Menendez doomed by forensic evidence

When state police tracked him down June 5, hours after his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend's body was found in Croton Falls, Ariel Menendez gave them a confession.

Prosecutors never used it.

They won a conviction Tuesday in Westchester County Court in White Plains for first-degree murder against the 28-year-old Bronx man with a powerful, mostly circumstantial, case that convinced jurors the Bronx man had sexually assaulted and killed Elizabeth Butler in her sport utility vehicle.

District Attorney Janet DiFiore said yesterday that she was not surprised.

"It was a very, very strong case," she said. "The forensic evidence was undeniable."

There were no eyewitnesses to the slaying, in which Butler was strangled and stabbed 13 times. But Menendez's DNA was found in semen, and Butler's DNA was in blood stains found on clothes he tried to throw away.

The defense had been willing to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a sentence of 25 years to life. But prosecutors were intent on a conviction that could lead to life in prison without parole.

Menendez will face that maximum when Westchester County Judge Barbara Zambelli sentences him July 25. DiFiore said she would seek it and Butler's family has urged friends and relatives to write to the judge requesting that she show no mercy.

Butler's parents found her body in her Nissan Pathfinder, around the corner from the Croton Falls train station and the market where the North Salem High School senior worked. Menendez tried to flee the country, but could not get a flight to his native Guatemala and went to Connecticut, where investigators found him.

Defense lawyer Harvey Loeb was not available for comment.

The first-degree murder charges required jurors to find that Menendez intentionally killed Butler in connection with a sexual assault. While not conceding his role in the killing, the defense seemed to be about limiting Men-endez's sentence. His lawyers wanted to convince jurors that the sex was consensual. He admitted stabbing and strangling Butler, but insisted it was during a struggle when they argued after sex.

Jurors never heard the account because Menendez chose not to testify and prosecutors Perry Perrone and Paula Branca-Santos opted not to use his confession. Their decision was based on the self-serving statements he made, and they didn't want to lend credence to his claim of consensual sex.

Instead, they methodically showed how Butler was trying to move on — seeing someone else, ignoring Menendez's constant phone calls. And they painted the defendant as an angry ex-boyfriend, forcing jurors to question why anyone still in a relationship would bring a kitchen knife.

"He was a man who dominated a young girl," Branca-Santos said yesterday.