Her diary allows her husband to be convicted of her murder

A mother who was a murder victim literally became the key witness in the trial of her husband accused of murder in Texas because of her diary.

Maria Munoz, 31, was left by her partner, Joel Pellot, who abandoned her and her two young children. Some time after she left, he wrote her again saying he wanted to speak with her.

However, when he returned home, he claimed to have found her lifeless. According to the suit, Joel Pellot, who is a nurse, allegedly injected her with toxic drugs stolen from the hospital where he worked, in an attempt to avoid a costly divorce.

The 31-year-old’s diary and cellphone records helped investigators uncover her husband’s abuse.

The woman’s marital history was literally reconstructed by the police.

Separation and infidelity

The day before her death, the woman based in Texas wrote. “What do I want? #1 Move forward!!!”, it is possible to read in his writings reported by the MailOnline.

Maria had met her husband when she was a young nurse in Puerto Rico. He was an ambitious medical student, 11 years older than her.

They married in 2011 and made their home in Texas where she gave up her career to support her husband.

But in 2020, Maria discovered a plane ticket for a vacation to Europe with a colleague from the hospital. He was cheating on her.

Things came to a head on September 19, the Saturday before his death, when Maria saw her husband’s car in front of the home of his mistress Janet Arredondo.

The mistress called the police who in turn called Maria as she was returning home with her husband.

“Hang up the f***ing phone,” her husband told his wife, words that the police heard and recorded. Angry, he even broke the windshield with a punch before arriving home.

The next day, she texted him to tell him she was hiring a lawyer.

“It’s too much money,” he replied, but a few hours later, the tone changed.

Last meeting

“I’m so sad, I’m hurting inside,” he wrote to her by email. “I want to sit down with you and talk, without arguing.”

Maria was nervous as she prepared for this final meeting. She texted friend Jazmin Martinez.

“I just ask you to pray for me. Tonight we are going to talk.”

Early Tuesday morning, police received a call from her husband that Maria Munoz had been found unconscious. He claimed she was not breathing and may have taken prescription medication.

Emergency services found the man wearing a surgical gown and performing CPR on his wife, who is now deceased.

The couple’s two young boys were sleeping in the next room. While emergency services were attending to her, the partner went into the bathroom to empty a bottle of the prescription drug clonazepam.

“Yeah, she’s been super depressed,” he told police.

Pellot was taken to the police station for questioning where surveillance cameras caught him crying, screaming and shoving furniture when left alone.

He admitted that the syringes and intravenous equipment found in the house belonged to him, but were part of his daily work equipment.

Investigators also had questions about a puncture mark on Maria’s arm, but it took four months to get the toxicology results. It was not clonazepam, but propofol.

The spouse attended his wife’s funeral, crying over her coffin. Despite this setup, detectives had Maria’s diaries, as well as her phone.

Extract from the newspaper

“Life is so unfair. My husband, the man I love so much, hurts me so much. I don’t want to be sad anymore, I don’t want my heart to hurt, I don’t want my mind to be tortured,” she wrote.

She also wrote about wanting to save her marriage and hoping to see things change. “Lord, this means a lot to me. All I really want is to see a change in him.”

Police also found video recordings on Maria’s cellphone, including an angry exchange in their car.

“What do you want me to do? she asked her partner. What are your expectations for this wedding? If you walk through that door, we’re going to divorce,” she warned him.

He then left the car, saying “very good” and slamming the door.

The writings and recordings allowed the police to rule out suicide as the cause of death.

The man’s mistress also revealed to investigators that he had admitted to giving his wife an injection the night of her death.

“He just wanted to calm her down,” she told them, “so he did it with medication.”

Pellot was arrested and claimed in court that he had given him Narcan, a medication used to reverse an opioid overdose.

“Someone tried to bring her back to life, and it wasn’t the paramedics, it wasn’t the police. It was Joel,” his lawyer, Roberto Balli, told the court.

However, it took the jury less than an hour to find Pellot guilty of murdering his wife and he was sentenced to life in prison in March this year.

Prosecutor Marisela Jacaman said the most important witness at the trial was Maria herself, through diaries that showed she had gotten over her husband.

“And she was a great mother, she was just an amazing person. She loved him and she adored him,” said Maria’s friend Angela Montoya. “She loved him too much.”