The handyman lover charged with the murder of Orsolya Gaal reportedly told police that he believed the New York mother of two gave him HIV over the course of their two-year extramarital affair, according to court records.
“She was cheating on me with somebody and she gave me HIV,” David Bonola, 44, reportedly told detectives when he was brought in for questioning just days after the 51-year-old mother was brutally killed in the basement of her Forest Hills home in Queens.
Mr Bonola pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in Queens Supreme Court on a 13-count indictment, which includes two counts of murder in the second degree, two counts of burglary, concealment of a human corpse, criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with evidence.
Gaal, who often had the man over to carry out “odd jobs” at her home in Queens, reportedly let Mr Bonola in early on the Saturday morning she was killed before the pair got in an argument, police told reporters last month.
Prosecutors claim that Mr Bonola then cut Gaal’s throat and stabbed her 58 times and then proceeded to stuff her body into a duffel bag that he then reportedly wheeled six blocks away before dumping in a park near the Jackie Robinson Parkway. Her body was later discovered by a dog walker later that morning.
In the unsealed court records, according to Fox News, Mr Bonola painted a relationship with Gaal to the detectives that had turned sour after he believes she began seeing other men.
“She lied to me and she used me,” MR Bonola told officers at the 112th Precinct, according to Fox. “She told me that she loved me, but that she couldn’t be with one person. She took a phone call from another guy, and she said she was going to see him.”
“That made me angry. I couldn’t accept it,” he added.
The 44-year-old then went on to detail to detectives his account of how the gory Saturday morning unfolded, noting that at one point in their argument Gaal had denied having HIV and had said that she no longer wanted to be with him.
“She kept saying I hate you and stabbed me in the left hand,” Mr Bonola told police, a wound that he eventually sought treatment for at the Bellevue Hospital. In his account, Gaal was the one who first grabbed a knife and began threatening him if he didn’t leave.
“I grabbed the knife and cut her in the neck.”
In a second confession recorded with Assistant District Attorney Peter McCormack on 20 April, Mr Bonola provided an explanation for the numerous stab wounds that Gaal had on her body, saying: “She kept moving, so I stabbed her.”
The amount of blood coming out of Gaal’s neck reportedly made him notice that she was no longer breathing, after which he told detectives he began to clean up the scene – where blood had sprayed onto the floors and walls – with towels.
After this, he told detectives, he put Gaal’s body in a hockey duffel bag, used by one of her teen sons, and wheeled her away to where her body would later be discovered.
Mr Bonola was later captured wheeling this bag on surveillance video from a doorbell camera located just a few blocks from the home of Gaal.
The 44-year-old also confessed to detectives, according to court documents viewed by the New York Post, that he’d destroyed Gaal’s laptop and cellphone by tossing them in the Hudson River because he believed they contained explicit videos of the two of them.
If convicted, Mr Bonola faces up to 25 years in prison.
