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Man arrested in Ridgewood mom’s murder after leaving U.S.

By Matthew Monks

“Come see your daughter. Call 911,” Jose Taveraz told the mother of slain 19-year-old beauty Lilliana Alvarez, seconds after police allege he smothered the single mother's face with a pillow and fired a bullet into the left side of her head, according to the victim's sister.”He said he didn't even care about the prison time,” said Wendy Alvarez, 18, on Monday shortly after washing her sister's blood off an entertainment center and the floor of the bedroom where she was killed at roughly 5 a.m. Sunday at 10-64 Cypress Ave. On Sunday morning police investigators contacted Dominican authorities, who arrested Tavarez after he stepped off a plane, a spokeswoman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. He was extradited to Queens Tuesday and charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted, the spokeswoman said. “I'm going to tell the judge to keep him there and kill him,” Alvarez said. Lilliana and Taverez had been dating for about six months, she said, describing their affair as a rocky relationship. “They always used to argue every day,” Alvarez said. The last fight occurred the morning she was killed. The two Alvarez sisters and Tavarez spent the night at the restaurant and bar Blue Macaul on Wyckoff Avenue in Brooklyn. When they left at 4:30 a.m., Lilliana Alvarez got mad at Tavarez when she noticed a .357 handgun in her boyfriend's jacket pocket, Wendy Alvarez said, adding that her sister did not know Tavarez owned a pistol. The two fought while riding in Tavarez's car back to the apartment where Lilliana lived with her 3-year-old daughter by another man, Marilaysi; her mother Margarita Fernandez, 40; and two stepbrothers, Wendy Alvarez said. Tavarez sometimes spent the night there. His place of residence was unclear because he gave police a false address, authorities said. When the women got back to the apartment, Wendy told her sister not to let Tavarez inside. “I didn't want to let him in,” Tavarez said. She told Lilliana: “Don't open the door. Trust me he's got a gun.”But Lilliana did not listen, brazenly saying she could handle Tavarez, who police said had one prior arrest for a domestic dispute in January in which he was charged with punching Wendy Alvarez in the face and breaking her nose. “You know what? I'm a woman,” Wendy Alvarez recalled her sister saying. “I can defend myself. If he kills me, he kills me.” Lilliana let him back inside. The two went into the front bedroom and appeared to have made up. Wendy Alvarez said she hailed a cab at 5 a.m. and saw her sister hugging her alleged killer just before she went home. She said her family told her that her sister was killed 10 minutes after she left. Reach reporter Matthew Monks by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.