More charges weighed for murder posted on Facebook

On Aug. 28, trial will begin on the murder charge, with prosecutors alleging he stabbed Claribel Estrella to death on her kitchen floor and posting a Facebook video of her still alive and covered in blood.

Mechikoff has entered dual pleas for the charge of first-degree murder, Wagstaffe said — not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial will be held in two phases, with jurors first hearing his case for the not guilty plea. If he is found guilty, he will then go into a second trial for the not guilty by reason of insanity plea, Wagstaffe said previously. 

That is set to proceed despite the fact that two court-appointed doctors determined he was sane at the time of the alleged crime, Wagstaffe said. 

Mechikoff was originally found not competent to stand trial last year by court-appointed doctors, a finding that was reaffirmed at the Napa State Hospital, where doctors found that treatment and medication were unlikely to return him to a state of competency that would make him eligible for trial, Wagstaffe said.

In a rare turn of events — the first during Wagstaffe’s tenure, he said — the conservatorship office has disputed the previous incompetency finding and found him competent to stand trial.

After Mechikoff’s alleged post of the killing, a woman saw the video while in Florida and called a Sheriff’s Office in Nevada to report the crime because it was the last place she knew Mechikoff lived.

From there, that Sheriff’s Office pinpointed the Facebook posting to the Bay Area and reached out to the San Mateo Police Department. San Mateo police conducted a search of the apartment complex on the 200 block of 37th Avenue. After the door-to-door search, officers found Estrella dead on the kitchen floor. Mechikoff was found and arrested a few hours later in San Jose, according to the DA’s Office.