Summary: After the gruesome attack on lawyer John Ralston Pate and his girlfriend in their upscale neighborhood apartment, Venezuelan authorities are placing greater effort into solving the case.
In a country where only 8 percent of murders are solved, Venezuelan authorities didn’t waste much time in finding those connected with the case. The country’s Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Diaz, announced that two men have been arrested and a third has been connected.
Twenty-four-year-old Juan Carlos Pimentel Pacheco and 26-year-old Antoni Jose Rodriguez Moreno were arrested for the murder of American lawyer John Ralston Pate and attack on his girlfriend Sally Elizabeth Evans in Caracas.
It is believed the attack was a failed robbery or kidnapping that resulted in both victims being stabbed multiple times in their apartment in the Vista Real building. In a country that is heavy with crime, the affluent neighborhood that Pate and Evans lived in seemed to be excluded from that fact. Critics of the government have complained that only high-profile cases like this one or the case involving beauty queen Monica Spears get any attention.
The apartment complex has only 30 units, a pool, and 25 video cameras. It was unclear if video footage captured the suspects but one would hope that that many cameras would have gotten something. People that live and work at the complex described Pate as a kind quiet person that left early in the morning to go to his job and returned late at night.
Pate was a partner at his firm De Sola Pate & Brown, which worked mainly with corporate law. Many of his clients were foreign businesses that wanted to conduct business in the country. Pate had even represented the U.S. embassy in a few circumstances.
Pate had lived in the country since the ‘70s where his son, now a lawyer in Florida, was born and raised. Pate was still licensed to practice law in Massachusetts.
Photo: usatoday.com