Jose Villafuerte was executed by the State of Arizona for the murder of Amelia Schoville
According to court documents Jose Villafuerte would beat up his girlfriend Amelia Schoville who he would then tie up and gag before leaving the home. Amelia Schoville would die from asphyxiation from the gag
Jose Villafuerte would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jose Villafuerte would be executed by lethal injection on April 22 1998
Jose Villafuerte Photos
Jose Villafuerte Case
On February 21, 1983, Jose Roberto Villafuerte beat his girlfriend Amelia Schoville. He also tied her to a bed in a trailer he was renting, gagged her then left her in a vehicle where she later died
The next day Villafuerte was found intoxicated by a deputy near Ash Fork who was investigating a disturbance call. Villafuerte was found sleeping near a car in a dry creek bed. That car belonged to Amelia Schoville.
The next day while being questioned by police, who were unaware of the Schoville murder, Villafuerte told deputies that he and his girlfriend had a fight in their trailer the day before. They had been drinking and she attacked him with a knife. He claimed that in the course of fighting over the knife she was hit several times in the head and also hit her head on an air conditioning unit.
He told the deputies that he loosely bound her, to keep her from calling police, and he left her there.
When Phoenix police arrived at the trailer, Schoville was found bound to the bed wrapped in a bloodstained bed sheet with a ball, made from a strip of bed sheet, stuffed in her throat
While Villafuerte admitted to hitting and tying up Schoville, he repeatedly claimed there were two other friends (Roberto and Fernando) there and he instructed them to unbind her when she “calmed down.”
Attempts by police and Villafuerte’s attorneys to find the two were unsuccessful, as Villafuerte could not or would not provide descriptions of the two friends.
Galen Wilkes, an assistant attorney general said Schoville died of asphyxiation because of the ball of cloth lodged in her throat. Lab tests turned up seminal fluid in her vagina, but it was not tested to determine whose it was.
