SEATTLE — Monday a jury found David Pietz of Lynnwood guilty of murdering his wife Nicole Pietz in 2006.
There was relief from Nicole Pietz mother, Gael Schneider, “I just wanted justice for my daughter, and we got it.”
“She’ll never come back…I’ll never get to hold her again and the horrible way she was murdered. I didn’t ever get to kiss her goodbye,” said Schneider. David Pietz did not react when the verdict was read.
David Pietz had been on trial since last month. The jury began deliberations on Thursday morning.
Before ther verdict, the jury asked to once again hear the messages left on Nicole Pietz's phone as well as the interview of David Pietz by detectives. The jury then took a recess at 11 a.m. and came back with a verdict a few hours later.
During the trial, the defense claimed that Nicole Pietz, who had struggled with an addiction to prescription drugs, was killed by an unknown drug dealer or dangerous criminal.
Nicole Pietz was on her way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting when she disappeared. Her doctor said she had been taking prescription painkillers in the months before her death because of a back injury. The defense believed she had fallen “off the wagon.”
PHOTOS: Timeline in Nicole Pietz murder case
The prosecution placed the blame squarely on David Pietz, saying he was tired of his wife and her eight years of sobriety, so he killed her during a heated argument. The trial uncovered that David Pietz had been sexually involved with several women while he was married, but told detectives that he “didn’t have much of a libido.”
The prosecution also shot holes in the theory that some unknown drug dealer or dangerous criminal killed the victim and placed her body beneath blackberry bushes in Burien, without raping her.
“Nicole was naked. If some robber or serial killer or drug dealer killed her, where are her clothes?” said King County Deputy Prosecutor Kristin Richardson.
Nicole Pietz was still wearing a night mouth guard when her body was found -- proof, the prosecutor argued, that she had been sleeping when her husband came home and strangled her during an argument.
Richardson said the night guard is something Nicole Pietz didn’t wear out of the house. David Pietz did not take the stand during his trial.
The guilty verdict has Maiya Alward , Nicole’s childhood friend, hopeful David Pietz might finally tell the truth about the night Nicole was murdered.
“Why doesn’t he admit what he’s done? Now that he’s been proven guilty, come forward and tell us what you did. Tell us how you did it. Give the family some peace,” demanded Alward.
KIRO
