Prosecutors: Slain woman told friends where to find her body

MISSOULA — A slain Missoula woman feared her boyfriend, was seen with bruises and black eyes, and told her friends where to look for her body if she went missing, prosecutors said in opening statements of the man’s trial.

Emmanuel Gomez is charged with deliberate homicide and assault of a partner or family member in the death of Charlie Ann Wyrick, 26. Her body was found in December 2015 in Pattee Canyon, southwest of Missoula, just as she had predicted, Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst said Thursday.

Pabst said Wyrick was stabbed in the chest and had several broken bones and other injuries but was still alive when Gomez tossed her off the road and into a ravine, where she froze to death. Her body was found a week after she was last seen alive.

Public defender Lisa Kauffman said in her opening remarks that prosecutors have no evidence to support the deliberate homicide charge.

“The state is asking the jury to assume that because he was in a violent relationship with Charlie that therefore he must have been the one that killed her,” Kauffman said. “They will be unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is actually the one who hurt her and hid her body in Pattee Canyon.

“There’s no murder weapon, there’s no witnesses, only assumptions,” she said.

Investigators found traces of Wyrick’s blood in Gomez’s vehicle, prosecutors said, despite his efforts to scrub it clean.

The mother of one of Wyrick’s co-workers told investigators that she asked Gomez where Wyrick was after she had not shown up for a couple of work shifts.

Pabst said Gomez replied, “She’s gone, and she ain’t coming back.”

Four people testified Thursday, including co-workers and friends of Wyrick’s, who said she would show up with bruises and black eyes and was afraid of the man she had dated for or eight or nine months.