Man who killed his mail-order bride may have 'gotten away with murder of girlfriend a decade earlier
- Gary Swierski was arrested last year for the 2005 murder of his second wife
- Police could only charge him after his daughter from his first marriage admitted that she helped him hide the body
- Now questions being raised about his girlfriend who 'drowned' in 1993
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Convicted: Gary Swierski was sentenced to 25 years in jail for the murder of his second wife, but now he may have an earlier crime to deal with
A man who was convicted of killing his mail order bride may have gotten away with the murder of a previous girlfriend, it was revealed today.
Gary Swierski was sentenced to 25 years in prison after his daughter Eva testified that her father strangled his second wife Reina and forced her to help him hide the body in a California national park.
Now California police are calling on authorities in Swierski's old hometown of Goshen, New York to reopen the investigation into his former girlfriend Hilda Gonzalez-Tapia Muhammad who 'drowned'.
The San Jose Mercury News reports that during his trial, Swierski's history of abuse came to light, and apparently that extended back to both of his wives and former girlfriends.
Swierski's turbulent romantic history dates back to when he began a pen pal relationship with Mansueta Casinillo who eventually moved from the Philippines to New York in 1981 to marry him and have his child, Eva.
During his recent trial, Ms Casinillo told the court that she was abused repeatedly during her marriage to Swierski.
At one point, she wrote to her sister in the Philippines saying that if she went missing, her husband would be the reason.
In 1992, Ms Casinillo took Eva - who was also abused by Swierski - and fled to California. He stayed behind and began dating Ms Muhammad, a Chilean woman who died two months after they moved in together.
The circumstances surrounding her death, though formally ruled a drowning, were suspicious to one local detective but Swierski filed a complaint about that officer and he was removed from the case.
'There were a lot of red flags,' Lieutenant Craig Anderson, one of the investigators, told The Mercury News.
'One of the original officers, I learned secondhand, was highly suspicious. But Swierski complained about him, and the officer was ultimately told to drop it.'
Not for swimming: Swierski's ex girlfriend Hilda Gonzalez-Tapia Muhammad was found having 'drowned' in Basha Kill Wildlife Management Area in Wurtsboro, New York back in 1993
Date night: The then-couple who had been living together for two months, went to dinner at Red Lobster (like the one seen here in neighboring Middletown) before going to the wildlife area that is not normally used for swimming
On the night of her death, Ms Muhammad and Swierski had dinner at a local Red Lobster before they went to the Basha Kill Wildlife Management Area, which is not typically used for swimming.
The fact that Ms Muhammad, who worked at a local university, was a champion swimmer, was found wearing a purple jumpsuit and shoes, had abrasions to her face consistent with being smothered, and torn clothing near her pelvis suggesting possible unwanted intercourse were overlooked by investigators.
As was the fact that she only eight feet away from shallow water. In spite of the clues that suggest another reason for her death, it was ruled a drowning.
Known victim: Reina Swierski was killed in 2005 but her husband wasn't arrested until 2001 after his stepdaughter confessed to helping him hide the body
According to Swierski's criminal record, and The Mercury News, his string of domestic abuse didn't end there.
Shortly after Ms Muhammad's death, he moved to California and began dating Elizabeth Armijo, an immigrant from Bolivia who worked at Burger King.
She left him in 1996 immediately after he hit her and strangled her to the point where she almost lost consciousness. To cover his bases, he reported Ms Armijo to police because she was in the country illegally, and she was deported.
The crime that sent him to jail, however, was from the relationship that followed when he began another pen pal relationship with Reina who went on to be his second wife.
The first break in the Reina's case came in April of 2008 – three years after she had gone missing – when her skull was found by hikers in Castle Rock State Park near Boulder Creek.
Her identity remained a mystery until 2010 when a DNA profile and dental records showed that the skull matched that of the missing woman, according to the Examiner.com.
Then in 2011, Eva Swierski, his daughter from his first marriage who was then 26-years-old, walked into a police station and said that her father had strangled her stepmother and ordered her to help remove the body from their home.
Miss Swierski explained her decision to come forward with information about the murder by saying that she ‘could no longer live with the guilt,’ prosecutors said. She was also apparently being threatened by her father to keep quiet.
During her father’s two-and-a-half-week trial, Eva Swierski testified against him and was not charged in the case.
‘It took a lot of courage and strength for her to come forward,’ said Deputy District Attorney Matt Braker.
Confirmed scene: Swierski dumped the body of his second wife Reina in the Santa Cruz Mountains
In often emotional testimony, Swierski said that as a 19-year-old, she got a call from her father shortly before midnight on March 8, 2005, asking for her help.
When she arrived at the house, Swierski told her that he had choked his wife to death and she was lying dead in an upstairs bathtub. He needed his daughter’s assistance in getting her out of the house and burying her.
The 26-year-old said she had agreed to carry the body, but refused to inter it. Instead, she remained inside her father’s Honda while he disposed of his wife in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The jury did not believe Swierski’s line of defense that he killed his wife accidentally and in self-defense when she allegedly attacked him with knife, prosecutors said.
It took the jury only one day of deliberations to convict Mr Swierski.
In the course of the trial, witnesses testified that Reina Swierski was abused so severely at the hands of her husband that friends smuggled her from her house, hidden under a blanket in the back seat of a car.
Neighbors told the jury about Mrs Swierski ‘running to their home in the middle of the night, shaking like a mouse with bruises on her throat, saying he tried to kill her,’ Braker told the San Jose Mercury.
Miss Swierski said she too was subjected to abuse at the hands of her father, although Braker said his star witnesses told him she still loves her dad.
Confession: Eva Swierski, who was 19 at the time that her father killed his second wife, said that her father threatened her in order to keep her quiet but then the guilt just became too much
‘She just felt so bad for Reina and Reina's family that she could not carry it around anymore,’ Braker said.
According to testimony, detectives asked Gary Swierski for his wife's dental records so they could match it to teeth if remains were found.
They believe that caused Gary Swierski to panic and remove the skull from his wife’s decomposing body, which he then concealed in the spot where it was later discovered by hikers.
The rest of Reina Swierski’s remains were never located, and her husband has told investigators they must have been carried off by wild animals.
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