First he bought his wife coffee. Then he set her head on fire.
Officials today released the confession of the Inwood man charged in last month's blowtorch revenge attacks on his wife and ex-boss -- admissions eerie in their mix of the mundane and the maniacal.
"I woke up this morning around 6 a.m. with the plan already made," Carlos Diaz, 35, told cops of the morning he doused wife Cathy Zappata in the face with accelerant, than blasted her with a blow torch as she sat in her car in a Pathmark parking lot.
"I went to Dyckman Bakery to buy her coffee," he told cops in the confession, released as Diaz pleaded not guilty through an interpreter to two counts of attempted murder.
Steven Hirsch
Carlos Diaz, 35, hit his estranged wife in the head with the blowtorch, poured a liquid accelerant in her hair and lit her on fire.
"I did that to buy more time so that I could take my kid to school and then there wouldn't be as many people in the mechanic's shop," he said.
Diaz told cops he'd wanted to lure his wife to the 10th Avenue garage, so that he could attack both her and his ex-boss, shop owner Helson Marachena, at the same time.
"She suspected something," though, he told cops of his wife, so he doused her on the spot in his car, he said.
"I sprayed her with starting fluid in her face and everywhere and lit her with a blow torch," Diaz told cops.
Lead prosecutor Scott Leet was asked today by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to recount the facts of the case, and the prosecutor told the judge that Zappata suffered second degree burns throughout her neck and face.
"Parts of her hair were singed down to the scalp," Leet told the judge, who set Diaz's next date for April 10.
The ex-boss, Marachena, fared better, the prosecutor told the judge. Diaz admittedly walked to the nearby mechanic's shop and doused Marachena with accelerant too, according to police and Diaz's own confession.
"But the torch wouldn't light," Diaz told cops.
Inwood man confesses to setting wife's head on fire with blowtorch
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Inwood man confesses to setting wife's head on fire with blowtorch
