Murder victim's estranged lover says she asked defendants to 'scare him'

EPHRATA — The ex of a man killed on state Route 26 in 2016 testified Tuesday that she had only wanted the men accused of murdering her husband to “scare him,” before things went horribly wrong.

Eustolia Campuzano agreed to testify against co-defendants Fernando Marcos Gutierrez and Gustavo Tapia Rodriguez in exchange for only spending three months in jail, a dramatically reduced sentence. She had initially been charged with two counts of first-degree assault with a firearm, one each for the murder of her ex-husband Arturo Sosa and the shooting of his friend Jose Rafael Cano Barrientos.

An immigrant who got no further than the ninth grade in Mexico, Campuzano said she had met Sosa at Eldorado Stone, an artificial stone facade manufacturing company that at the time had a facility in Royal City, before the two started dating.

Campuzano claimed that she and Sosa would get into verbal and occasionally physical fights, and that she was kicked out of the house after they broke up. While Sosa moved would later move in with Barrientos, Campuzano said she moved in with a woman named Paula Rodriguez Cuevas, a friend who had also worked at Eldorado Stone.

Aggrieved at being kicked out of the house, Campuzano testified that she had told Cuevas that she had been wronged by Sosa, and that she wanted to get revenge.

She testified that she was introduced by Cuevas to Tapia Rodriguez, Marcos Guttierez, material witness Julio Ceasar Albarran Varona and two other men. Campuzano said she had asked the men to “scare” her estranged lover, and that they agreed to assist Campuzano, a woman they did not previously know, without compensation.

A week later, she said, she, Tapia Rodriguez, Marcos Guttierez and Albarran Varona drove to the home of Barrientos, where Sosa had been staying. When Barrientos and Sosa began driving to Royal City for work that morning, Campuzano testified that they began following the victims while flashing their headlights, signaling for them to pull over.

When they eventually did, reportedly concerned that the pursuing vehicle needed assistance, Campuzano testified that Tapia Rodriguez and Albarran Varona kidnapped the men at gunpoint, stealing their car after forcing them into the backseat. Gutierrez and Campuzano stayed in their vehicle, pursuing the kidnappers when they began to drive off.

A few minutes later, there was a struggle. Barrientos previously testified that Sosa lunged for Tapia Rodriguez’ gun while he attempted to place Albarran Varona in a chokehold while the car was in motion. The kidnappers, however, eventually overpowered the two men.

“I saw flashes of light,” Campuzano said. “Then they got out and said they killed them.”

Sosa died immediately, while Barrientos spent the next 24 hours in critical condition, fighting for his life.

Reportedly concerned by the kidnapping gone wrong, the kidnappers then allegedly pulled Campuzano out of the car, forced her to look at the mutilated body of her husband, and began threatening to kill her or her children if she talked to police.

“He said that if I spoke that I would get picked up, and obviously I would die,” Campuzano said. “And if not, his boss in Mexico would send some people to do something to my children, that (Tapia and the other men on trial) didn’t do that, but there were people who would do that.”

The kidnappers have previously reported connections to the notoriously violent Gulf Cartel, as illustrated during the Sundberg murder trial earlier this year, for which Tapia Rodriguez is already serving a life sentence. In that case, Tapia Rodriguez was convicted of the execution-style murder of Jill Sundberg, Quincy mother of four.

After the shooting and before the men fled that murder, which occurred just weeks after Sosa’s cohort Ambrosio Mendez Villanueva pinned a sign to Sundberg’s back that threatened those who disrespected the Gulf Cartel. Prosecutors in that case believed that Sundberg had been killed because she was believed to have talked to police, leading to the deportation of an associate of the murderers.

The threat to kill her children was not an empty one, Campuzano testified. Her children, whom she had in common with Sosa, had been left at Cuevas’ house, along with a man who had been holding a gun in his hands when she left, she said.

“I think they left that person there to do something to my children if I said or did anything against them,” Campuzano said.

On cross examination, defense counsel grilled Campuzano, pointing out numerous occasions over the course of a year in which she lied to police, both in interviews and at least one sworn statement. Those lies included whether she had been a part of Sosa’s murder, whether she knew who was involved and how many people were involved in the incident.

Trying to explain her previous dishonesty with law enforcement, Campuzano repeatedly said that she had done so out of fear for herself and her children.

“I was afraid, because those threats had been very direct, and they were against my children. I was not going to put them at risk if anything would happen to me.”

After almost a dozen instances of explaining her dishonesty in this way, Judge David Estudillo eventually called on Campuzano to answer the questions without unsolicited narratives about her reasoning.

Before court adjourned for the evening, the defense pointed to a number of mug shots depicting dozens of men, including the defendants, that police had shown contemporaneously to Campuzano for identification after she began to cooperate. Though she did say that she recognized a man that appeared to be Guttierez, she had looked over a photo of Tapia Rodriguez and did not mark him as one of the men involved.

Cuevas is expected to testify Wednesday.

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at edinman@columbiabasinherald.com.