Virginia Beach’s first ‘no-body’ murder case set for trial this week
It’s been nearly four years since Bellamy Gamboa was last seen at her home in Virginia Beach.
The 39-year-old mother of four was reported missing in July 2018 after she failed to show up for work at a customs brokerage firm in Norfolk.
Despite a long and intense search — police spent more than $50,000 to excavate portions of a Hampton landfill — Gamboa’s body was never found.
According to testimony at a 2019 court hearing, Lamont Johnson — her ex-boyfriend and the father of her young twins — confessed a few weeks after Gamboa went missing to pushing her down a flight of stairs at the Virginia Beach townhome they shared, then strangling her and tossing her body in a dumpster.
Johnson’s trial on charges of second-degree murder is set to begin Tuesday. The case is believed to be the first murder trial to be prosecuted in Virginia Beach without a body ever being found. It’s expected to last about a week.
The recovery of a homicide victim’s body, and an autopsy report revealing the person’s cause of death, typically are essential pieces of evidence at trial. But they’re not necessarily needed, according to a former federal prosecutor who has tried “no-body cases” and wrote a book about them. Especially when police have obtained a confession, as they say they have in Johnson’s case.
Although Johnson and Gamboa had broken up, they still shared a home with their 1½-year-old twins and two teenage children Gamboa had from a previous relationship.
Johnson, 45, was working as a trade analyst for a Norfolk container transportation and shipping company at the time of his arrest. He’s been held in the city jail without bond since then.
Evidence found on his cellphone and work computer showed both devices had been used to search dumpster locations and garbage routes, a document in his court file said.
Johnson’s public defenders filed motions seeking to have the statements he made to police thrown out, but their requests were denied in a ruling made in August.
Macie Allen, a spokesperson for the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, said Monday that she couldn’t comment on potential trial strategy, evidence, or witnesses that may be called. It’s not known if Johnson plans to testify in his own defense.
Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com
