A prosecutor urged jurors Thursday to convict a man of first-degree murder in connection with the disappearance of his girlfriend, a U.S. Army National Guard reservist whose body has not been found, while a defense attorney contended that there are holes in the case that should lead to an acquittal.
Jurors were handed the case late Thursday against Luis Antonio Gomes Akay, who is charged with murdering Anna Laura Costa Porsborg, 22, who had traveled from the East Coast for a trip with the defendant in late December 2022.
The defendant — who testified in his own defense — denied that he had anything to do with the young woman’s disappearance.
Deputy District Attorney Hilary Williams told the Los Angeles jury that Gomes Akay had confessed in jail to two undercover informants following his arrest that he had strangled her and told them that law enforcement was never going to find her body.
The prosecutor said Gomes Akay subsequently spoke to Los Angeles County sheriff’s homicide detectives, showed “zero remorse” and acted out how he had strangled the woman.
She argued that “no body is no crime in his mind,” telling the jury that “he got away” with it in Brazil, where another woman he had dated disappeared in February 2017 after she broke off the relationship.
“There’s no doubt — none — that both of these women have been killed,” the deputy district attorney said in her closing argument. “These two women should be here today living their best lives and they are not.”
Defense attorney Stephen Kahn told the panel that his client felt intimidated into falsely confessing by the two undercover operatives, who then encouraged him to talk with detectives in a bid to be released from custody.
“I believe that there is reasonable doubt and I ask you to find him not guilty,” he said.
Gomes Akay’s lawyer argued that the woman left the room “angry and upset” that the defendant was on his phone and “went to parts unknown,” saying it was a “reasonable conclusion that she left and something happened” to her subsequently.
Kahn told jurors that the 5-foot-4-inch tall woman’s body wouldn’t have fit inside the suitcase that the prosecution says Gomes Akay was seen moving out of the El Segundo hotel before he drove to Angeles National Forest.
Gomes Akay’s attorney maintained that the case has “holes,” contending that “if this case was so open and shut” that there was no need for the prosecution to present evidence about the disappearance of 24-year-old Ana Claudia Dos Santos Silva in Brazil. He said authorities there had investigated the disappearance and determined that there was no crime.
In her rebuttal argument, the prosecutor called the evidence “quite powerful” and told jurors that the defense attorney didn’t highlight what any of the holes in the case were. She noted that searches for the woman’s body have been fruitless, but that her phone was discovered in the mountains nearly a year later.
In testimony Wednesday through a Portuguese interpreter, the defendant told jurors that he last saw Costa Porsborg as she stormed out of the room after asking him whether he was going to be on his phone or going to pay attention to her. He said the woman warned him not to come after her.
He said that he didn’t immediately worry about her because she had walked away to use her phone before, and that he thought she would be returning to the hotel room.
The defendant — who reported her missing to El Segundo police and subsequently learned that she was married — testified that he drove to a number of locations, including the forest, in an effort to search for her “with no specific place to go.”
Gomes Akay told jurors that he was arrested on New Year’s Day 2023 and put in a jail cell with the two jailhouse informants, who told him they were behind bars for murder and left him “very frightened.”
“… I think I thought I was going to be the next one to be killed,” the defendant testified.
He said the men asked him why he was in jail and said he concocted “a story right away” about strangling Costa Porsborg and claimed that he had put her body in the hotel room ceiling, adding that one of the men advised him that he could face less time or be released if he cooperated with law enforcement.
“Did you kill Anna Laura?” the defense attorney asked.
“No,” the defendant responded.
“Did you take her body out in that suitcase?” Kahn asked.
“No,” the construction-industry worker answered again.
He had maintained that he had put clothing back inside the suitcase.
Under cross-examination by the prosecutor, the defendant said he didn’t remember telling the jailhouse informants that the woman cried as he choked her and that she was trembling.
He said he believed law enforcement would let him go if he fabricated a story of what had happened to her, and said “a dog is not sure of anything” when asked about two human cadaver dogs alerting to the same spot in his rented car.
He said he loved Costa Porsborg and had given her a ring and “would never kill her.”
“… I’m innocent,” he maintained, saying that he has “never killed anyone.”
Gomes Akay acknowledged that he engaged in multiple conversations via phone with escorts and with someone on Tinder within hours of the time he said his girlfriend left the hotel and acknowledged that he had deleted those messages, which were subsequently retrieved by law enforcement.
He has remained behind bars in lieu of $2 million bail since his arrest.