Police say several pieces of evidence converged within hours after Tisha Marinoccio identified her former boyfriend as her attacker.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The criminal case that followed Tisha Marinoccio’s fatal Aug. 12 stabbing took shape rapidly: Marinoccio identified her alleged attacker in a 911 call, officers detained him outside her building, surveillance video traced movements through the property, and police recovered a knife from a rear-alley dumpster.
Authorities say those pieces of evidence point to Matthew Almontes, Marinoccio’s former boyfriend and a fellow resident of the Charles T. McQueeney Towers on Orange Street. Almontes, then 39, was charged with murder and tampering with evidence after Marinoccio, 42, died at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The police account is detailed about what happened after Marinoccio contacted emergency dispatchers but leaves parts of the encounter inside her apartment unresolved. The charges are accusations, and the evidence described by police has not resulted in a publicly reported conviction in the sources reviewed for this story.
The sequence began shortly before 3:30 p.m. when Marinoccio called 911 from her apartment on the sixth floor. According to police, she said her former boyfriend had stabbed her, identified him as Almontes and told dispatchers he lived in the same building. She also said he had left her apartment with the knife. Officers arriving at the scene found Marinoccio conscious and seriously wounded. A department spokesperson later said her condition worsened as medical personnel worked on her. She was rushed to the hospital and died during emergency treatment. The available reports do not provide a complete transcript of her call or describe any statement from her about why Almontes had been in her apartment.
While emergency crews treated Marinoccio, officers searched around the complex. They soon found Almontes outside the building, sitting on a bench, according to a police report. He was detained. The location mattered because it limited the period between the reported attack and his apprehension and placed him near the same property Marinoccio had identified during her call. Police said he later acknowledged throwing the knife into a dumpster behind the apartment building. Investigators searched the container and recovered a knife. Authorities have publicly identified it as the weapon used in the stabbing, though reports reviewed for this article do not provide laboratory findings or describe any forensic testing performed on it.
The building’s camera system supplied another part of the timeline. Police said surveillance footage showed Almontes entering and leaving Marinoccio’s apartment. Investigators also said video showed him using a rear exit and throwing an unidentified object into a dumpster in the alley. The footage, as publicly summarized, does not show the alleged stabbing itself. Instead, police have cited it as evidence placing Almontes at Marinoccio’s residence and documenting his later movement toward the location where the knife was recovered. Authorities have not publicly released a full version of the surveillance video in the reports reviewed for this story.
The tampering charge arises from what police say happened to the knife after the attack. Investigators described recovering it from debris in the dumpster after Almontes had been detained. The police report said Almontes acknowledged discarding the weapon, but it also said he later declined to speak with investigators after he was booked at a detention facility. Those statements are not contradictory on their face because the report distinguishes an initial acknowledgment from a later decision not to participate in questioning. A defendant’s choice not to give investigators a formal statement is not evidence that the murder allegation has been proved.
Only after the physical and video evidence had been gathered did investigators publicly describe information suggesting the killing may have been preceded by months of threats. An employee at the apartment building told police that Almontes had discussed stabbing Marinoccio over roughly six months, according to the New Haven Register’s account of the police report. The employee said Almontes had become preoccupied with his former girlfriend. Most significantly, the employee alleged that two days before her death Almontes said he intended to kill Marinoccio by stabbing her and suggested the weapon would disappear. Police reports attribute those claims to the witness; they are not independent findings about Almontes’ motive or mental condition.
A friend of Marinoccio supplied a second account of problems before the stabbing. The friend contacted police about a welfare check and said Almontes had previously harassed and threatened Marinoccio, according to the report. Public accounts do not establish whether those alleged incidents had been formally reported before Aug. 12. Nor do they say whether Marinoccio had sought a restraining or protective order. As a result, the documented public record is much clearer about the events after her 911 call than it is about any contacts with authorities before the killing.
That distinction matters when assessing the evidence now known publicly. Marinoccio’s identification came directly to emergency dispatchers during the immediate aftermath of the stabbing, according to police. The surveillance footage and dumpster recovery provided physical and circumstantial evidence gathered by investigators. The prior-threat accounts came from witnesses interviewed after the killing. Each category carries a different role in the criminal case and may be challenged in court. Prosecutors would have to establish the admissibility and significance of the evidence, while the defense would have an opportunity to contest the state’s interpretation.
The apartment building itself ties much of the evidence together. Both Marinoccio and Almontes lived at Charles T. McQueeney Towers. Police said the relevant surveillance footage came from the property, Almontes was detained outside it, and the knife was recovered from the dumpster behind it. Marinoccio also specifically told dispatchers that Almontes lived there. Yet investigators have not publicly explained several basic details about the encounter: how Almontes got into her apartment, how long he was there, whether anyone else witnessed their interaction or what was said immediately before the stabbing. Those unanswered questions may become significant if the case advances toward trial.
The Orange Street response unfolded as New Haven police were handling another fatal stabbing nearby. Roughly a half-hour earlier, officers had responded to a separate incident near the New Haven Green involving a 37-year-old man. Police repeatedly said the two killings were unrelated. The coincidence nevertheless meant two homicide scenes were developing in a small area of the city at nearly the same time. In Marinoccio’s case, her identification of Almontes and the presence of surveillance footage helped investigators establish an immediate suspect, while the other case initially involved a search for a person who had fled.
Details about the people at the center of the Orange Street case became more complete in the weeks that followed. Early national reports carried inconsistent ages, but New Haven police information and local reporting identify Marinoccio as 42 and Almontes as 39 on Aug. 12. Police listed birth dates consistent with those ages. A later profile based on comments from Marinoccio’s family described her as someone who loved animals, music, beaches and the ocean. Her daughter’s comments broadened the public account of a woman who, in the first days after her death, had been known largely through descriptions of an emergency call and crime scene.
Almontes was ordered held on a $1.5 million bond after being charged with murder and tampering with evidence. The latest local account found during research for this story, published Sept. 10, said he remained in custody on that bond. No later report reviewed here described a conviction or final resolution. The case therefore remains defined by allegations and by an unusually compact chain of publicly described evidence: Marinoccio’s own identification, security video from the building, an arrest outside the complex and a knife recovered from the place where police say an object was discarded.
Author note: Last updated September 28, 2026.