On what would have been her mother’s 43rd birthday, Candice Estrada spent the afternoon telling a jury how she unwittingly discovered what would become a piece of evidence in her father’s trial for her mother’s murder.

She said she was taking the last of her mother’s belongings from her parents’ Port St. Lucie home in December 2006 when she opened a cookbook, curious as to why the edges were shredded.

“When I opened it, there was a bullet there,” she said Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Albert Estrada’s first-degree murder trial this week said another bullet Estrada fired inside the house on July 26, 2006, hit Julia Rolon-Estrada and killed her.

Crime scene investigators never saw the cookbook during their investigation.

Assistant State Attorney Steve Gosnell asked Candice Estrada what she did when she found it.

“Well, I was kind of creeped out, so I just closed the book and put it back,” she said.

Albert Estrada could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

Jurors on Tuesday also heard testimony from detectives who said Estrada stood at a back window two days after the alleged murder, his hands pressed to the glass while investigators looked at the bags of mulch stacked atop a shallow grave in the couple’s back yard where they found Rolon-Estrada the next day.

Among other evidence, prosecutors showed jurors a calendar inside the house. On July 26, the day investigators believe Estrada killed his wife, someone had drawn a sad face.

Jurors also heard a conversation between Estrada and Port St. Lucie police Detective Robert Fonteyn while investigators searched the couple’s home. Estrada told him his wife ran away after he rebuffed her desire to have more kids.

“I told her, ‘If we’re going to fight and you decide you’re going to leave, what am I going to do? Huh? Am I going to kill you? Then I’ll never have you,’ ” Estrada said.

Tags: Albert Estrada, Candice Estrada

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 10:44 am and is filed under Courts, Crime, Port St. Lucie, St. Lucie County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.