Woman Cuts Cousin ‘Into Pieces’ & Barbecues Him On Grill After Drug Deal Gone Wrong

UPDATE (JULY 2, 2019):

After two trials, Gabriel Moreno was found not guilty in the murder of Jose Luis Menchaca.

However, in June 2019, Moreno was accused of assaulting a woman and pointing a gun at her head in an unrelated case. He is facing charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, felon in possession of a firearm, and theft of a firearm. His bond is a total of $1 million for the three charges.

Read more: CBS Austin, CBS Austin (2)

ORIGINAL STORY (DECEMBER 13, 2018):

BEXAR COUNTY, TX — A beef over a bad drug deal resulted in a Texas woman helping dismember and then barbecue her own cousin on a grill.

In exchange for a plea deal that granted her a maximum of 30 years in prison for admitting to murder, Candie Dominguez testified on December 10 that in September 2014, she lured Jose Luis “Pee Wee” Menchaca, 35, to her home in Bexar County on orders from her boyfriend, Daniel Moreno Lopez.

When Menchaca showed up, Dominguez testified that she “just watched” as her 32-year-old boyfriend and another alleged assailant, Gabriel Moreno, 36, went after her cousin with metal baseball bats and a pipe as revenge for a previous attack on Lopez following a failed drug transaction.

"They just beat him. He tried to talk at first and then he just didn't talk no more,” she said. “He was trying to use his hands to help himself, but no.”

During Dominguez’s trial, witness Dennis Austin, 32, recounted how the bloody murder scene was like “a horror movie” and that he helped move Menchaca’s body to a backyard shed out of fear for his own life. “I was scared as to what I’ve seen, to what I experienced,” he testified. “I never experienced anything like that before."

Dominguez, 39, was calm and matter of fact as she recalled for the San Antonio court how she then got more actively involved after the relocation of her cousin’s body.

"I cut it up into pieces,” she said, noting the gruesome process of dismemberment and barbecuing took “like maybe two days” because “we weren’t on it; we were doing different things.”

In November, Dominguez’s boyfriend, Lopez, was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in Menchaca's death. Moreno, the second alleged assailant, could face a similar fate if found guilty at his upcoming retrial, since deadlocked jurors failed to reach a verdict in his first trial last March.

Read more: Newsweek, ABC13, My San Antonio