LEWISVILLE, Texas — On April 26 2010, Lewisville police got a chilling 911 call.
A mailman, Jeremiah Gonzalez, who was out delivering mail, made the call. He described what he saw in the call and it was a horrific scene. There in the middle of the street in Lewisville was the body of Maria Corona, he said.
”The body is in the street and it’s bleeding. It’s decapitated,” Gonzalez can be heard saying in the call.
Lewisville police opened their case file for WFAA. They showed us crime scene photos, the search warrant, and stuff they took out of the house. We spoke with the lead detective, Bill Wawro, who is now an assistant chief.
”The truth is stranger than fiction and harder to believe and this is one of those Hollywood type of murders. You wouldn’t think someone would do something like this,” said Wawro.
Police say Maria was on the phone with one of her friends just before the murder and her friend could hear loud noises in the background.
She told her friend, “I think Jose is out in the yard making noise with some sort of lawn equipment,” then got off the phone and went outside, apparently to see what was happening, and that’s when police say Jose attacked his wife with a chainsaw.
”He made a lot of arrangements. Even the night before, he was making arrangements. The son heard him starting chainsaws outside at midnight and he’s like, 'does dad know it’s midnight? Why is he running chainsaws at midnight?' He prepared. He had chainsaws running. He duct taped them so they were running. He had two of them, prepped it all,” said Wawro.
“The chainsaw had blood on it,” Gonzalez told the 911 operator.
Lewisville police released that 911 call to us from that mailman who saw Maria’s mutilated body and also saw who they now believe is Jose Corona still there at the scene.
”He was next to the car. He was next to the vehicle, and he has a chainsaw running, the chainsaw is still running in the back of the vehicle, but I don’t see him,” said Gonzalez.
"It is terrible. On the 911 call, you can actually hear their oldest daughter get out of the car and running towards her mom and officers trying to hold her back,” said Wawro.
Right before the daughter arrived to find her mom, police say Jose called his son-in-law.
According to a search warrant, he received a call and Corona told him, “I did it. I killed her and was going to drag her body next door.”
Read search warrant affidavit 1 here:
”Immediately after the murder, he jumped into a vehicle and drove away, eventually ended up in Bedford, where he dropped the car off,” said Wawro.
Police say after he attacked his wife, Jose got in another vehicle that they owned, left the chainsaws, then drove to a Walmart. Surveillance video showed him buying some clothes and some other items.
”He went in and purchased a few items and pulled some more money out of the ATM and another Toyota pickup truck picks him up,” said Wawro.
There is a picture of that truck that police believe picked up Jose at the Walmart.
Police say the driver then took Corona to an auto dealership and he got into a truck there that he said he was taking on a test drive. He took off in that truck and headed for the border.
”We know he was in Laredo several hours later. We have a picture of him crossing near the border in that truck at the tollbooth. There is a picture of him. That’s where he crossed and that was the last sighting of him,” said Wawro.
Police believe the motive was that Corona was a suspicious person, controlling and suspected his wife of cheating on him.
Police say he was talking to a curandera, which is a witch doctor. He believed his wife was having an affair and he was seeking some sort of solution by going to the curandera, police say.
”So she would provide little vials of perfume and had those around the house. The herbs would cast out spirits and bring in spirits that would help his marriage and that situation,” said Wawro.
When police searched the Corona home they found potions with some sort of perfumes, little bottles of herbs and they found black magic books.
Read search warrant affidavit 2 here:
We spoke with Dr. Howard Campbell at the University of Texas in El Paso who studies black magic, witchcraft -- things that sometimes are prominent in certain aspects of the Latino culture.
”Typically these faith healer types use potions, herbs, liquids. I think the color red -- assume that it is related to blood, the imagery of blood related to the heart or love. The idea is that faith healers give you things that are going to heal or fix the problem,” said Dr. Campbell.
Read search warrant affidavit 3 here:
Police say they did talk to the witch doctor to see if she had suggested to him that he kill his wife, but they were unable to prove that happened.
This is not an unsolved case, unlike some of the other cases we have profiled. Police say they know who it did, but he is still out there and police say he needs to be brought in.
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