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Home / World

They made him eat cat litter before killing him - and posted it all on Snapchat, police say

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr
Washington Post·
29 Dec, 2016 05:03 AM4 mins to read

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20-year-old Devin Katzfey, one of three people criminally charged in connection with the fatal beating of Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro. Photo / Supplied

20-year-old Devin Katzfey, one of three people criminally charged in connection with the fatal beating of Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro. Photo / Supplied

The brutal and bloody final moments of Delvin Mendoza-Chaparro's life were right there on Snapchat, visible to any of his friends - and ultimately to police.

One man forced him to the floor and made him eat cat litter, according to a criminal complaint. Another man urinated on him.

A Snapchat video shows him lying on the floor, barely conscious, the complaint says. A man's voice says, "This is what happens when you steal . . . You got knocked the f-- out, b---. Don't ever come and steal."

In a second video, he's immobile and bloody, lying near a doorway. "That's what happens when you try to steal," says the man operating the iPhone.

The final video shows the victim lying on the kitchen floor near the litter box, dazed and bleeding. Mendoza-Chaparro tries to get up, but he's kicked to the ground.

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Mendoza-Chaparro's capital offense: stealing a bong, a pipe and other items as he smoked marijuana a few days before Christmas with the people accused of killing him.

Devin Katzfey, 20, Branden Katzfey, 19 and Sarah Zakzesky, 20, are all charged with murder, according to prosecutors. They are still being held in Milwaukee County Jail. It was unclear whether they had hired lawyers.

The victim's mother, Iris Chaparro, told Milwaukee Fox-affiliate WITI that this was going to be her first Christmas with her son in a half-decade because they had lived in separate states for five years.

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Instead, police told her that he had been killed.

"It was horrible. They showed me his photo and I couldn't even go to the morgue to identify him," she said.

Investigators pieced together what happened from interviews with Zakzesky and Branden Katzfey - and from Mendoza-Chaparro's Snapchat account.

They identified the younger Katzfey brother as the primary aggressor.

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Gang member's 373 days on the run

29 Dec 04:00 PM

According to the criminal complaint, they were all getting high at Zakzesky's apartment in west Milwaukee. She later told police that she was in and out of consciousness. The first time she woke up, she had sex with Branden Katzfey, the complaint says. She noticed Mendoza-Chaparro asleep on the living room floor.

The second time, Devin Katzfey was shaking her awake. Mendoza-Chaparro was trying to steal, he said. The brothers had seen the drug paraphernalia in his coat.

Enraged at Mendoza-Chaparro's attempt to steal, Devin Katzfey dragged him into the kitchen by his feet. Then the beating began.

Mendoza-Chaparro said that he hadn't stolen anything and begged his assailants to stop. In all, he was punched and kicked about 25 times, until he was unconscious. Then he was beaten some more, the complaint says.

Zakzesky told investigators that the victim "didn't even [have] a chance to raise his fists and fight man to man," according to the complaint.

The victim was already badly injured when Devin Katzfey reached for his phone and logged on to his Snapchat account, according to the documents.

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Then Zakzesky wanted the injured man out of her apartment.

"She kept telling Devin Katzfey that they need to take the victim to the hospital but he said no," the criminal complaint says.

They drove him to the alley, the complaint says, and "Devin Katzfey was holding on to the victim as they got out of the car and . . . the victim then fell over in a snowbank by garbage cans."

According to the complaint, Zakzesky told investigators that the unconscious man couldn't stand or sit up on his own.

"She . . . agreed that it was cold enough that someone could freeze to death," the complaint says. "When asked what she thought would happen when they left him there, she said she did not know."

Police found Mendoza-Chaparro in the alley on Dec. 19, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, which were pulled down. There were signs he had been beaten on his neck and head. It was 14 degrees.

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