ESTELÍ – Marty Jo Johnson knew about the other woman. As she worked and saved up money in St. Petersburg, Florida, Johnson's husband, Ken Kinzel, spent long days building a small eco-lodge in the Miraflor Nature Reserve, 30 kilometers outside of Estelí.

Johnson planned to sell their home and join her husband in the misty northern edges of Nicaragua. Yet back in the Estelí barrio where he lived, the 52-year-old Kinzel had become romantically involved with a Nicaraguan girl well under half his age.

Johnson, 54, said that she and her husband vowed to make the marriage work despite the affair. Virtually every day, he would call her or send a text message on the progress of what was to become their new life together, she said.

Those messages stopped abruptly, sparking speculation and rumor as Johnson sent out frantic messages on Internet chat boards pleading for information. What actually transpired from the time Kinzel went missing to the time his body was found remains a mystery, but recent developments suggest it goes far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

Reviewing the Testimony: Human-rights lawyer Roberto Petray reviews the testimony of his teenage client, who confessed to murdering Kinzel.

Eric Sabo | Nica Times

On May 25, Kinzel's pregnant 17-year-old girlfriend turned herself in to local police, claiming that she had shot and killed the man Johnson married nearly four years ago. More chilling was the gruesome admission that the girl made of the measures she took after the murder to prevent being caught: With the help of her younger brother and sister, the girl, whose identity is protected because she is a minor, said she dismembered Kinzel's body and buried parts of his corpse in three separate spots in the woody hills outside of Estelí.

Already reeling from the horrible murder, friends and family say they are also shocked by the girl's apparent motive: She claims that Kinzel threatened to kill her and her unborn child, leaving her little choice but to defend herself.

“At three in the morning he (Kinzel) arrived with a pistol and told me he was going to attack me and the baby,” the girl told Roberto Petray of the Nicaraguan Human Rights Association, who recorded her confession and presented it to police.

Fearing that Kinzel might hurt her, the girl she said that she grabbed the gun and hid in the bathroom.

After 15 minutes, Kinzel allegedly tried to break down the door, prompting her to “fire only one bullet at his head,” according to the young girl's statement.

Doubts Raised

Those who knew Kinzel for years say that such a scenario is implausible. The native of Florida was a Quaker and a longtime peace activist who had volunteered part of his time helping disadvantaged kids in Nicaragua. Kinzel was never known to raise his voice in anger, let alone threaten someone's life, friends say.

“He lived his Quaker beliefs,” said Lillian Hall, one of Kinzel's closest friends in Nicaragua.

Hall was the maid of honor at Kinzel's and Johnson's wedding in Managua and strongly disapproved of him dating the much younger Nicaraguan girl, saying he was “no saint” for doing so.

Still, Hall said, Kinzel was always gentle and kind-hearted – attributes, she said, that prompted his wife to forgive him whatever mistake he made.

“Marty adored Ken,” Hall said.

The confessed killer, who is eight months pregnant, is currently being held by the family services department in Estelí. Police recently arrested her two other siblings and charged them as accomplices. In an interview with The Nica Times, Estelí's police chief, Marvin Castro, said that they are continuing to explore the possibility that more people were involved.

Kinzel's wife, who kept a low profile as she visited Estelí and Managua this week, says she is reserving specific comment about the case until the police complete their investigation. But faced with the hard-to-believe claims that her husband was abusive, Johnson and friends are rushing to his defense on the Internet, claiming that local media are spreading false rumors to tarnish a peaceful man's reputation.

“It was a set-up and he was the perfect victim,” wrote Hall on the popular discussion board, NicaLiving.com. Later, she said, “All I can do is tell people about the kind and gentle Ken I knew.”

Searching for Answers Online

The online battle over Kinzel's reputation reveals both the power and isolation of creating a virtual community of expatriates in a foreign country. Kinzel at one point said that he learned many valuable tips about moving to Estelí from reading Internet discussion groups, and his wife received an outpouring of support after she posted her plea for help on NicaLiving.com.

But some are expressing frustration with how the chat boards can spiral out of control, as questionable news accounts get posted with ease, often adding more confusion than clarity.

“Get the facts,” admonished Johnson on Nica Living, after readers posted stories that claimed Kinzel had $85,000 in the bank and threatened to kill the Nicaraguan girl.

“Non-violence was his credo,” she wrote of her husband. “He loved Nicaragua and its people, and wanted to live a simple life in solidarity.”

Cyber Split

The opposing descriptions of Kinzel illustrate the changing nature of the expatriate community here.

Arguing that the Nica Living board is tilted too heavily toward left-wing opinions, some have started a new discussion board, called “The Real Nicaraguan,” which reflects more-conservative views.

“They are likening (Kinzel) to (Ben) Linder on the other board,” claimed one recent posting on the Real Nicaraguan, referring to the slain U.S. peace activist who was killed by Contra forces 20 years ago. “The American Sandinista sympathizer needs something to hang onto.”

Phil Hughes, who runs Nica Living from his home in Estelí, refused to discuss the debate over Kinzel, explaining in an e-mail that if he wanted to talk about the case, he would do so on his Web site.

“People who read and believe the U.S. mainstream press are better to believe what they want and ‘know' that everything in Nicaragua is a subversive communist plot,” Hughes wrote.

Police Gather Facts

Both the timeframe of Kinzel's murder and the motive remain unclear. Although Johnson posted a message in May that her husband had been missing since April 13, she has not responded to calls to clarify the recent events. Nobody is sure when he was last seen or exactly what transpired between the time that he went missing and his murder.

However, both friends and police say that Kinzel couldn't have been the father because he met the teen in December, when she was already pregnant.

The first clues of Kinzel's death were discovered May 24, when a local resident alerted police about human body parts that were found in the woods. The next day, Kinzel's former girlfriend visited Petray at his office and made her confession.

Although the suspect explained in detail what happened the day of the murder and where she buried the body parts, Petray said that she gave little insight into why she tried to hide the evidence.

The human-rights lawyer says that his job is to make sure that the young girl and her unborn baby are looked after, rather than investigate the details of her confession.

“My concern is her human rights,” Petray told The Nica Times.

Estelí is best known for its cigars and leather goods, and the town of nearly 100,000 residents largely shuts down in the evening as families sit in front of the television to watch Spanish telenovelas. After hearing about the soap opera developing outside their front door, many here are pointing fingers at the girl, saying that she or someone else likely wanted Kinzel dead for his money.

As a minor, the girl can be sentenced to no more than six years in prison.

By her own admission, she said she began dismembering Kinzel's body with a circular electric saw two days after she shot and killed him. On May 14, she put the head and torso in a plastic bag and drove south of town, using Kinzel's pick up truck.

The next day she rented a car and buried more of the body to the east. The rest of the corpse was disposed of May 16, after she hired a cab to drop her off for 100 córdobas ($5.50), according to police.

Throughout the ordeal, the girl continued to wipe Kinzel's house clean of the crime. Despite the shooting and dismemberment, Castro said police found only a few blood stains on the walls.

The blade of the saw looked brand new and the sales stickers were still on the shovels that she used to bury the body. Several days before confessing to the murder, the girl invited her parents to live with her in Kinzel's former house, Castro said.

The police chief admitted that it is exceptionally unusual for someone so young to cover her tracks that methodically. When asked if money might be a motive in the killing, Castro replied that it was “one possibility.”

He added, however, that neither Nicaraguans nor foreign visitors should be overly fearful of similar crimes.

“This was a particularly bad case,” Castro said.

Estelí suffered some of the heaviest fighting in the 1980s civil war, but today it remains safer than the capital, police statistics show. Buildings around town contain hundreds of murals as a way to give at-risk kids an alternative to getting involved in drugs or crime.

Although Estelí has fewer foreign residents than Granada or San Juan del Sur, North American visitors say the town is kind and open to outsiders. Hall, who has been working in Nicaragua since the 1980s, believes that Kinzel was taken advantage for being open with his money and new to the country.

Photographs of the confessed killer show her to be attractive, with medium-length dark hair and expressive eyes. Hall said that her friend was clearly infatuated with the girl, but she contends that his main interest was making sure that mother and baby were properly cared for.

Kinzel, who never had a child himself, told his friend shortly before his death that he had taken his teenage girlfriend to get an ultrasound, and found out she was going to have a boy.

“He just sat back and smiled,” Hall said. “He seemed so happy about that.”