Shameful! Chicago Public Defender Blames Mary Stachowicz for Her Own Murder

The following is excerpted from Defense: Killing Payback for Gay Taunts (‘She could not leave him alone’), by Stefano Esposito, published Oct 27, 2006, in Chicago Sun-Times:

Nicholas Gutierrez killed a 51-year-old mother of four and church volunteer only after she beat and tormented him because he was gay, Gutierrez’s attorney told a Cook County jury Thursday.

“It happened because she could not leave him alone in his lifestyle,” attorney Crystal H. Marchigiani said in opening statements…

Continue reading in Chicago Sun-Times…

This excerpt is from Trial Begins in Funeral Home Slaying, published Oct 27, 2006, in Chicago Tribune:

Assistant Public Defender Crystal H. Marchigiani told jurors that Stachowicz, a mother of four and a church volunteer, instigated the attack by following Gutierrez upstairs and bullying herself into his apartment.

Continue reading in Chicago Tribune…

Who was Mary Stachowicz? Was she a bully, filled with hatred? Read this verbatim excerpt from Chapter 16 of A Mother’s Plea: Journey into the Light, by Father Anthony Bus, published 2005 by Marian Press:

Murder or Martyred? The Death of Mary Stachowicz
The Flame in Her Heart

Mary (Stachowicz) was a graceful and compassionate woman. She was strong-willed but humble. She was without malice. Her faith in Jesus Christ, her love for the Virgin Mary, and her defense of the Catholic faith and Catholic spirituality were simply integral to her personality …Concern for the faith of her family was the flame that perpetually burned in her heart, and that fire spread well beyond the walls of her home. Her only agenda was to make Jesus and the Church known and loved.

On the Feast of St. Stanislaus Kostka, Mary assisted in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, consumed the Sacred Host, and crossed the street to begin her work as a receptionist and translator in a funeral home. Unknown to her, her reception of Holy Communion that morning was preparation for her death.

Moments after crossing that threshold from the church to the funeral home, Mary Stachowicz ascended the “Hill of Golgotha.” She was kicked, brutally beaten, and repeatedly stabbed with a knife. The killer then wrapped her head in a garbage bag and strangled her to death. According to his confession to police, he did this because she had befriended him. With the instinct of a mother, she had invited him to embrace the faith and reflect on his lifestyle. In his own words, the 19-year old stopped beating Mary only after he had become too tired to continue. He not only “crucified” a holy woman, he “crucified” her entire family and all her friends as well. I can only wonder about the demons released in the life of the young man who committed this heinous crime.

It is inconceivable that after beating Mary to death, he discarded her body in a crawl space, and then spent the next few days consoling and praying with her family as they fearfully and frantically sought information about their mother’s disappearance. On the third day, her body was found.

On November 13th, Mary crossed the threshold from this world into the next. Taken by force, she walked from one kingdom into another – from the paradise of the proud to the halls of the humble. The proud strut about in the sickness of their own disease, compelled to extinguish anyone who gets in the way of their illusory kingdoms. Only the Father of Lies supports the perversion of their power: Jesus calls him the prince of this world.