Man who killed Idaho woman, fled the country sentenced to 30 years in prison
A man who killed his partner in Wilder, Idaho, eight years ago – in front of their children – and then led police on a six-year international manhunt was sentenced to 30 years in prison Thursday, with only 15 years before he’ll be eligible for parole.
Erasmo Diaz, 59, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in January. At his hours-long sentencing hearing in 3rd District Court in Caldwell, relatives of Diaz’s partner, Amparo Godinez Sanchez, gave emotional impact statements, cried and wore T-shirts that read, “Justice for Amparo.”
Prosecutors asked Judge Matthew Roker for a sentence of life without parole. Public defenders requested 15 years, arguing that Diaz acted in self-defense and did not plan the killing.
On June 11, 2015, Diaz fatally shot Godinez Sanchez, 39, in front of their children at their Wilder home. He then fled to Mexico. The U.S. Marshals Service and Mexico Federal Police captured him in 2021, and he was extradited back to Canyon County.
What prosecutors and defense attorneys said
Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Angela Harrigan said that in the years before the murder, Diaz had repeatedly threatened to kill Godinez Sanchez or have her killed. And after the killing, he abandoned his son, Gustavo, who was 12 years old at the time, and did not provide money for his care, she said.
The killing was not an accident or self-defense, Harrigan said, but a murder committed because he thought Godinez Sanchez was having an affair. Anything less than a life sentence without the possibility of parole would harm the victim’s family and public confidence in the justice system, she told the court.
Public Defender Casi Wright said Godinez Sanchez tended to be “hot-tempered” and once tried to strangle Diaz. She threatened to kill him or get someone to kill him around the time of the murder if he didn’t give her $50,000 to start a new life with her boyfriend, Wright asserted.
She said that on the night of the shooting, Godinez Sanchez grabbed Diaz’s gun and mumbled “something to the effect of ‘maybe it’s better if I kill you.’” She said that the gun went off during an ensuing struggle between the couple and that Diaz can’t remember what happened next.
Public Defender Lary Sisson said Diaz chose not to go to trial to spare his family from that ordeal. He suggested that the killing was not planned, because Diaz fled without his shoes or money, and shot the victim outside his children’s bedroom. He argued that Godinez Sanchez had money and a good job, so she could have left Diaz if she wanted. And he said Diaz fleeing the U.S. for his native Mexico was understandable.
Diaz’s attorneys also said in a presentencing filing that Diaz’s father had been murdered in front of him.
Sisson asked Roker for a sentence of 15 years, with 10 years fixed. If Diaz is ever released from prison, he will “undoubtedly be deported,” he said.
Roker gave Diaz an opportunity to speak, but all he offered through a court interpreter was: “I have nothing to say. I would like to say a lot of things, but I don’t have the words to say them.”
What relatives said in court
Members of Godinez Sanchez’s family gave impact statements about how the murder had affected them.
“Because of him, she will never know her grandchildren,” said her sister, Lucia Godinez. “She didn’t get to see her son graduate. She didn’t see her daughters get married. He’s sitting here, worried about the rest of his life, while my sister’s been in the ground for eight (years).”
Brother Octavio Godinez said, “Please lock him up, throw the key away.” Roker had Octavio address the court via Zoom from the prosecutor’s office because of threatening statements he made to a deputy sheriff about Diaz in the first part of the hearing.
“I want you to sit in a cell for the remaining hours of your life,” said Godinez Sanchez and Diaz’s daughter, Laura Diaz.
“My last words to you are these: It didn’t have to be this way, but you chose crime and ego over compassion.”
Judge Roker’s sentencing decision
Roker sentenced Diaz to 30 years, with 15 fixed and 15 indeterminate. That means he will be in prison for at least 15 years but could serve the remainder on parole.
The judge said he considered that Diaz had little criminal record and a strong work history, and decided not to put his family through a trial. He said that Sisson’s heat of passion argument was “valid” and that as a 59-year-old, Diaz will serve a sentence that exceeds his life expectancy.
In 2008, Diaz assaulted Godinez Sanchez and threatened to shoot family members, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting. He pleaded three felony charges down to misdemeanors in that case. Authorities confiscated his three handguns, but after completing a 90-day jail sentence and a year of probation, a judge gave him the guns back.
At the time, Idaho did not have a law that prevented convicted domestic abusers from owning guns. The state still does not have one, despite the efforts of Laura and Judy Diaz to get such a bill passed in 2018.
Laura Diaz told the Statesman after the hearing that she did not consider her father’s sentence to be a fulfillment of justice. True justice, she said, would mean liberation from violence and her family not having to be in court over this killing to begin with. She said Sisson engaged in victim blaming by suggesting her mother could have left.
“It is never that simple,” she said.
New information about the case
Prosecutors used the hearing as an opportunity to introduce evidence that would have come out if the case had gone to trial. That included a 911 call after the killing, as well as testimony from the pathologist who examined Godinez Sanchez’s body and a sheriff’s deputy who was involved in capturing Diaz.
Roker allowed prosecutors to play the 911 tape over Sisson’s objection. In the recording, the victim’s children, Judy and Gustavo Diaz, sobbed as they described how their mother was shot. “Mom, please don’t go,” a distraught voice on the call said.
Glen Groben, a now-retired Ada County Coroner’s Office pathologist, said Godinez Sanchez’s body had five gunshot wounds. The most severe was one to the head that entered through her left eyebrow. Without that shot, she might have survived, Groben said.
The Ada County coroner handled the death investigation for Canyon County, he said.
Canyon County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Douglas Gately, who was assigned to the U.S. Marshals’ fugitive task force in 2015, said that in the aftermath of the killing, Diaz abandoned his truck in Oregon, visited a friend in Los Angeles and fled to Mexico.
Mexican law required that U.S. authorities agree not to pursue the death penalty and provide a list of prospective charges to law enforcement there. The process started in 2016, but Mexico did not grant an arrest warrant until 2020, Gately said. Authorities knew where he was, but Mexico locked down for the COVID-19 pandemic, further delaying extradition.
Finally, in 2021, the U.S. Marshals Service and Mexico Federal Police arrested Diaz and returned him to Idaho. Over 100 law enforcement personnel worked on the case at different points, Gately said.