A Houston man has entered a guilty plea for the 2020 murder of his wife, whose body was found in a freezer, according to reports. Curtis Holliday, 62, agreed to a plea deal on Monday, accepting a 10-year prison sentence for the murder of 29-year-old Chi Le. Holliday's decision came as an alternative to facing a jury which could have potentially handed down a much heavier penalty. "You never know what a jury's going to do," said Judge Jim Wallace, who oversaw the case in the 178th District Court, in a statement obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
Le's body was discovered at the couple's home, which also served as their place of business, back in 2020, wrapped in plastic and concealed in a freezer. Holliday, who had previously been charged in a domestic violence case involving his wife and was free on bond at the time of her death, gave credit to the certainty of the plea deal over the risk of a lengthier sentence. "We decided to take the certainty of an outcome rather than risk of a life sentence," Holliday's defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin, mentioned in an interview with the Houston Chronicle.
Initially, Holliday was out on bond from a previous charge - continuous violence against Le. When she went missing in April 2020, her worried relatives pointed investigators towards a distressing Facebook post where she expressed fears that if she disappeared, it might be at the hands of her husband. This tip led deputies to the tragic discovery of Le's remains. Though DeGuerin had prepared to argue that Le took her own life, Holliday opted for the plea, earning him credit for the two years he had already spent in the Harris County Jail before posting bond, as detailed in a report by ABC13.
While DeGuerin acknowledged the evidence gathered suggested Le's death could have been a result of suicide, the decision to not immediately alert authorities and instead to place her body in the freezer could have been seen unfavorably by a jury. "That's bizarre," DeGuerin said, according to a ABC13 report. "And I don't know if a jury would have liked that too much." Under this plea agreement, Holliday could be out in time to continue to raise his daughter, despite the gravity of his admitted actions. Holliday is expected to be formally sentenced in July.
