After a four-year hiatus, Blaine County had its first murder case since Alan and Diane Johnson were gunned down in their Bellevue home in 2003.
This year's murder had its own gruesome attributes. The victim, 16-year-old Wood River High School student Margarita "Maggie" Guardado, was killed with a hammer on Aug. 24 on the street in front of her home in the Woodside area of southeast Hailey. Her assailant then dumped a flammable liquid on her body and lit it on fire.
Her erstwhile boyfriend, 17-year-old Freddy Tellez, has been charged with the crime. Investigators believe jealousy was the motive. Evidence suggests that Guardado went on a camping trip to Redfish Lake with a 26-year-old Hailey man the weekend before she was murdered.
Tellez, meanwhile, is incarcerated without bond. A jury trial is scheduled to begin April 29.
Two other Hailey residents are also involved in murder investigations, one as a victim in Gooding County and another as a suspect in Twin Falls.
Thirty-one-year-old John Henry McElhiney is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly killing Dale Miller, an 18-year-old Twin Falls man, and hiding the body in a barrel. Arrested on Sept. 12 at an apartment where he was living in east Twin Falls, McElhiney, a former Hailey car salesman, is being held without bond awaiting a March 3 jury trial.
In Gooding County, the body of 30-year-old Gustavo Flores-Quintana, who worked at times in the Wood River Valley in drywall construction, was found on Nov. 8 near the Big Wood River about a mile north of Gooding. He had been shot in the back of the head execution style. Gooding County authorities believe two illegal immigrants, Jesus Valencia-Bolanos, 23, and Carlos Villanueva-Martinez, 37, both of Gooding, killed Flores-Quintana. Authorities fear both men have fled to Mexico and are trying to have them located and returned to the United States.
Alleged attempted murder
It wasn't a homicide, but Blaine County authorities allege it could have been and have charged the accused assailant with second--degree attempted murder.
The charge was filed against 54-year-old Deborah A. Reimer, accused of trying to kill her former boyfriend Robert Dreyer at his home in south Ketchum on July 18. Reimer allegedly fired two shots at Dreyer that morning while he was taking a shower. Police apprehended her later that day near Challis.
Reimer is incarcerated in the Gooding County Jail on $1 million bond. (The aging Blaine County Jail does not have long-term accommodations for female inmates.)
Reimer's bond was raised from $50,000 after she removed an ankle-monitoring bracelet in Twin Falls on Nov. 6 and fled. She was apprehended six days later at a motel in Pryor, Okla.
NET takes a bite out of crime
The Blaine County Narcotics Enforcement Team, sometimes referred to as NET, took a bite out of cocaine and methamphetamine distribution in the Wood River Valley on April 11, when it arrested 10 suspected drug dealers and issued an arrest warrant for an 11th who was an inmate at the Idaho State Penitentiary near Boise.
All 11, plus two more suspected drug dealers, were indicted on April 20 by a Blaine County grand jury on a plethora of drug-dealing charges.
By the end of 2007, nine of those indicted had pleaded guilty to reduced charges and had been sentenced to prison or jail terms. Two others have pleaded guilty and await sentencing in 2008. Charges were dismissed against one individual, and court proceedings are under way against the final suspect, the man who was already serving prison time.
Four sex criminals sent to prison
Four men convicted of sex crimes in the county were sent to prison in 2007.
Former youth lacrosse coach Douglas D. Cooper was sentenced in July to two to 15 years in prison for lewd conduct with a minor child under 16. Cooper, a 44-year-old Hailey man, was arrested and charged in 2006 for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl.
Sent to prison for three to 20 years was Ovidio Ricaldi-Villajuan, a 24-year-old Peruvian citizen who was in the United States illegally and living in Hailey. Ricaldi-Villajuan was convicted of lewd conduct with a minor child under 16 for molesting a 4-year-old girl in November 2006.
Two other Hailey men were sentenced to three to seven years each for having a drunken sex party in Slaughterhouse Canyon east of Bellevue in July 2006 with two Hailey girls who were 12 and 13. Emmanuel Bautista-Aguayo and Jose Vivar-Olivera, both 23, were sentenced in May after both pleaded guilty to single counts of lewd conduct with a minor child under 16. Vivar-Olivera is a Mexican citizen who was a legal U.S. resident at the time of his arrest. He may face deportation once released from prison.
Margarita Guardado
