Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, your host on Pushing Up Lilies. This week, we’re revisiting one of the most shocking cases from our Deaths During the Holidays series, a truly horrific crime that took place on New Year’s Eve in 2014. In this episode, I walk you through the tragic and disturbing case of a son who brutally murdered and decapitated his mother with an ax in their Long Island home. His reason? He claimed she was “nagging” him about doing chores. As a death investigator, I break down the crime scene, the timeline, and the psychological elements behind this unthinkable act. We’ll also explore how holiday stress, mental health, and unresolved family tensions can turn deadly. This is a difficult case, but it’s one that deserves to be told. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine-tingling, unusual, and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey guys, I hope everyone had an amazing and very Merry Christmas. I'm looking forward to the new year for a lot of reasons, but I am recording this week from the frozen tundra of North Dakota.
00:48
It is super cold here right now. I think it's five above zero, and there's snow all over the ground, which I love. We don't get to see that in Texas hardly ever. I think it's been almost a year since we've seen ice.
01:05
And at that time, there really wasn't enough snow on the ground for us to even build a snowman. It's pretty amazing. I'm super excited to put my gloves on and go outside and try to build a snowman. There are huge snow drifts, probably six to eight feet against some of the buildings.
01:25
It seems like the entire state shuts down. I can remember growing up in our small town in Valley View, Texas, when we had just a little bit of ice or snow. There was no school. So, we always loved it when we knew the weather was going to be bad because we knew that we weren't going to have class, which was amazing.
01:44
And nine times out of 10, our parents still had to go to work. My mom was a nurse, so she wasn't allowed to just not go in when the weather was bad. She was needed more than ever. But we knew that we were going to be home all day without our parents.
01:59
So, it was fun day. And I can remember those days way back when we just don't see snow, though, that much in the hot heat of Texas anymore. But I am looking forward to the new year, as I hope you all are.
02:14
I found some New Year's Eve or a New Year's Eve murder story that I thought that y'all would be super interested in. And I was thinking about it as I was going through all of the history of this particular story.
02:28
And I can remember growing up how mad I used to get. Did y'all have chores? Like I had so many chores and I did not get allowance. A lot of my friends would have certain chores that they'd have to do certain days of the week.
02:43
I was always jealous because, you know, at the age of 10, 11, 12, they always had money in their pocket. I didn't understand. My parents felt like chores were something that had to be done and that were not optional.
03:00
You did not get rewarded for finishing them, for finishing them early or overachieving. There was no reward. We hated it. I mean, it was not fun. I can remember even as I got older, I would be forced to finish chores before dates.
03:19
And I used to get so mad because my poor dates would sit on the couch waiting for me to finish laundry before my mom would let me leave. So yeah, it does make you angry when someone pesters you to do something.
03:32
So, this story is real similar to what some of us have experienced growing up, but we didn't quite push it to this extreme, obviously. And this happened on New Year's Eve in 2014. Christian Gomez, he was 23 years old.
03:50
He was spending the Christmas holidays with his family. His mother's name was Maria, and she was 48-year-old, single mom. And there was a brother named Mario who did not live in the home, but would come visit during the holidays.
04:08
And a younger sister named Maria who did still live at the home. And so again, you know, Christian's mom wanted chores done, had certain things that she needed done that she relied on the boys to do because of heavy lifting and whatnot.
04:23
But she had asked Christian several times to go up to the attic and bring down some boxes for the purpose of packing up the Christmas stuff and carrying it all back upstairs. Well, apparently she nagged him for several days.
04:43
It went on and he continued to grow tired of her nagging. So instead of moving the boxes, he chose to kill her. Now, most of us would not, obviously, go to that extreme. I never got quite that mad at my mom, but Gomez actually cut his mom's head off with an axe, and then he dumped her body outside by the trash can.
05:11
He put her head in the trash. So, one reason in reading that he didn't put her body in the trash can was because he was unable to lift it up and get it into the trash can. So that is the reason why he actually left it outside the trash bin in the front yard.
05:29
But her head was actually inside. So, he left the house on a bicycle at that time. Christian rode his bike to a neighbor's house, and he asked for a beer. They gave him a water instead, but they did notice that there was blood on his ankles and helicopters were hovering overhead.
05:54
So they phoned 911 at that time because they suspected that the police were probably looking for him. Now, this happened after dinner on New Year's Eve. So, it was December 31st of 2014. Maria, the mom, dropped the daughter, Maria, off at work.
06:17
When she came back, Mario, the brother, heard a thump in the garage, and he knew that his mom and Christian had gone in there to get the boxes down from the attic. Finally, finally, Christian decided he was going to do what his mom wanted him to do.
06:35
Now, Mario heard this thump, and he didn't hear any yelling or screaming, which you would expect to hear if there was an altercation going on in the next room. So, he figured that the boxes had fallen from the attic or someone had dropped one.
06:52
And so, the thump didn't really startle him at all. One of mom's friends had arrived shortly after this and saw Christian in the garage with a mop, a broom, and a bucket. He looked to be mopping up what she thought was red paint.
07:09
Often, blood is mistaken for red paint. Not really expecting there to be blood in the garage, she just assumed that it was paint that had spilled and that Christian was in there trying to clean it up.
07:23
So, the friend called Maria, the mom, to tell her that Christian was acting strangely and got her voicemail, obviously, and she left a voicemail whenever Maria didn't answer. Mario eventually got up. He was on the couch in the living room and noticed that his mom hadn't returned to her room and that Christian had not come back into the house.
07:46
So, he kind of was wondering, hey, what's going on out there? He opened the garage door from the house and saw a puddle of blood, which the friend had mistaken for paint, and saw an axe leaning against the wall.
08:01
And then he followed a blood trail to the front door. So, Mario continued to follow this path until he discovered his mom's body without the head sitting outside on the curb by the trash can. So Christian was also missing.
08:20
And so at that time he called 911, which is why the helicopters were hovering overhead when the neighbors down the street called them as well because they saw blood on Christian's ankles. There were a lot of problems with Christian.
08:35
He thought that his mother favored his older brother over him. One of the main reasons for that is because the older brother Mario did not live at home and he only came home during the holidays. So that was her only chance to really spend time with him.
08:51
And so, during that time of year, she did spend maybe a little more time with him just because that was their only chance to visit. Christian lived at home. Maria, the daughter, also lived at home. So, the mom, Maria, really enjoyed the time that she got to spend with Mario during the holidays when he was visiting.
09:12
Now, Christian also, he liked to be alone. He liked to play video games, and he would sit outside for hours and stare at the sky. He'd also, in looking at his past, had been arrested for loitering, for prowling, and also for resisting an officer.
09:32
Now, he had been previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he would occasionally, in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, hear voices from under his bed. So, he took medications. His mother would drive him to therapy sessions.
09:49
When he would refuse his medications, she would have to crush the pills and put them in his food. Now, Christian, he was a smart kid, although schizophrenic and had a lot of mental issues. When he found out that mom was crushing his pills and putting them in his food, he accused her of trying to poison him.
10:12
Now, he, of course, saw a therapist regularly. His mom, who was a single mom, did all she could for him. He told his therapist that he felt like a burden to her. So, he was paranoid and he told his therapist that he believed that his mom watched him through the television.
10:33
So, at that time, he decided he was going to stop taking showers, right? Because, I mean, who wants to get in the shower if your mom's watching you? So, he thought that mom and Mario, for that matter, his older brother, could actually see him through the television.
10:49
And so, there were certain things that he stopped doing, showering being one of them, because he did not want to be watched while he was doing that. Now, he seemed to think that his younger sister, Maria, was attractive.
11:03
And so, because he exhibited inappropriate behaviors with her, for obvious reasons, mom would not allow him to stay home alone with her. And Christian's condition seemed to worsen just days before New Year's Eve.
11:21
Again, when Mario would come to visit around the holidays, the two would argue often. And the main reason was because Christian was jealous of Mario. He would stay in his room most of the time when Mario would visit.
11:38
I found it interesting that when the police did arrive on scene, they actually found Maria's head in the trash can after they found her body lying next to it. Of course, questioned Christian, who said that he did spend two days plotting his mother's murder.
11:59
And he did confess and told police that he finished her off and swung the axe at her like a baseball bat. This was well planned out with no previous discussion with his therapist and no indication that he was going to do this to his mother.
12:19
And keep in mind, and we see this a lot with mental illness where the parents really go above and beyond to try to do everything that they can for the child. Somehow it just doesn't work out. You know, maybe they can't afford to put them in an inpatient facility where they really need to be.
12:37
There's not a lot of assistance. We all know that mental health is a huge problem, not just in Florida where this occurred, but all over the world. And so, there was no indication that he had planned on doing this.
12:54
Although mom, well, everyone in the home, I guess you could say, was a little bit scared of him, you know, because he heard voices. Who knew what the voices were telling him, right? Who knew in the middle of the night while he was in his bed and heard voices under it, what were the voices telling him to do?
13:13
And I have friends who have had this issue with their own children or their own stepchildren or their own adopted children who have been through some sort of trauma at some point in their life and really were in fear of their own children, had to sleep at night with their door locked because they didn't know what might happen during the night.
13:35
And so, Mom Maria actually slept with a kitchen knife under her pillow. She was scared of him and rightly so because he had actually previously been arrested and skinned and buried the family cat. And we all know how that worked out with Dahmer.
13:54
We know about his obsession with dissecting animals and roadkill. It never turns out good. We know that David Berkowitz, who is the son of Sam Killer, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Boston Strangler all engaged in animal cruelty early in their lives.
14:17
So, none of these guys really quite turned out normal or what any of us would consider normal. And a lot of them, quote unquote, practiced on animals to get better at what they're planning to do to humans, perfecting decapitations.
14:34
The Humane Society did a study back in 2015 and actually found that 71% of domestic violence victims say that their abuser actually targeted their pet at some point. And there are also researchers who actually found that people who abuse animals are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against humans.
14:57
So, a lot of serial killers brought suffering to their poor pets, dogs, cats, rabbits, and even roadkill before they graduated to humans. David Berkowitz poisoned his mom's parakeet because he believed that the parakeet was competing for attention with his mom.
15:20
The Boston Strangler had locked cats and dogs into crates and then used them as target practice. And the BTK killer actually perfected his strangling technique on dogs and cats before he turned his attention to humans.
15:37
So, I would have panicked if my kids had ever gone to try to abuse or hurt one of our family animals. But the fact that Christian actually skinned the cat before he buried it, he tortured that poor animal.
15:51
This is not anywhere near a normal child. So, Christian spent three years in a state mental hospital, and rightly so, he was medicated and declared competent to stand trial in July of 2018. This is three years after he actually committed the crime.
16:14
Now, of course, when he did go to trial, he was facing life in prison, and he accepted a plea deal that really works out to a 25-year sentence. That is to be followed by 10 years of probation and treatment.
16:31
So, he could potentially be free in 20 years, which would be 2028, factoring in the time served and also the possibility of early release for good behavior or whatnot. So it's scary to think, and we've seen this with other criminals who are paroled and reoffend and end up back in prison, killing more people, that there is a possibility of this guy getting out of prison in 2028, which is horrifying.
17:04
And if you go back and look at this kid's mug shot, he looks super scary. Like I would not want to be anywhere alone with him. His mugshot is horrifying. I would most definitely run the other way if I saw this guy on the street.
17:22
Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple Podcast. This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
17:36
Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.