A Chelsea man will serve at least 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to stabbing his wife more than 40 times in 2021, according to the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office.
Mario Mira, 51, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Aug. 15, for the 2021 murder of his estranged wife, Paula Andrea Ortiz, 47, at her Chelsea apartment, officials said in a release.
On Dec. 11, 2021, Chelsea police officers responded to Ortiz’s Stockton Street apartment around 4:21 p.m, where they found Ortiz with “multiple stab and slash wounds,” according to the DA’s office. Ortiz was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mira, who was still at the apartment when responders arrived, had a box-cutter and knife nearby, authorities said. He was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with life-threatening wounds. Authorities say he was arraigned in his hospital bed.
Mira was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parol after 25 years, according to the DA’s office.
During Mira’s sentencing, Ortiz’s relatives — including her sister, Ana Ortiz, and Paula Ortiz and Mira’s 17-year-old daughter, Maria Paz Ortiz — shared statements.
“It’s been almost 3 years of constant panic attacks, PTSD, nightmares, depression, days of not getting out of bed, days where I’m mad at the world and wonder who to blame,” Maria Paz Ortiz wrote.
“I’ve never really felt okay but I forced myself to find peace … I still have so many questions, but they will probably go unanswered.”
