La Plata, MD – After a long, grueling trial that lasted nine days, Charles County Circuit Court Judge Amy J. Bragunier sentenced Isa Manuel Santiago, 40 of Oxon Hill, to 55 years in prison after a jury delivered three guilty verdicts for the 2003 murder of 26-year-old LaToya Taylor.
The jury delivered its verdict late Thursday, Sept. 24, and sentencing followed.
Charles County Deputy State’s Attorney Karen Piper-Mitchell, in her closing remarks to the jury Thursday afternoon, admitted the case was one of circumstantial evidence, that jurors had to sort through claims by the defense counsel that Santiago’s Jeep Cherokee was stolen prior to it being found set ablaze in Washington, DC on the day of the murder.
“Why did he destroy the Jeep Cherokee?” she asked them. “If he wasn’t at the IRS [where video showed the victim getting into a Jeep Cherokee], if he wasn’t coming out of that field [in Newburg, where the victim’s body was found in June 2003], there is no need. You’re not going to torch your vehicle when it costs $14,000. Do you really think it was stolen in that time frame?” she asked.
Piper-Mitchell said that prior to her death, Taylor had just presented Santiago with paternal results revealing that he was the father of her child.
“We had a love triangle going on here,” she said. “He had a child with LaToya and he had a child with his wife.”
She pressed on, saying Santiago testified that he was running errands with his wife on the day LaToya disappeared, yet had to call his babysitter and tell them he couldn’t pick up their child because of an emergency.
“What is such an emergency that you can’t go pick up your child from daycare?” she asked.
She said the fact that the mother showed up at 5 p.m. to pick up the child clearly indicates the two were not out running errands together.
Piper-Mitchell noted the discrepancy in time from 4:27 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. when Santiago was not heard from, was the exact time he would have needed to kill LaToya Taylor.
“He had all the motive in the world,” Piper-Mitchell said.
In the end, Santiago was convicted on all three counts, receiving 30 years for murder, second degree; 20 years for felony use of a handgun in a violent crime; and five years on illegally possessing a firearm.
Charles County State’s Attorney Tony Covington said in a murder case such as this, it is not unusual to have a trial run into a second week.
“The first trial actually took longer than this one,” he said, adding that it went into a third week.
“Based on the amount of evidence, witness testimony, they take time,” Covington stated.
Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com