The man charged with murdering a New York mother allegedly claimed that he thought the victim gave him HIV—and that he stabbed her after she initially grabbed a knife.
The case continues against David Bonola, 44, for allegedly killing Orsolya Gaal, 51, in the basement of her Queens home. Investigators with the New York Police Department previously said that the victim had engaged in an affair with her killer on-and-off over the course of two years.
Bonola, who worked for the married woman as a handyman, arrived at her home between 12:30 and 12:40 a.m. on April 16 after she returned from a show at Lincoln Center, cops said. Bonola allegedly stabbed Gaal more than 55 times, put her in a hockey duffel bag belonging to one of her sons, and dragged her body away. While Gaal’s younger son was upstairs, her husband and elder son were out of town. The bag was soon found around at nearby intersection. Officers, however, were not clear about the “heated argument” between the two before the stabbing.
The filing describing Bonola’s account of that “heated argument” was unsealed in court Tuesday, according to The New York Post.
“She gave me HIV,” Bonola allegedly told detectives in an interview on April 20. “She lied to me, she used me. She told me that she loved me. She couldn’t be with one person.”
Bonola allegedly asserted that she “was cheating on me.”
“They had been off and on, and they had broken up prior — but had reunited early in the month of April,” an NYPD official said after Bonola’s arrest. “Their relationship was considered at an end.”
In the defendant’s alleged version of events, he got angry after Gaal said she took a phone call from another man, and “said she was going to see him.”
“I couldn’t accept it,” Bonola allegedly said.
In the filing, the defendant told detectives he had knocked on her door that early morning and she let him in.
“She opened the door and asked me what I was doing there,” he allegedly said. “I told her that I just wanted her to tell me the truth about why she gave me HIV. She said she didn’t have HIV.”
He allegedly claimed that she said their affair was over, that she grabbed a knife, and told him to leave her home “or she would kill him.”
“I grabbed the knife and cut her from the neck,” Bonola said. “She kept fighting and we fall. She was moving and trying to grab me so I stabbed her in the neck to get her to stop attacking me.”
As previously reported, Gaal’s husband voiced concern for his family’s ongoing safety. He reportedly received threatening texts, including “Your whole family is next.”
Bonola allegedly admitted to writing a threatening text to her husband.
“In the past, she told me that she had sent a man to jail so I sent a message to her husband pretending to be that guy because I was scared,” Bonola said in the filing. “I took her laptop because she had sex videos on the laptop. I threw her laptop in the Hudson River where I used to visit her.”
[Featured post image of Bonola via CBS New York; image of Bonola via mugshot; image of Gaal via Facebook]