Lazaro Galindo, accused murderer and reformed Satanist, told a Miami-Dade jury Tuesday that he was really just a normal teenager seven years ago when prosecutors say he killed his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.
”What 19-year-old doesn’t have some type of skulls?” said Galindo, who is defending himself.
He showed the jury a picture police took of his home and said the skulls in the picture were just plastic toys.
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Up until last week, Galindo said he was a Satanist and even insisted on his constitutional right to wear his religious garb — a special cap and pentagram jewelry — in court.
On Monday, he announced that he had found God and no longer needed the special clothes. He abandoned his plan to keep his Satanic Bible on the defense table during the trial.
”At no time in this case will you hear that I said I kill for Satan,” he told the jury.
Galindo is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the death of Argelio Gonzalez, 44. Gonzalez was stabbed and beaten to death and then one leg and all his fingers were hacked off. Children playing in a Brownsville park found his leg and their mother called police, who found most of the rest of the body.
His fingers were never recovered.
Tuesday afternoon, Assistant State Attorney Herbert E. Walker, III, was expected to call police detectives who interviewed Galindo after Gonzalez’s body was discovered. Walker said one of the detectives will testify that Galindo told him he had an “insatiable desire to eat human flesh.”
The trial, before Circuit Judge Peter Adrien, is expected to last through Thursday.