Lead detective reveals details after Prescott man sentenced to life for burying wife alive

PRESCOTT, AZ (AZFamily) — A Prescott husband received a life sentence with no possibility of parole after burying his wife alive seven years ago.

Just before his trial was set to begin, David Pagniano pleaded guilty to the 2017 murder of his wife.

Now, one of the lead detectives on the case revealed more in an exclusive interview.

Replaying what happened to Sandra Pagniano is a painful thought for the detective who stood at the crime scene this time not long ago.

“We believe that it happened overnight seven years ago today in the early hours,” said Yavapai County Sheriff Sergeant Jack Mattox.

Mattox said it all began when Sandra Pagniano went missing from her Prescott home while her young kids and husband, David Pagniano, were inside.

“She had supposedly left or disappeared, but he still was not calling in the report,” said Mattox.

Instead, one of Sandra’s friends called in a missing persons report, saying it was completely out of character for her to willingly leave. Friends said she was a mother who was very involved in her kids’ lives and with the community.

David showed police two handwritten notes that Sandra reportedly left behind: one to her kids saying she had to leave, and the other to David, leaving him all of her property and belongings.

“The handwriting analysis showed those notes were in fact written by him,” said Mattox.

With David as a person of interest, Mattox said they gathered enough cell phone evidence that put him in the place Sandra Pagniano’s body would ultimately be found in a hand-dug grave.

“She was also bound around the mouth and around the head so that she presumably would be unable to make any noise,” Mattox said. “She was alive at the time she was buried.”

Horrifically, evidence showed she was likely conscious for up to five minutes after she was buried.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office charged David Pagniano with first-degree murder, and the county attorney was pursuing the death penalty.

But on the eve of his trial, David decided to plead guilty and let the judge decide his fate.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Detective Mattox believes avoiding trial may protect their kids from more harm. He said they were eight and twelve years old at the time their mother was killed.

“It spares all of them having to re-live all of those details,” said Mattox.

Mattox said that while justice is finally served, certain cases stick with you forever. For him, this is one of them.

“There are things you experience, and you think you’d never be able to experience something worse, and then along comes something like this,” said Mattox.

In addition to the life sentence, David Pagniano was also sentenced to an additional 16 and a half years in prison for kidnapping Sandra, forging the notes, and fraud schemes. He will die behind bars.

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