CANYON COUNTY, Idaho — Editor's note: Story updated with new sentencing date.
Eight years after what the Canyon County Sheriff called a "domestic violence homicide with more than one victim," the man charged with murdering a woman in Wilder in 2015 will soon be sent to an Idaho prison.
Erasmo Diaz Alcala pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Monday, Jan. 30, closing one chapter in a long investigation that began June 11, 2015, when 39-year-old Amparo Godinez Sanchez was shot and killed in front of her and Diaz's two children in their Wilder home.
Diaz, a Mexican national, was brought back to Idaho to face murder charges in November 2021, some five months after Mexican Federales and U.S. Marshals took him into custody in Mexico. Investigators said that after killing his wife, Diaz had ditched his car in Adrian, Oregon, then made his way to Mexico.
After his extradition back to Idaho in 2021, Diaz initially pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, but on Monday, he changed his plea. His sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. on July 6 with Third District Judge Matthew J. Roker at the Canyon County Courthouse.
The plea agreement is not a conditional guilty plea, meaning the judge is not bound to an agreed-upon sentence. Under Idaho law, he faces no less than 10 years in prison and up to life with no parole. If he is ever released from prison, Diaz could be deported and barred from obtaining U.S. citizenship.
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