Amtrak murder trial: Woman found dead on train was suffocated

It took nine years for the boyfriend of a 28-year-old woman who died during an overnight Amtrak trip to be tried for her murder, but on Monday an expert witness testified that Marina Placensia had indisputably been suffocated.

“ Ms. Placensia was suffocated to death ,” Dr. Bill Smock, a nationally known expert in asphyxia deaths, testified at the trial of 43-year-old Angelo Mantych, who’s charged with first-degree murder, The Denver Post reported. “She died because she couldn’t breathe. Period. This is homicide. Death at the hands of someone else. Literally the hands of someone else.”

Mantych, Placensia and their four children had boarded an Amtrak train in Wisconsin on Aug. 30, 2016, bound for Denver, where the family planned to relocate. When it pulled into Denver’s Union Square St