A Wyoming man accused of shooting and dismembering two of his friends has pleaded no contest just one week before he was set to go to trial.
On Monday, Jan. 22, just one week before his murder trial was scheduled to begin, Michael Montano decided to change his not guilty pleas to instead plead no contest to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of mutilation of dead bodies, Gillette News Record reports.
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On Oct. 8, 2016, authorities discovered the dismembered bodies of 33-year-old Phillip Brewer and 38-year Jody Fortuna in plastic totes in the back of Montana’s pickup truck, which was parked in a storage unit. Investigators believed that the pair had been killed more than a month earlier, possibly on Sept. 2, 2016, when a resident at Hoy’s Trailer Park, where Montano lived, heard about six gunshots and saw suspicious activity at Montano’s trailer.
Brewer died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head, while Fortuna died from a gunshot wound to the back of the head and two gunshot wounds to the back.
During the course of the investigation, authorities claim that Montano, 37, repeatedly admitted and denied the murders, alleging that during a break in his first interview, he told officials “I did it. I killed them,” but later retracted the statement.
Court documents also allege that Montano told an inmate in jail that “this won’t be the first time that I have killed his friends.” He also reportedly asked another inmate to tell a private investigator that he had heard someone else confess to the killings.
Montano’s girlfriend, Kylee Collins, allegedly told officials that she asked him why the pair’s bodies were in her bathtub, to which he replied by saying that he had messed up and began crying. He also allegedly told her that he believed that he could get away with murder.
Montano allegedly told authorities that he sat in the trailer for more than a day attempting to decide what to do with the bodies before he eventually decided to dismember them using handsaws. It took him one or two days to dismember the bodies and place them in plastic totes.
Collins claimed that she saw Montano remove a section of the floor in front of the bathroom because there was blood on it as well as remove the carpet and wash it before gluing it back in place.
An affidavit states that Montano allegedly told a friend that he had killed Brewer and Fortuna “over drugs and money.”
Montano is scheduled to be sentenced on April 25. His plea of no contest means that he neither admits nor disputes to the crimes and that the court will treat it the same as a guilty plea. The prosecution and defense will recommend a sentence of 51-and-a-half years to life for each count of second-degree murder as well as two-and-a-half to three years for each count of mutilation of dead bodies.
