Ashley Flowers

They would learn that the woman lying on the kitchen floor was Milagros Nieves.

She was a 49-year-old Puerto Rican woman who had moved to Connecticut decades prior.

And that little girl that was in the apartment with her was her granddaughter.

A mother of six, Milagros looked after her grandkids so that her children could keep working and go to school.

She was a full-time caretaker.

It was a role that she adored.

Papalucha's colleague, Detective Jeffrey Holtz, was assigned Milagros' case in 2025.

As part of his review of the case file, he was tasked with looking through the crime scene photos and the reports that documented what Papalucha saw in real life.

And it was brutal.

Along with the cut to her throat that Papalucha saw, Milagros had been stabbed to death 33 times in her neck, chest, and torso.

Detective Holtz did let our reporter, Laura Freider, look at those photos when she was at the Bridgeport Police Department.

He wanted her to understand how brutal Milagros' death really was.

And Laura said that the photos show Milagros lying face up on the floor of the kitchen, arms limp above her head, and her legs were splayed out with her right foot touching a broken panel on the oven door.

And there was a broken dinner plate between her legs, a white plate with blue trim.

And lying just below Milagros' groin, there was this grayish-green beanie with a tear on it.

Laura said that if there wasn't a huge blood smear across the white kitchen floor, it honestly would be hard to tell that Milagros was bleeding because the blood from her injuries blended into her red nightdress.

The rest of the kitchen, though, it was pretty tidy.

In the sink, there were three coffee cups, all white with blue trim to match the broken dinner plate on the floor.

Two of the cups were empty, and then one was full of watery coffee.

It was as if Milagros had been standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes in the moments before she was attacked, seemingly by surprise, evidenced by, if nothing else, the fact that her granddaughter was there and left alive.