PORT ANGELES — Moises Ramirez Matias, 25, pleaded guilty last week to second-degree murder in the Jan. 8 stabbing death of 18-year-old Laranda Konopaski of Forks.
He agreed in a plea deal that will see him spending 250 months — more than 20 years — in prison for the killing, which was witnessed by the couple’s 4-year-old daughter.
Ramirez Matias had been charged with first-degree premeditated murder with a deadly weapon in the death of Konopaski in their Forks home.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams accepted the plea deal and ordered a pre-sentence investigation.
Williams set sentencing for 9 a.m. June 14, when Konopaski’s friends and relatives — and Ramirez Matias — can make open statements to the court.
“I have a lot of words to say of what happened,” Ramirez Matias, a Guatemalan citizen illegally in the U.S., told Superior Court Judge George L. Wood at his first court appearance Jan. 12.
The possibility that the couple’s daughter would testify played a part in the plea deal, county Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Ann Lundwall said Friday.
“Part of my consideration as far as the plea deal was sparing a 4-year-old the trauma of having to testify in court,” she said.
Ramirez Matias, who has a fifth-grade education, according to court documents, “wasn’t getting much of a deal,” Lundwall added, because the minimum range for first-degree murder is 240 months.
Harry Gasnick of Clallam Public Defenders, representing Ramirez Matias, did not say Friday why his client agreed to the plea deal.
He did say: “My client has felt horribly about this situation since Day 1, and the fact he entered a not guilty plea when he first appeared in court does not detract from that.”
According to the Forks Police Department’s probable cause statement, the couple’s daughter called 9-1-1 at 5:09 a.m. Jan. 8 from their 1205 S. Forks Ave. home “stating her father . . . had stabbed her mother.”
Forks police officer Gene Hoagland, who wrote the statement, said he found blood in the living room and back hallway of the couple’s trailer and Konopaski lying in the hallway.
He said a blood-stained kitchen knife was in the master bedroom.
Konopaski was taken to Forks Community Hospital and died from her injuries.
Ramirez Matias became the target of a manhunt.
Three days after the killing, he was taken into custody 3 miles from his home after he told a friend he wanted to get a lawyer and turn himself in.
________
Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
