Recording of victim's voice heard at murder trial
Leonardo Valdez-Cruz, seen arriving at the Nassau County Courthouse on the first day of his trial, was found guilty of first-degree murder and other charges on April 30 in the torture and stabbing of his estranged girlfriend, Jo'Anna Bird, 24, in her New Cassel apartment in 2009. (April 13, 2010) Credit: Howard Schnapp
Leonardo Valdez-Cruz sat Monday with his hand covering his face as the voice of the woman he's accused of killing filled the courtroom.
"I don't give a - - about your threats," Jo'Anna Bird said in a phone call recorded in October 2008, when Valdez-Cruz called her from the Nassau County jail. "I don't know who you think you're scaring. . . . So come home and do what the hell you want to do."
Five months later, out of jail after serving time for violating an order of protection against Bird, Valdez-Cruz, 24, of Westbury, tortured his estranged girlfriend to death in her New Cassel apartment, prosecutors say.
Two phone calls from Valdez-Cruz - the first was in July 2008 - were played Monday during his first-degree murder trial. The exchanges ranged from cordial and casual to intense and emotional, with Valdez-Cruz at times threatening Bird.
His lawyer, Dana Grossblatt of Jericho, has said evidence of a rocky relationship is not evidence of murder.
In both the calls, Valdez-Cruz expresses his love to Bird, begging her to give him another chance and, at times, threatening her if she wouldn't.
Bird, in turn, is somewhat guarded in her responses. At times she is warm, laughing off his threats and even ending one call by saying, "I love you, too." At other times, she denies that she still cares for him, and tells him that the relationship is over.
"You don't even say 'I love you' no more," Valdez-Cruz says on a tape recorded Oct. 9, 2008. "You don't say it willingly 'cause you want to say it. I've got to build that back up, right? Right?"
"I don't know," Bird, 24, says.
"I want you to love me the same way I love you," Valdez-Cruz says on the tape. "I want you to want to kill me if I don't want to be with you."
"I wouldn't do that," Bird says.
"Well, we different," Valdez-Cruz responds.
Later, Valdez-Cruz flies into a rage, asking Bird, with whom he shares a son, to start fresh with him. "I want to be a - - family," he says. "I want to be a happy - - couple. . . . That's not going to kill you!"
"I'm tired of trying!" Bird shouts back. "And it just might kill me."
