According to the affidavit, on view below in its entirety, two different informants -- one in Colorado, the other in Boise, Idaho -- spoke with officers during the last year or so about Vasquez, who is said to go by the names "Janito" and "Nito" and sports a "666" tattoo, among other ink. The tales are gruesomely similar.
Vasquez told one witness quoted in the affidavit that in mid-2000, when he was eighteen-years-old, he briefly lived with a woman later determined to be Ealy. "There was something wrong with her, like she was mentally retarded," he claimed. (Ealy reportedly suffered from chronic pain.) Then, one night, he and Marone, who was then his girlfriend, got into a cocaine-fueled conversation about killing someone "to see what it would be like."
In the account, Marone found a front-row seat and watched as Vasquez came up behind Ealy and began stabbing her. She reacted by screaming, which convinced Vasquez he needed to finish the act -- at which point he got on top of her and continued stabbing an estimated 21 times until she was gurgling blood. When it was over, the informant said Vasquez jumped up, raised his arms and declared, "I did it!" -- his clothes soaked in blood.
Afterward, the narrative continues, Vasquez and Marone disposed of his outfit at different hotels in the area. In addition, Vasquez stopped by a Circle K either before or after the murder -- the informant wasn't clear on the timeline -- to establish an alibi using the store's video-surveillance system.
Nonetheless, Vasquez was interviewed in relation to the crime -- a natural development, since he had been bunking with Ealy. During the chat, he tried to cast suspicion on Ealy's boyfriend, saying they'd had a fight prior to the killing, and took a polygraph test that he passed, he told the informant, by singing a song in his head.
Vasquez didn't stay clean after this incident. One informant said he'd gone to jail after using a knife to rob a drug dealer. Another squealed on him following a domestic violence episode in Boise that had ended with a trip to the hospital.
The sources' info, combined with subsequent crime-lab work, led to the arrest of Vasquez in Idaho and Marone in Cheyenne, Wyoming. They're charged with first-degree murder and first-degree murder after deliberation.
If police are right, there was plenty of the latter. Look below to see mug shots of Vasquez and Marone, as well as the affidavit.
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More from our Colorado Crimes archive: "Brooks Kellogg, 73, pleads guilty to one murder-for-hire count -- but why so light a sentence?"
