Lawyers give closing arguments in trial of man accused of killing girlfriend who sought to leave Long Island

In the days before the point-blank shooting death of Marivel Estevez in Mineola, Nassau County prosecutors say, she told friends that her boyfriend was having trouble coping with her decision to leave Long Island for a Florida job.

Estevez, a building management worker, who lived in the luxurious new complex, The Allure at 140 Old Country Road, told co-workers and friends that Mark Small, 57, was following her around, begging her to stay.

"Baby are you sure about leaving me alone, I can’t live without you," Assistant District Attorney Tracy Keeton quoted texts from Small to Estevez in the weeks before her death.

When no one heard from her in the final days of July 2022, family had police perform a wellness check and they found her dead, shot once in the head and once in the neck, Keeton said.

"He couldn’t take it," the prosecutor told the jury Wednesday during closing arguments in the murder and weapons case against Small. "If he couldn’t have her, no one would. So he shot her twice in her bed. He got his wish."

Keeton acknowledged that much of the case hangs on circumstantial evidence — surveillance footage of Small leaving the victim's building around 3:30 a.m., days before she was found dead, a key fob in his possession that was the last to lock her apartment door and his DNA on the murder weapon. That is enough, she said, for the jurors to find him guilty.

Defense lawyer Stephen Drummond, who also gave his closing statement in the case on Wednesday, told the panel that inconsistencies in the evidence, investigative errors and his client’s behavior prove that authorities have the wrong man.

The attorney pointed out that the time records of entries and exits from Estevez’s apartment were more than four hours off the actual time, which prosecutors concede. He said that four Nassau County homicide detectives failed to find the murder weapon when they first searched the apartment, but a crime scene investigator found it days later under the sofa cushion.

He said that the DNA of two other people were found on the gun.

Drummond added that Estevez and Small were still very much in love before her murder and they expected to get married someday.

Finally, on the night authorities believe Estevez died, Drummond said that his client did not act like a man fleeing a crime scene.

After he left The Allure with Estevez’s Maltese Tuffy around 3:30 a.m., he got into an accident, colliding with a van on the LIE, according to testimony. During the crash, the dog fled the vehicle into traffic and Small gave chase, the lawyer said. As he tried to retrieve Tuffy, another car struck him, putting him in the hospital.

"It’s undisputed that Mr. Small was chasing after Tuffy when he got hit," Drummond told the jury, saying such behavior is not typical of a fleeing man. "You have to ask yourself why would he go after the dog, it’s not his dog."

On Thursday, Nassau County Justice Helene Gugerty will instruct the jury in the morning and deliberations are expected before the afternoon.