March 14, 2005

Sentencing Tuesday for murder of Mastic Beach mother

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said today that 26-year-old Faustino Chavez will be sentenced tomorrow in Riverhead to 22 years to life in prison for the murder of Vinessa Hoera.  The 23-year-old single mother vanished on the evening of February 27, 2004.  Police found her body six weeks later, with fatal knife wounds to her neck, in low-lying brush near a Westhampton soccer field. 

Chavez admitted in his guilty plea on February 15 that he raped the victim in her car at knifepoint, and later cut her throat several times before hiding her body.  Police and members of the slain woman's family said Vinessa had repeatedly spurned Chavez's advances in the past.  The two worked at Cor-J Seafood in Westhampton, a store managed by Vinessa's father.

Spota said the prosecution recommended a sentence for Chavez of 25 years to life.  A sentence of 22 years to life in prison was put forward by the court and accepted, to avoid a lengthy trial, by the victim's family. 

Because Chavez committed two felonies, rape and murder, a Suffolk County grand jury indicted the Guatemalan native for first and second-degree murder, in addition to one count of arson.  Chavez set fire to the victim's car and left it abandoned on a road in Hampton Bays where police found it the day following the woman's disappearance.  Police also found Chavez the next day, unconscious in his smoldering car in Ronkonkoma, his head, chest and hands severely burned.

The defendant was arrested on 150^th street in Jamaica, Queens on April 5, 2004 and initially charged with arson.  A grand jury indicted Chavez on first and second-degree murder charges in June.   

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