A Houston man charged with capital murder in the death of his pregnant wife declared his innocence before an Italian judge after fleeing the United States with a forged passport weeks before his trial was set to begin.
Lee Mongerson Gilley, 39, appeared at the Palace of Justice in Turin on Monday, May 11, where Judge Marta Sterpos of the Turin Court of Appeals asked whether he agreed to extradition back to the United States.
Gilley refused, telling the court, "My wife is deceased, and they have wrongly accused me. I am innocent. I did not take my wife's life. The only wrongdoing I committed was to flee," according to NBC News.
Gilley is charged with capital murder in the Oct. 7, 2024, death of his wife, Christa Bauer Gilley, 38, who was found unresponsive at the couple's home in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.
He initially called 911, claiming Christa had suffered an overdose, but hospital staff reported bruising and apparent trauma to her face, and the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences later ruled her death a homicide, listing the cause as "compression of the neck."
Gilley was arrested on Oct. 11, 2024, and released on a $1 million bond on October 21, with conditions that included GPS ankle monitoring and a prohibition on leaving Texas without prior notification.
According to a federal criminal complaint, Gilley cut off his GPS ankle monitor on the night of May 1, triggering a strap tamper alert, and became unreachable to authorities in the days that followed. He flew from Houston to Canada and then boarded an Air Canada flight to Milan, Italy, arriving on May 3 at Milano Malpensa Airport.
Authorities allege he presented a forged Belgian passport and other fabricated Belgian identity documents bearing the name "Lejeune Jean Luc Olivier," which Italian border police identified as fake. He was taken into immigration custody, after which he revealed his true identity and filed an asylum claim, People reported.
In 2025, while still out on bond, prosecutors alleged Gilley had already devised a plan to escape, including asking an unnamed woman whether she knew of a Mexican identity he could acquire and outlining a detailed scheme to remove his GPS monitor and arrange a sham marriage to obtain a new identity.
His trial had been scheduled to begin on May 29. Harris County Judge Peyton Peebles issued a gag order on May 8, barring attorneys, staff, and law enforcement from discussing the case publicly with the media, as per WFMD.
