Kickboxer sentenced in death of girlfriend

A Baltimore kickboxer was sentenced yesterday to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole for a murder two years ago in a Warwick motel.

Mallon Bolden, 47, of 7007 Lachlan Circle, Baltimore, was sentenced by Judge Edwin J. Gale in Kent County Superior Court for murdering Maria Sample, 44, on March 19, 2006, according to the attorney general’s office.

The judge also ordered Bolden to serve one year on one count of resisting arrest.

On Sept. 3, Bolden pleaded guilty to the charges in what the attorney general’s office said was not a negotiated plea because the state did not give up any rights in securing it and did not dismiss any counts of the indictment.

Bolden has been held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions in Cranston since Warwick police arrested him.

In his guilty plea, Bolden acknowledged the state would have shown he murdered Sample and that the death was in a “manner consistent with aggravated battery or torture,” the attorney general’s office said. That gave the court the option of imposing life imprisonment without parole.

The attorney general’s office said that more than 40 relatives and friends of the victim were in court for the sentencing.

According to the attorney general’s office, Bolden, ranked as a world champion in the Professional Kickboxing Federation Cruiserweight Division, and Sample — with whom he lived in Baltimore — came to Rhode Island with another couple for a March 18, 2006, kickboxing tournament at the Rhode Island Sports Center in Warwick.

At about 8 a.m., the couples checked into rooms at the Motel 6 on Jefferson Boulevard.

At checkout time, two of Bolden’s friends sat in a parked car waiting for Bolden and Sample, but the couple never appeared.

The Motel 6 manager called Warwick police. As the police opened the door in the motel room, Bolden tried to flee. When the police entered the room, Sample was found lying on the floor covered in blood. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The state medical examiner’s office found Sample’s injuries were consistent with being hit with hands, feet and an iron. Footprints were found on the victim’s face and an arm. There was evidence that Maria Sample was alive and conscious during the infliction of all the injuries, according to the attorney general’s news release.

— Staff report

Wanted in Guatemala, arrested in Providence

PROVIDENCE — An illegal immigrant from Guatemala, wanted in his home country for possession of weapons and explosives and for allegedly killing a police officer, was arrested by the Providence police Monday and turned over to immigration officials.

Paula Grenier, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Boston, said the arrest of Jose Arnoldo Pinto, 45, demonstrated the value of cooperation between enforcement agencies.

The police said the arrest grew out of information developed by Francisco Colon, an inspector in the department’s internal-affairs and inspections division, who recently learned that Pinto, who was living at 181 Petteys Ave. in the Hartford neighborhood, was wanted in Guatemala for killing an officer.

Colon relayed the information to local ICE officials, who confirmed with their counterparts in Guatemala that Pinto was also wanted for possession of weapons and explosives. Officers Edmund Malloy and Scott Keenan, detectives in the Police Department’s Special Response Unit, put Pinto’s home under surveillance and then took him into custody when they spotted him driving on Hartford Avenue.

Pinto is being held at the Wyatt Detention Center, in Central Falls, according to Grenier, and will face a hearing soon before an immigration judge on the government’s request that he be sent back to Guatemala. She said she did not know how long he has been in the United States.

— Richard C. Dujardin

Counterfeiter sentenced in federal court

PROVIDENCE — Jesus Nater, who already is serving a state sentence for passing counterfeit bills, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court yesterday to federal charges alleging that he made thousands of counterfeit twenty-dollar bills and passed them at Providence Place mall, in convenience stores and to his landlord.

Nater, 29, had admitted to federal agents that he made about $100,000 in counterfeit bills, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente’s office.

Prosecutor Andrew J. Reich said the government had been prepared to prove that Nater passed bogus bills at least five times between July 2007 and January of this year. Federal agents seized a copier machine and sheets of uncut bogus bills in a hotel room used by Nater, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

In court yesterday, Nater, whose last known address was not available, entered the guilty plea before Chief Judge Mary M. Lisi, who scheduled a sentencing hearing for April 10. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

— Staff report

Trial in death of boy, 3, begins today

PROVIDENCE — Opening arguments are expected in Superior Court this morning as the murder trail begins for Gilbert Delestre, who is accused of beating 3-year-old Thomas J. Wright to death four years ago.

Delestre faces one count of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Judge Netti C. Vogel will hear the case.

Lawyers finished jury selection yesterday, picking 10 women and 4 men to consider the case. When all evidence is presented, 12 of the jurors will be selected to make the final determination of innocence or guilt.

Prosecutors say Delestre and his girlfriend, Katherine Bunnell, beat her nephew, Thomas, to death after they returned to their Woonsocket apartment from a night out and found yogurt and milk he had spilled on the living room floor. Delestre and Bunnell were caring for Thomas and his two brothers in addition to their own two children while Bunnell’s sister, Karen Wright, served a prison term in Illinois for marijuana trafficking.

The pair was given separate trials because each accused the other of inflicting the injuries that killed Thomas. Bunnell was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy. She was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

— Tatiana Pina