For almost six years, Martin Mendiola got away with murder until his DNA linked him to the 2004 slaying of a Colorado Springs woman, a prosecutor said Thursday as testimony began in his trial.

But Mendiola’s defense attorney contends that the 40-year-old former house painter had been having an affair with Patricia Gonzalez-Arvizu. He had sex with the 29-year-old woman in her mobile home on the day she died, the attorney said, but he did not rape or kill her.

The trial was delayed briefly when a female juror passed out and slumped to the floor of the jury box while El Paso County Coroner Robert Bux was describing the multiple stab wounds he found during an autopsy of the victim.

The fatal wound was a slash to her neck, Bux said. She would have died shortly after it was inflicted, he said.

Deputy District Attorney Joe LeDonne said Mendiola went to Gonzalez-Arvizu’s home that day intending to rape her.

“He (Mendiola) did not want her to tell and made sure she was silenced forever,” LeDonne told the seven-man, seven-woman jury.

At first, police investigated several other possible suspects, all of whom eventually were cleared, the prosecutor said.

But eventually they focused on Mendiola, whose DNA matched evidence from the crime scene, LeDonne said.

When confronted in prison, where he was serving a sentence for an unrelated crime, Mendiola at first denied even knowing the victim or having sex with her, the prosecutor said.

“The defendant got away with it for six years,” LeDonne concluded. “Don’t let him get away with it.”

Deputy Public Defender Dennis McGuire countered that investigators also found evidence at the crime scene that they couldn’t match to anyone, such as a finger print on the cell phone that Gonzalez-Arvizu used to try to call her husband right before she was killed.

“Whoever’s fingerprint that was also took the time to cut the phone cord,” McGuire said.

Police also found the DNA of an unknown male on a McDonald’s coffee cup found in a sink. The cup was not there when the victim’s husband left for work that day, McGuire said.

When confronted six years later, McGuire said Mendiola tried to distance himself from the victim, knowing he was one of the last people to see her alive.

“He did not want to be accused of a murder he did not commit,” McGuire said.

“Patricia’s family deserves justice. But they’re not going to get it in this trial,” he said, arguing that the real killer has not been charged.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.

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Photo by Jason Janc KRXP photo