SWFL prosecutor honored with top award

Rich Montecalvo has prosecuted some of Southwest Florida’s biggest cases.

He prosecuted Mesac Damas, who killed his entire family in Collier County. He was also in charge of prosecuting Lois Riess, a grandmother fleeing across the country on a killing spree.

Montecalvo is the chief assistant state attorney in the Twentieth Judicial Circuit, which covers Charlotte, Collier, Glades, Hendry and Lee counties.

Montecalvo just won the Eugene Berry Award for Excellence.

Montecalvo told WINK the Damas case will always stick with him.

“It will always be seeing the Christmas photo of those children the Christmas before they were murdered,” he said.

Montecalvo has been prosecuting the law for nearly 30 years, but nothing compares to his first steps through Damas’ home in 2009.

“I’m on the phone to the state attorney at the time, Steve Russell, filling him in on everything that he needs to know, because this is clearly going to become one of the biggest cases certainly in Collier County history and still is,” Montecalvo said. “But going into that crime scene being forewarned by the detectives, by the crime scene analysts, it’s not something prosecutors often see.”

Damas’ wife Guerline Dieu Damas, and their five children: Meshach, 9, Marven, 6, Maven, 5, Megan, 3, and Morgan, 1, were slaughtered with the same knife.

“My immediate memory is all of the fingerprint powder that was all over the house,” he said. “You walk in. There were stairs immediately to your left, and then to your right was (an) entrance into the living room and the downstairs bathroom where Guerline was found.”

Damas, the killer, fled to Haiti.

“The fact that he fled immediately, to me, told me, one, he was not insane,” Montecalvo said. “He knew what he was doing. He had planned this.”

A prosecutor has to anticipate all the angles of a single case, and in a horrific killing, putting the murdered temporarily behind bars is one of them.

But to find someone guilty and have them sentenced to death row, Montecalvo needs airtight proof.

“It’s stunning to me still, you know, having a medical examiner on the witness stand and having to have the medical examiner explain exactly what their bodies were experiencing as the knife was being sliced through their arteries on their neck and understanding one of the aggravating factors we had to prove was that the crime was heinous, atrocious and cruel,” Montecalvo said. “One of those factors is do the victims know that death is impending.

“There’s no doubt that certainly, for the older kids, they knew it. The 18-month-old, in a way, was spared that fear because she didn’t know that fear, but the oldest child, he knew it, he was fighting back. Guerline fought back.”

The case in court had all kinds of weird twists and turns, including outbursts from Damas. In 2017, Damas pleaded guilty. Fourteen years after Montecalvo first walked inside the blood-spattered home, his case was closed.

He keeps a photo of the five Damas children underneath the glass top of his desk.

Damas was sentenced to death.

“It wasn’t him that I was focused on. It was the evidence. It was making sure my witnesses were prepared. It was making sure the family was understanding what was happening every step of the way,” Montecalvo said. “Only when we were in court, at a hearing or at the trial, is my focus then turned to the defendant.”

On Aug. 1, the judge ordered Damas to stay on death row after he tried to claim his counsel was ineffective.

As this year’s recipient of the Eugene Berry Award for Excellence, Montecalvo was selected from the Florida Prosecuting Attorney’s Association.

State Attorney Amira Fox, of the 20th Judicial Circuit, serves on the rotating committee and nominated Montecalvo, not only for his entire career but also for this work on the Damas case.

The state of the death penalty was in flux during the proceedings, which led to delays and necessitated Montecalvo explaining what was happening to the family of Guerline.

“Rich was so masterful at helping the family through the process,” Fox said.

Now, Montecalvo said he tries to mentor younger attorneys in his office to help them grow their careers.