Man who used insanity defense in fatal stabbing pleads guilty to felony in separate knife incident

Charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the March 2017 killing of Betty Rodriguez in Springfield, Vt., Arnaldo Cruz steps up to the defense table to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity through lawyer Dan Sedon in Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction, Vt., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter in the March 2017 killing of Betty Rodriguez in Springfield, Vt., Arnaldo Cruz steps up to the defense table to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity through lawyer Dan Sedon in Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction, Vt., Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2018. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. James M. Patterson

Arnaldo Cruz, of Springfield, Vt., appears at an arraignment with his attorney, Jordana Levine, at Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction, Vt., on March 21, 2017. Cruz is accused of stabbing and killing Betty Rodriguez early Monday morning at a Springfield apartment building. (Valley News - Geoff Hansen) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.

Arnaldo Cruz, of Springfield, Vt., appears at an arraignment with his attorney, Jordana Levine, at Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction, Vt., on March 21, 2017. Cruz is accused of stabbing and killing Betty Rodriguez early Monday morning at a Springfield apartment building. (Valley News - Geoff Hansen) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. Geoff Hansen

Staff Report

Published: 07-19-2023 5:45 PM

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A 59-year-old Springfield, Vt., man who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 2018 in the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend recently pleaded guilty to a felony charge that he attempted to stab a man with a knife weeks before the murder.

Arnaldo Cruz pleaded guilty to a single count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in Windsor Superior Court on May 15 and was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison, all suspended except for three years and 326 days with credit for time served, court records show.

Cruz, who has been held without bail in Southern State Correctional Facility since he was charged in 2019, is eligible to be released from prison on Aug. 17, according to Vermont Department of Corrections records. He would remain on probation until May 2028.

Following his insanity plea, Cruz was ordered by the court into custody of the state Department of Mental Health for the purposes of treatment and supervision. Cruz was later discharged into a residential program in Massachusetts, where 10 months following his insanity plea he was arrested on a Vermont warrant and charged with threatening to kill a 22-year-oid man with a knife inside a Springfield apartment in 2017, a few weeks before he killed his girlfriend.

Prosecutors were only made aware of the knife threat against the man when the victim’s mother reported the assault to police in 2019, subsequent to Cruz’s 2018 insanity plea in the murder of his girlfriend.

Neither state prosecutors nor Cruz’s defense attorney immediately responded to messages seeking comment on Wednesday.