Trial starts Tuesday in death of 19-year-old girl at Braintree motel

DEDHAM − Two of the three people charged with murdering 19-year-old Reina Rodriguez in Braintree will go to trial Tuesday in Norfolk Superior Court.

Kentaveous Coleman and Kenyonte Galmore, both of Mississippi, are accused of are accused of killing the Lowell woman, whose body was found bound with cellphone cords inside a room at the Hyatt Place Hotel in Braintree in 2017. They also face charges of unarmed robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit unarmed robbery.

Galmore and Coleman were extradited from Mississippi in 2018 to face the murder charge in Massachusetts. Juana Rivera, 21, of Lawrence, is also charged in the case and being held without bail. She was arraigned on charges of murder, human trafficking, unarmed robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit unarmed robbery and deriving support from prostitution. No trial data has been set for Rivera, who is due back in court for a status review conference next month.

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Rodriguez was found in a room at the Hyatt in Braintree on June 22, 2017. She was naked from the waist up, and her arms and legs had been bound with cellphone cords, Assistant District Attorney Lisa Beatty said at a court hearing in 2018. Her purse had been emptied and no valuables were left in the room.

Investigators say Rivera recruited Rodriquez for sex work in late 2016 and that she would often work for days at a time at the Hyatt, according to documents on file at Norfolk Superior Court. On the day of her death, Rodriguez’s boyfriend, Jason McLeond, then 35, rented the room and Rodriguez worked there to solicit customers on the website Backpage.com. McLeod is charged with human trafficking and deriving support from prostitution.

At about 1:45 a.m. on June 22, Coleman and Galmore entered the lobby of the hotel, police reports say. A hotel clerk told police they entered the hotel separately, but one waited in the elevator and held the door for the other. A short time later, the clerk told police, the stairwell exit door slammed and the men left and walked across the driveway toward the parking lot. There were no cameras in the hotel’s hallways.

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About three hours later, McLeod went upstairs to the room and knocked on the door. When he got no answer, he asked the front desk for a key to the room. Shortly after, he returned to the front desk saying his girlfriend was dead and asked for help, the reports say.

One of Rivera’s acquaintances — identified in court documents as “J.J.” — testified before a grand jury that Rivera, Coleman and Galmore would use Backpage.com to rob sex workers, and that Rivera said she went to Braintree with Coleman and Galmore to rob Rodriguez.

“(Rivera) said she stayed in the car and that she didn’t know the victim was dead until she got a call from defendant McLeod,” Beatty, the prosecutor, said Monday in court. “She said that she then confronted the two men and was told that the victim had struggled and they had to smother her until she died.”

Cell tower records show Galmore and Rivera's cell phones were using towers in the area of the Hyatt on the date and time of the murder, court documents say. Galmore's DNA was found on the cell phone cord bound around the victim's legs, on a stain on the bed and on Rodriquez's fingernails.

The trial is scheduled to start Tuesday with jury selection before opening arguments and testimonies begin.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Trial starts Tuesday in Braintree death of Lowell's Reina Rodriguez