Alexi Saborit-Viltres an illegal alien from Cuba, who was released into the U.S. in 2012 from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, was convicted of murder earlier this year after he publicly beheaded his girlfriend in the town of Shakopee, Minnesota. Saborit-Viltres has now been found, not guilty due to mental illness.
Saborit-Viltres was originally arrested and charged with second-degree murder in 2021, after being accused of beheading 55-year-old America Mafalda Thayer, his girlfriend. Reportedly he also dumping her body on the street. This was according to those who witnessed the gruesome broad-daylight attack.
Reportedly, a bystanders saw him pull Thayer out of the car, and then picked her head up by her hair, decapitating her with a machete. Saborit-Viltres reportedly told police the two were on their way to court, when she said she wanted to end their relationship.
Allegedly, he admitted to murdering her because she had “gone too far” in wanting to leave him.
When officers later took him into their custody, he claimed that he had been in a long-term relationship with Thayer.
According to a New York Post reports, Saborit’s verdict was reversed in May, to first-degree premeditated murder. This came about Monday, when a judge made the ruling about his mental competency. Judge Caroline Lennon’s ruling cited psychologists who determined the immigrant’s “mental illness prevented him from understanding his actions were morally wrong.”
After Lennon’s initial ruling, in which Saborit-Viltres potentially faced life in prison, his defense team filed a motion on July 12 to argue that he should be found not guilty because of his mental illness. He was found to have a myriad of mental illnesses, that included, “bizarre delusions,” traumatic brain injury with hallucinations, psychosis and delusions.
He was originally supposed to be deported a decade ago, but ICE agents were unable to obtain travel documents for him. Thayer had reportedly worked at My Pillow, founded by Mike Lindell. After legally immigrating to the United States and becoming a naturalized American citizen,
Her friends claimed that she changed her first name to “America” .
This is a tragic story, that likely has a history of mental illness that fostered an abusive relationship - that Thayer sought to remove herself from. Sadly, her withdrawal came too late.
That this mentally ill man was even here in the U.S. illegally, makes any relational pain that Thayer suffered even more heinous. This story sadly, is not one of a kind – many are the mentally ill persons that have invaded our nations interior, perpetrating other unknown crimes. Likely most of these crimes never reach the mainstream media or are covered by them.
“Most people have been touched by the battles of mental illness in some way or another. It's either going on in their families or next door to them, or they know people who have experienced it.”
–Tom Kitt