By Dan Nienaber
The Free Press
MANKATO — A former Mankato man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in a 2007 murder in Cottonwood County.
Gerard Irving Holt, 24, was sentenced Thursday for killing 20-year-old Alberto Samilpa and attempting to burn Samilpa’s body with a stolen Porsche.
Holt, who pleaded guilty to a charge of second-degree murder on Dec. 28, is the second of five suspects arrested after the murder to enter a plea.
The Porsche 911 had been stolen from a residence north of Mankato. It was found burning with Samilpa’s body on a road near Delft, a small town north of Windom on Highway 71, on Nov. 19, 2007. A Lincoln Navigator stolen from the same residence was found burning in rural Watonwan County later that day.
Hans Hottel, 22, was arrested in Mankato after he was identified as the person who paid to fuel the stolen vehicles and his own car in St. James. Hottel, who testified he witnessed the murder, pleaded guilty to a gross misdemeanor charge of aiding an offender in December 2008. He promised to testify at the trials for Holt and the others in exchange for no jail time.
With Hottel’s testimony, prosecutors were able to charge Holt, 24-year-old Lionel Benavidez and 22-year-old Axel Rene Kramer with first-degree murder. Benavidez and Kramer are scheduled to go to trial in June.
A woman who was arrested outside a hotel in Albert Lea with Holt and Kramer, 20-year-old Aimee Jo Palmer of Eagle Lake, also is scheduled to go to trial in June for felony charges of aiding an offender. The three were arrested after investigators put out a statewide notice saying they were wanted for their connection to Samilpa’s murder.
Benavidez was arrested later in Texas after investigators found him there.
Holt’s sentence for the murder will run concurrent with a 38-month prison sentence he received in July in Blue Earth County for an aiding and abetting burglary conviction. That charge stemmed from the burglary where the burned vehicles were stolen along with jewelry, electronics and cash.
