
Army Sgt. 1st Class Maliek Kearney is seen court Oct 18, 2016 at the John H. Wood, Jr. Federal Courthouse after being denied bail. Kearney has admitted travelling interstate to kill his wife in Maryland in 2015
A U.S. Army sergeant’s girlfriend has testified to helping him kill his soldier wife in 2015.
Army Sgt. Maliek Kearney, 37, and his girlfriend, Dolores Delgado, 33, were arrested in San Antonio, Texas, in October 2016, after authorities said the pair traveled from Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where Kearney was stationed, to a home in Severn, Maryland, to kill his wife, Army Pfc. Karlyn Ramirez, 24.
Ramirez was found fatally shot in her Maryland townhouse, while holding the couple’s unharmed, sleeping infant daughter, in August 2015.
Dolores Delgado of San Antonio, Texas, in August 2017 had pled guilty in federal court for interstate travel to commit domestic violence resulting in death, in connection with the death of Karlyn Ramirez.
Tuesday Delgado testified as a government witness in the case against Kearney, a decorated soldier accused of killing his wife three years ago in Anne Arundel County.
On the third day of Kearney’s trial, Delgado, 33, said she supplied Kearney with her car and gun and then burned his clothes and dumped the revolver off a fishing pier in Florida’s Banana River.
Delgado, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, could be sentenced to life in prison after her guilty plea.
Karlyn Ramirez was shot multiple times , but her baby was left unharmed in her arms
After Army soldier Pfc. Karlyn Ramirez, 24, of Fort Meade, Maryland was found shot to death in her home on August 25, 2015 while she lay next to her newborn baby. Investigators looked to her roommate and her husband as persons of interests.
Karlyn worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) and had a top secret security clearance.
Eventually her estranged husband, Sgt. Maliek Kearney who was then stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas and his new girlfriend Army veteran Dolores Delgado were arrested for the murder.
Kearney and Delgado, were charged with the federal crime of having crossed state lines to commit domestic violence which resulted in death. Delgado pled guilty, while Kearney’s trial began on July 16 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Sgt. Kearney [left], admitted to shooting his wife Karlyn [right] four times, placing their baby in her dead mother’s arms, and then fleeing the scene leaving a sliding glass door open. The pair were married in 2015, for just five weeks before the Karlyn’s murder
In August 2017, Dolores Delgado plead guilty to helping Sgt. Kearney with the murder of Karlyn Ramirez.
During his own testimony, Kearney admitted to shooting Karlyn four times, placing their baby in her dead mother’s arms, and then fleeing the scene leaving a sliding glass door open. Investigators report that the crime was a well thought out and executed plan implemented in an effort to throw homicide detectives off.
Delgado, an Army veteran, took the stand Wednesday and told the court that Kearney was going to kill Ramirez, who was stationed at Fort Meade at the time, unless they reconciled, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Delgado said she and Kearney meticulously plotted the killing and that she provided Kearney with her car and gun to use.
She also said that while he was en route to Maryland, she stayed in South Carolina with his cell phone, sending texts from it to help establish an alibi for him.
Dolores Delgado testified in court Wednesday that she helped boyfriend, Maliek Kearney plan the killing of his wife, dispose of the murder weapon and establish an alibi for him
Dolores Delgado gave Sgt. Kearney the car, the gun, and gas cans to refuel with so he wouldn’t be caught on any security cameras as he drove from South Carolina to Maryland on August 24th to carry out the murder. Sgt. Kearney returned back to work the next morning at Fort Jackson in South Carolina to establish an alibi.
Additional testimony revealed that Karlyn and Sgt. Kearney separated only two weeks after they had been married. They had been married for roughly five weeks when Karlyn was murdered.
Karlyn attempted to get a restraining order on Sgt. Kearney just days before the murder after he showed up to her home unannounced in an effort to reconcile with her. After the failed attempt at reconciliation, Sgt. Kearney was hospitalized because he tried to end his life with sleeping pills.
Kearney was a decorated 15-year Army veteran who had served tours in Iraq, Pakistan and South Korea. One of his superiors at Fort Sam Houston testified that he has been “nothing but an exemplary soldier.”
A friend reported that he had no idea that Sgt. Kearney and Dolores Delgado were even dating.
Delgado said that despite planning Ramirez’s death with Kearney, she thought he and his wife would make up, not that Kearney would actually kill her.
‘I believed there was some chance of Karlyn seeing Mr. Kearney and working things out,’ Delgado said, according to the Baltimore Sun. ‘I told him that he wasn’t going to do anything … that everything would be fine.’
During her testimony, Delgado also revealed that she been having a lengthy affair with Kearney, which she said started before his marriage and continued after it.
Testifying for the second day, Delgado said: “I kinda figured they’d [cops] be knocking on my door at some point in time.”
Dolores Delgado described how she sat on Kearney’s sofa in South Carolina while he carried out the crime in Maryland and went through his phone, becoming angry after finding pictures of other women.
Delgado who first met Kearney while they were serving in Iraq in 2007 testified their sexual relationship continued until they were both arrested in Texas, almost a decade later.
Describing the time she says Kearney committed the killings, Delgado said, “I realized something bad had happened, and I should have done something about it.”
Delgado has already reached a plea deal with the government for her role in Ramirez’s death.
Federal prosecutors said that Kearney and Ramirez’s relationship had deteriorated prior to her death and that both parties had cheated on each other, with Ramirez attempting to leave him, which prompted Kearney and Delgado to plan her murder.
Kearney’s defense attorneys have said that Delgado is at fault for Ramirez’s death, pointing to a Facebook post written by Delgado, in which she wrote, ‘The crazy b****h is going to be put out.’
Delgado has already reached a plea deal with the government in 2017 for her role in Ramirez’s death, in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, WBAL-TV 11 reported.
She could, however, still receive a life sentence.
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