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15-Year-Old Allegedly Beheaded, Cut Off Arms Of Classmate In Fit Of Jealous Rage
Mathew Borges is accused of killing fellow Lawrence High School sophomore Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino because he thought he was having sex with his girlfriend.
A teen who was just 15 when he allegedly killed and beheaded his high school classmate did so in a fit of jealous rage, prosecutors say.
Mathew Borges, now 17, is accused of cutting off both the head and hands of 16-year-old Lee Manuel Viloria-Paulino in Lawrence, Massachusetts back in the fall of 2016. Viloria-Paulino was a sophomore at Lawrence High School. Borges was also a sophomore at the time of the killing.
On Monday, prosecutors accused Borges of killing his classmate while consumed with jealousy because he thought he was sleeping with his girlfriend, according to the Boston Herald.
The prosecutors made the accusation as Borges murder trial kicked off in Essex County Superior Court on Monday.
“I think of killing someone and I smirk … It’s all I think about every day,” Borges texted his former girlfriend before killing his Viloria-Paulino, prosecutor Jay Gubitose said “The next time you see me, look at my eyes because that’s the last time they’ll be like that. They’ll be dead.”
The very next day, Viloria-Paulin went missing. His decapitated body was later found by a man walking his dog in a river, and his head found by a trooper not far from it.
The victim’s arms were also cut off.
The two teens had gone to smoke marijuana together before Viloria-Paulino was killed, according to a 2016 Associated Press report.
“I killed him. He’s dead," Borges allegedly told other teens who then contacted the police, prosecutors said in court this week, according to MassLive.
Borges’ attorney Edward Hayden claims his client should only be accused of burglarizing the victim’s home, not killing him.
“Witnesses who are going to say he committed murder are not reliable,” he said. He also attributes the texts to the fact that his client is just a teen who talks about weed, sex and swears a lot.
“In these thousands of texts and messages there is no evidence that Matthew killed Lee. Anything incriminating is referring to the house break,” he said. “There is nothing in all these messages.”
Borges is being tried as an adult on the first-degree murder charge.
The trial is expected to take about three weeks.
