Pedro Grajales admitted killing Nilda Rivera in 2023 after telling police he had planned the attack for days.
HARTFORD, Conn. — A Hartford man admitted he killed his girlfriend, Nilda Rivera, in a 2023 stabbing that police said ended when he drove her body to headquarters and confessed. That man has now been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The sentence closed the criminal case against Pedro Grajales, 55, nearly three years after Rivera, 57, was found dead in the front passenger seat of his car outside the Hartford Police Department. Prosecutors said the killing was deliberate, not sudden, and court records said Grajales told officers he had been planning to murder Rivera because he believed she had been cheating on him. The case drew unusual attention because of the details in the arrest warrant and because Rivera’s family said the jealousy they had seen in the relationship turned deadly.
Police said the case began on April 16, 2023, when Grajales walked into the lobby of the Hartford Police Department at about 3:22 p.m. He was covered in blood, according to court records and early police accounts, and told officers he had just stabbed his girlfriend. Rivera was in a vehicle parked outside the building, police said. Investigators later said Grajales had picked Rivera up earlier that day and hidden a knife in his pants pocket before meeting her. According to the arrest warrant, he took her to a McDonald’s on Brainard Road, where they ordered food through the drive-thru and sat in the parking lot while she ate. The warrant said he was “intentionally treating her very nice” so she would not suspect his plan. After leaving the restaurant, police said, he drove to a nearby secluded lot and pretended he needed to get lumber before turning on her inside the car.
Investigators said Grajales described the attack in direct and chilling terms. The arrest warrant said he told police he moved his driver’s seat all the way back so he would have room to swing the knife. Rivera was seated in the front passenger seat when he began stabbing her, according to the warrant. Police said she was stabbed more than 25 times. Court records cited in local reporting said Grajales then watched as Rivera struggled for air and waited for her to die before driving to police headquarters. Officers said he also showed them a photo of Rivera’s body on his cellphone after entering the station. Authorities charged him with murder that same day. A judge first set bond at $1.5 million, and it was later raised to $3 million as the case moved forward. At the time of the arrest, Hartford police said the killing was the city’s sixth homicide of 2023.
Rivera’s death quickly became more than a criminal file for her family. Relatives described her as a mother, grandmother and friend whose life was larger than the final moments recounted in court papers. One of her daughters, Daniella Valle, said after the killing that her mother had simply been “looking for love.” Family members also said they had seen warning signs in Grajales’ behavior before the attack. According to interviews they gave in the days after Rivera’s death, he was “very jealous,” checked her phone, and deleted contacts and social media connections. Those public comments matched the motive police said Grajales gave after surrendering. He told investigators he believed Rivera had been unfaithful. Court accounts also said he blamed the situation on an affair and on threats he said another man had made toward his mother. Even with those statements, the official record left some questions unanswered, including exactly when Grajales decided on the parking lot and whether any confrontation happened inside the car before the stabbing began.
The legal process stretched from spring 2023 into early 2026. Grajales was initially charged with murder and held as the case proceeded through Hartford Superior Court. A court appearance was scheduled in May 2023, and the matter remained pending as prosecutors prepared for trial. Instead of taking the case to a jury verdict, Grajales entered a guilty plea to murder in December 2025, according to court records cited in multiple reports. That plea resolved the central charge and avoided a trial focused on Rivera’s final hours. On Feb. 18, 2026, a judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison. The sentence was significant but also reflected the end of a case without a full public airing of all evidence that might have come in a trial. No additional charges were publicly reported in connection with Rivera’s death, and no major disputed facts remained after the guilty plea. By the time of sentencing, the issue before the court was punishment, not responsibility.
The facts that stood out most in the case were not complicated, but they were hard to forget: a meal from a drive-thru, a short drive, a parked car, and a man arriving at a police station with the victim still inside. Those details gave the case a grim public life well beyond Hartford. Yet the people closest to Rivera kept returning to who she had been before the violence. Her family spoke about birthdays, meals at the kitchen table and the roles she filled at home. Their comments pushed back against the way homicide cases can flatten a victim into evidence and procedure. In public accounts, Rivera remained both the woman named in a murder file and the person her daughters said did not deserve to die this way. Grajales, meanwhile, moved from suspect to defendant to convicted killer with the sentence now imposed and the criminal case effectively finished unless future post-conviction filings arise.
For now, the case stands as a closed prosecution built on Grajales’ own admissions and the physical evidence police found on April 16, 2023. With sentencing complete as of Feb. 18, 2026, the next milestone would come only if an appeal or post-sentence motion is filed in the months ahead.