February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The killing, on Friday morning, April 29, prompted a huge police hunt and led to the arrest of a man police identified properly Tuesday as Ronald Douglas Herrera Castellanos.
Initial reports had identified the Guatemalan-born suspect as Douglas Martin Herrera.
Herrera Castellanos is facing charges of first- and second-degree murder and is being held in the Rockland County Correctional Facility.
A grand jury hearing is being convened this Thursday at the County Courthouse in New City, a leafy suburban community about 25 miles northwest of New York City.
Herrera Castellanos was captured four hours after the murder.
Minutes after the slaying, he had been confronted by the victim’s sister, Ann Fallon, who had called to the house after Nagle had failed to meet her for a tennis game.
After giving evasive answers to Fallon’s questions, Herrera Castellanos fled the scene.
Moments later, Fallon discovered the bloodied body of her sister in her bedroom.
The dead woman – mother of a girl in kindergarten and a boy in third grade – had been beaten, stabbed and sexually assaulted.
In the following hours, police from Clarkstown, which covers New City, mounted a major search that, according to spokesman Sgt. Harry Baumann, included ground forces and a helicopter.
As the search progressed, the suspect, according to a report in the locally published Journal News, made over 50 taunting and threatening phone calls on Nagle’s cell to her family members and friends.
Baumanmn said that at one point a neighbor of the slain woman had spotted Herrera Castellanos and this had helped in the eventual apprehension and arrest of the 39-year-old suspect who had entered the U.S. in October 2000 on a tourist visa.
“I think he got confused in the unfamiliar streets and neighborhoods,” Baumann told the Echo.
The suspect was arrested on Reservoir Drive, about a mile from the Nagle home. He was wearing clothes belonging to the murdered woman’s husband, Daniel Nagle, when arrested.
Police investigators have discovered that Herrera Castellanos had used several variations of his name in recent years and had overstayed his visa.
He is also wanted on a 2002 warrant for beating up his then girlfriend in the Rockland County town of Ramapo and failing to appear for a court date.
Herrera Castellanos, who carried what appeared to be a valid California driver’s license, was employed by a New Jersey-based painting company that had previously carried out work at the Nagle home.