LANCASTER, Pa. — A Lancaster County man has been convicted of shooting two of his friends to death, then burning their bodies in a pickup truck in Manor Township in 2020, prosecutors announced.
Ezequiel B. Almodovar, 38, was found guilty by a Lancaster County jury Tuesday of shooting and killing Jonathan Rivera, 29, and Eugenio Morales-Torres, 33, at his home on Hunsicker Road in Upper Leacock Township on July 27, 2020.
Almodovar then used a pickup truck belonging to Morales-Torres to transport the victims' bodies to a farm lane off Charlestown Road in Manor Township, where he set the truck on fire.
The bodies were discovered the next day, prosecutors said.
After hearing a week's worth of testimony and two hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Almodovar of two counts of first-degree homicide, two counts of abuse of corpse and one count each of reckless burning and tampering with evidence. He will be sentenced at a later date.
The two first-degree murder convictions carry mandatory sentences of life in prison with no opportunity for parole, according to prosecutors.
Almodovar was linked to the killings by several pieces of evidence that were found in his home after Rivera went there and never returned.
At a preliminary hearing in 2020, Rivera's fiancée testified she interrupted Almodovar as he was cleaning up the crime scene when she went there looking for Rivera, who had texted her the night before to say he was going to visit "Zeke" (Almodovar).
When Rivera did not return and his phone went silent, his fiancée went to Almodovar’s home, according to her testimony at the hearing.
There, she testified, she encountered Almodovar – in what appeared to be a blood-stained, white tank top shirt – crouching down next to Morales-Torres’ black pickup truck, where he appeared to be looking for objects on the ground.
The fiancée and Rivera’s sister (who was Morales-Torres’ girlfriend) went back to Almodovar’s house the next morning, according to testimony. The truck was gone, but they found a spent shell casing in the grass, near the driveway.
The casing was turned over to police, who found five more casings outside Almodovar’s home, according to testimony.
Police also found stains, believed to be blood, in the driveway and on a comforter and towel inside the home. A bag of blood was found in a biohazard bag inside Almodovar's garage.
