‘Bring the dude that chopped up my wife to justice’: Husband desparete plea to find the killer who dismembered his wife

PIX11’s Anthony DiLorenzo reported from Williamsburg as a stunned crowd gathered outside a Brooklyn building where police are still searching for answers in a case that feels almost impossible to understand.

Friends kept showing up at the scene, stopping by for a look, for a rumor, for any detail that might make the story feel less unreal. But DiLorenzo’s reporting made it clear that, so far, there’s no neat explanation waiting around the corner – just a family in shock and investigators working a case with more questions than facts.

At the center of it all is Michelle Montgomery, a 39-year-old mother of four, whose death has left her loved ones begging for someone – anyone – to come forward with the missing pieces.

A Husband’s Plea, And A Scene Full Of Silence

DiLorenzo’s report carried the voice of Montgomery’s husband, Anthony Echevarria, who didn’t sound like a man trying to shape a headline. He sounded like someone whose world had been ripped open, and who now can’t breathe unless he’s moving toward the truth.

“Find out what really happened,” Echevarria said in DiLorenzo’s reporting. He called that information “the biggest help” to “bring the dude that chopped up my wife to justice,” and he made it clear he wasn’t saying it for attention – he said it “for the sake of her children and their peace.”

That last part matters, because it explains the kind of grief this is. It’s not only mourning. It’s also a parent trying to keep four kids from being haunted by a mystery for the rest of their lives.

DiLorenzo showed how the search for answers is now happening on two tracks at once: police looking for a suspect, and loved ones trying to reconstruct a timeline that still doesn’t make sense to them.

It’s the kind of case where the brutal facts hit the family first, but the uncertainty becomes the second wave – because when you don’t know who did it, every unknown face starts to feel like a threat.

And when a death is this violent, the silence around it feels even louder.

What Police Found, And Where They Found It

According to DiLorenzo, Montgomery’s decapitated body was discovered around 9:30 a.m. Sunday inside a bag in the compactor room at the Borinquen Houses in Williamsburg, a NYCHA development.

Just reading that sentence is enough to make most people stop and stare at the wall for a second. Because it’s not only the horror of what was done, but the setting – a place where families live their daily lives – where something like this feels especially violating.

DiLorenzo described police continuing to look for a killer “inside this Brooklyn building,” while loved ones clustered nearby trying to understand how Montgomery ended up there.

At the time of his report, police said they had no suspects and had made no arrests.

And the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was still working to determine the cause and manner of death, which is a clinical way of saying the official explanation isn’t finished yet, even though the human tragedy is already complete.

That gap – between what a family knows and what officials can confirm – can feel unbearable in a case like this, because every hour without an answer gives fear room to grow.

The Final Social Media Clue That Everyone Keeps Rewatching

One of the most frustrating pieces of DiLorenzo’s report is also one of the clearest: Montgomery left behind what appears to be a final public breadcrumb, a Facebook post, before she died.

DiLorenzo said her final Facebook post placed her partying nearby around 11:30 p.m. Saturday night, with the location described as Mama Tacos. Friends then did what friends do in moments like this – they went into full “detective mode,” replaying and replaying what she posted, looking for faces, voices, anything.

DiLorenzo reported that friends who poured over the video believed Montgomery appeared to be with at least two other people while dancing.

A longtime friend, quoted in DiLorenzo’s reporting, admitted how little they actually knew from the clip: “We have no idea who that is.” The friend pointed out something that now feels painfully important in hindsight: “Usually when she goes out, she tags who she’s with.”

That detail is small but sharp, because it suggests this night was different. Either she didn’t tag them because she forgot, or because she didn’t want to, or because she wasn’t as close to them as she usually was, or because she didn’t think it mattered.

And that’s the tragedy of social life: people assume there will be time later to fill in the blanks.

DiLorenzo’s reporting made the Facebook video sound less like a fun memory and more like a shaky last-known-sighting – something that should help, but instead raises more questions.

Who were the people in that video? Were they friends, acquaintances, strangers? Did they leave together? Did she leave alone? Did something happen right after that post?

When a case hinges on “who was she with,” it often means the circle of certainty is still too small.

A Family That Didn’t See This Coming

DiLorenzo also spent time showing who Montgomery was to the people who loved her, which matters because crime stories can flatten victims into a single awful moment.

In his report, Montgomery is remembered as a devoted mother and a working parent, someone who kept life moving the way so many families do – work, kids, late nights, early mornings, repeat.

DiLorenzo reported that she worked overnight shifts at Amazon, the kind of schedule that can wear people down but also says something about responsibility: she was doing what she had to do.

He also reported that she and Echevarria had welcomed a baby boy just 10 months ago, which adds a whole other layer of heartbreak. A ten-month-old doesn’t “remember” in the normal sense, but he will grow up surrounded by the shadow of what happened, unless someone brings the truth into the light.

A friend told DiLorenzo that people believed Montgomery was happy, and when the reporter pressed on whether she ever spoke about trouble, the answer was blunt: “Not at all. Not at all.” The friend described the news as “completely shocking.”

That’s another detail that can gnaw at families, because when there were no warning signs, people start going back through old conversations like they’re scanning for a hidden message they somehow missed.

But sometimes there isn’t a message. Sometimes something terrible happens even when a person didn’t see it coming, didn’t sense danger, didn’t realize the night could turn lethal.

That’s why these cases scare people so deeply – because there’s no comforting lesson, no obvious “here’s what she did wrong.” It can feel random, and randomness is terrifying.

Neighbors Ask The Same Question Everyone Else Is Thinking

DiLorenzo’s report included the reaction of Celeste Turner, who has lived in Montgomery’s Gowanus apartment building for years, and who voiced the question most viewers probably said out loud in their own living rooms.

“Oh my God. Who could do something like that to another person?” Turner asked.

That’s not a legal question. It’s a human one. And it points to the specific kind of horror here: dismemberment doesn’t sound like a crime of quick impulse, at least not to the average person.

It sounds deliberate. It sounds like a person either trying to conceal something, or trying to send a message, or operating at a level of cruelty that doesn’t fit inside normal explanations.

That kind of violence changes the emotional temperature of a neighborhood. People don’t just lock their doors; they start looking at everyone sideways, wondering who they’ve walked past a hundred times without really knowing.

And when police have no suspect to name, that anxiety just sits there.

The Painful Problem With “Come Forward”

DiLorenzo showed Echevarria pleading directly for someone to speak up, saying: “Come forward… come to the house… let me know something. I need to know something.”

Those words are raw, but they also underline an awful truth about many cases like this: someone out there often does know something, even if it’s small.

Maybe they saw her leave. Maybe they saw who she was with. Maybe they heard a story. Maybe they recognized a face in that video. Maybe they heard a late-night argument. Maybe they noticed someone acting strangely.

And yet people hesitate.

They hesitate because they’re scared of retaliation, or because they don’t want involvement, or because they worry they’ll get dragged into court. Sometimes they hesitate because the person they suspect is someone they know, and admitting that out loud feels like detonating their own life.

The problem is that “I don’t want to get involved” sounds reasonable right up until you realize the victim is somebody’s mother, and the children now live with a hole in their world that will never close.

In DiLorenzo’s telling, Echevarria isn’t asking for a perfect answer. He’s asking for any truth that can move the case forward and make sure his kids don’t grow up thinking the world can do this to someone and then just shrug.

The Unanswered Questions That Keep Multiplying

At the time of DiLorenzo’s report, police were still working without a suspect, and the medical examiner was still determining details. That means many of the obvious “what happened next” facts are still not public.

But the questions that families ask don’t wait for paperwork.

How did Montgomery get from where she was partying to the Borinquen Houses?

Did she go there willingly, thinking she was safe, thinking she was just continuing the night?

Was she meeting someone she trusted, or someone she barely knew?

Was she followed?

Did something go wrong suddenly, or was she targeted?

And the biggest question, the one that sits behind all the others: who did this, and why?

When a person is killed, families grieve. When a person is killed and dismembered, families also fear. They fear the killer isn’t just “out there,” but is someone who can blend into daily life.

DiLorenzo’s report captured that tense in-between stage – where grief is fresh, and answers are still missing, and everyone is staring at the same few clues like they’re going to change if you look hard enough.

A Case That Doesn’t Let A Family Rest

What comes through in DiLorenzo’s reporting is that this isn’t only a homicide investigation. It’s also a family’s fight against the idea that their loved one could be reduced to a headline and then forgotten.

Echevarria described having to deliver the news to the children, and he said, “I don’t even think they believe that this is really happening.”

That line hits because it’s exactly how shock works, especially for kids. Their brains protect them by refusing reality for a while, because accepting it all at once would be too much.

But reality doesn’t wait. The questions will come. The anger will come. The nightmares will come.

That’s why his plea in DiLorenzo’s piece isn’t just about punishment. It’s about getting to a truth solid enough that a family can stand on it, even if it hurts.

Because the alternative is living in uncertainty forever, and that can wreck a person just as thoroughly as grief.

For now, as DiLorenzo reported from Brooklyn, the investigation continues with no suspects named publicly, a medical examiner still working, and a husband asking the public for the one thing that can change everything: a name, a face, a tip, a detail – anything that helps bring the person responsible into the light.