranged husband the day before the slayings. The husband, Daniel Leake, wanted them dead because he was worried that they knew about his involvement in drug trafficking, Hernandez-Ventura testified. He claimed that Leake told him that he would kill Hernandez-Ventura and his family if he did not follow the order.

But Clark told jurors during her closing argument Tuesday morning that, even if that claim were true, Hernandez-Ventura was still guilty of premeditated murder. He chose to carry out the killings rather than find another option, she said.

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Investigators who testified during the trial said they found no evidence to support Hernandez-Ventura's claim that Daniel Leake was a drug dealer. Clark reiterated that assertion to the jury during her closing statement.

"He has a full day to think about what he's going to do," she said. "He deliberates, he ponders what he's going to do. He had the option to think about how he was going to commit this."

Leake himself testified Monday, telling jurors that he never spoke with Hernandez-Ventura.

Hernandez-Ventura sat calmly as the verdict was read aloud, and was escorted from the Dallas County Courthouse in handcuffs by deputies. A group of people who were in the courtroom to see closing arguments and the verdict declined to speak with a reporter as they left.

Lourdes Leake and Hernandez-Ventura, who moved to Perry from Virginia, had moved in together approximately one month before the killings. Leake worked as a waitress at the Casa de Oro restaurant in Perry, and her daughter was a high school student who participated in track and was one the swim team. Tejada was a regular at the restaurant where Leake had worked and opened his home to the family.

Jurors heard from several law enforcement witnesses throughout the trial and from medical examiners who performed autopsies on the three bodies. Hernandez-Ventura was the sole witness who testified for his defense Monday.

"Had it been up to me, I would have never done such a thing," he told jurors.

Defense attorney Michael Adams told jurors during his closing to consider that Hernandez-Ventura had been consistent in all his statements to law enforcement, insisting that the estranged husband's threats were the motivation for the attack. Adams maintained throughout the case that Hernandez-Ventura should not be found guilty of first-degree murder because he was compelled to commit the killings.

District Court Judge Paul Huscher scheduled a sentencing hearing for 1:30 p.m. April 21.