During a virtual hearing Tuesday morning, the former husband and father-in-law of slain St. Cloud mother Nicole Montalvo had their trial scheduled for the week of July 13.
Christopher Otero-Rivera, Montalvo’s estranged husband, and his father Angel Rivera, appeared Tuesday, and the state is consolidating their cases and they will be tried together if the Ninth District Court allows. They are charged with second-degree murder, abuse of a dead human body and tampering with evidence.
In addition, the state has filed new discovery documents against Wanda Rivera, Angel’s wife, and faces charges of with giving false information to law enforcement and tampering with evidence.
Montalvo’s body was found on the family’s property in October 2019, days after she was reported missing after she didn’t pick up her son.
The state has dropped the misdemeanor charge of violating a domestic violence injunction against Otero-Rivera, which the state used to hold him while pursuing the murder charge. His defense has filed motions to have the murder trial moved out of Osceola County and some of the evidence suppressed as illegally obtained during a police search.