Valerie Pape: The case of Scottsdale salon owner turned 'torso murderer'
The Republic | azcentral.com
January 12, 2018
A petite blonde wearing sunglasses and gloves parked her Jaguar behind a Mesa grocery store, pulled out a heavy plastic bag and struggled to hurl it into a trash bin.
The bizarre behavior drew the attention of a deliveryman, whose suspicions ultimately led police to Ira Pomerantz's headless, limbless torso in January 2000.
The woman doing the heavy lifting was Valerie Pape, a Scottsdale salon owner and French national. Pape, who was 47 at the time, would go on to tell police she dumped her 60-year-old husband's torso into a trash bin four days after finding him shot to death in their home.
Pape ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was deported to France in 2016 after serving a 16-year sentence with the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Here's what you need to know about the "torso murderer."
A stormy relationship and troubled finances
Pomerantz and Pape married in November 1995. How soon things began to go sour between the couple isn't readily known.
Pape opened her own beauty salon in 1997 at the exclusive Scottsdale address of Marshall Way. Public records show Pomerantz filed for bankruptcy the same year the salon opened, and he subsequently lost a bar he owned in Chandler.
Family and friends knew the couple's relationship was volatile. Police had been to their McCormick Ranch home more than once, and friends had said they had seen her bruised.
Pape told friends that her husband was abusive and an alcoholic, which he denied. She sought a court order against him in late 1999, accusing Pomerantz of throwing knives at her during an argument over bills. In his response, he said it was true, they argued over bills, but "I have not been physical with Valerie."
She withdrew the request a week later, explaining they had reconciled.
But the bills continued to mount. Pomerantz complained to an acquaintance days before his death that his wife was bleeding him financially. He also suspected she was having an affair with a Frenchman who was living with the couple and had a stake in the salon.
He was planning to file for divorce, friends told police, when she was identified as having dumped her his torso in a Mesa trash.
Maricopa County deputy prosecutor Vince Imbordino said at the time that the plea deal to a second-degree murder charge "seemed to be the fairest solution." He said the allegations of domestic violence may have persuaded a jury that she did not plan the slaying. Proof of such premeditation would be required for a first-degree murder conviction.
What about the torso?
Police were uncertain what exactly happened to the mutilated body of Pomerantz after he was fatally shot.
At one point, investigators believe his torso may have been frozen, and they searched his closed nightclub to see whether it had been stored there before it was found in the garbage bin in January 2000.
If the body had been frozen, it would have made it easier to dismember, as police said, with an ''electrical cutting instrument.''
Police found a receipt in Pape's purse showing she'd purchased a saw at a hardware store weeks before the killing.
Pape originally said she discovered her estranged husband shot to death on her kitchen floor and that she dumped the torso because she feared she would be blamed in her husband's death. According to his death certificate, Pomerantz was shot in the right upper back. Investigators never found the other body parts.
Later, Pape said she shot Pomerantz in the heat of a domestic dispute, and she pleaded guilty to a second-degree murder charge.
What about the French business partner?
Pape had a longtime friend and business partner, Michel Sauvage, who eventually moved in with the married couple.
Although some speculated that there was romantic relationship between them, others doubted it.
"There was absolutely nothing in their behavior that gave a hint of anything other than a business relationship,'' one friend said.
But another neighbor thought it was strange that whenever she and her husband extended an invitation to Pomerantz and Pape, the Frenchwoman insisted that Sauvage be included.
Police at the time wondered how Pape had handled Pomerantz's body by herself.
Where is Valerie Pape now?
Pape completed her 16-year prison sentence in 2016 and was deported to France.
The French government agreed in 2006 to have Pape transferred to that country to finish serving her sentence under an international treaty on prisoner exchanges.
Daniel Pinna 
Kathy Pinna 
Stacy Sullivan 
