Lawyer: Slain Mayor Abused His Wife for Years

Pics, voicemail show Levette Crespo endured violent marriage: lawyer
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 22, 2014 1:14 PM CDT
Lawyer: Slain Mayor Abused His Wife for Years
An official portrait of Daniel Crespo, the mayor of Bell Gardens, hangs at the city's police station in Bell Gardens, Calif., on Sept. 30, 2014.   (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

The wife accused of murdering the mayor of an LA County town last month is beginning to fill in some of the blanks in the fatal shooting of Daniel Crespo: Levette Crespo's attorney has given NBC4 photos that show Levette "about two years ago" with lacerated lips and a bruised right eye—proof that she lived a life marred by domestic violence, says Eber Bayona. "From the time she was pregnant with [daughter] Crystal at the age of 15, she endured his abuse," Bayona tells NBC4. He also says Crespo battered his wife with belts and his fists and that he once went berserk when he found her looking at an elected official on the computer. "He took her face, smashed it into the computer, and asked her if she found him attractive," Bayona adds.

NBC4 also got its hands on a voicemail left for Levette, allegedly from one of Daniel's paramours, in which the woman tells Levette that "you know all the f---ing s--t that he has done" and "to wake the f--- up." The pics and voicemail are a counterstrike against Daniel Crespo's brother, who announced a wrongful-death lawsuit Monday against "cold-blooded killer" Levette. William Crespo's attorney acknowledged Daniel "had a bit of a zipper problem," but also stated "in California … you can't just shoot people five times because they're having a bad day," NBC4 notes. The Crespos' son, however, has a different take: Daniel Jr., 19, told a 911 dispatcher the night of the shooting that his mom "was defending herself" and him after his dad allegedly punched him in the face. (This mother got more jail time than her husband, who raped her son.)

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