Marshfield Man Sentenced for Choking a Woman to Death and Setting Her Body on Fire

Wednesday, August 20th, 2025 -- 11:01 AM

(Karen Madden, Marshfield News-Herald) A 28-year-old Marshfield man was sentenced Aug. 19 to 25 years in prison for the November 2024 death of a woman who was choked to death then taken to Price County and set on fire.

According to Karen Madden with the Marshfield News-Herald, Deyvin Castro-Gutierrez pleaded no contest to and was found guilty of second-degree intentional homicide in the death of Blanca Jesenia Hernandez-Portocarrero, 28, of Marshfield.

The charge was reduced from a charge of first-degree intentional homicide. Retired Marathon County Circuit Judge Gregory Grau, acting as a substitute judge in the Wood County case, found Castro-Gutierrez guilty of the reduced charge.

As part of the plea agreement, a charge of mutilating a corpse filed in Price County was dismissed but considered during sentencing. Wood County District Attorney Jonathan Barnett said Castro-Gutierrez told investigators he and Hernandez-Portocarrero got into an argument over some text messages and phone calls she had made.

Because she was smaller, Hernandez-Portocarrero got a knife to protect herself. Castro-Gutierrez knocked the knife out of her hand and then hit her throat and held his arm across it until she stopped breathing, Barnett said.

If the case had gone to trial as first-degree intentional homicide, a jury likely would have decided Castro-Gutierrez's account of how the death happened did not justify the charge, Barnett said. There was no evidence to dispute it, he said.

A neighbor in the apartment complex had put a surveillance camera in the parking lot, because he believed someone had hit and damaged his car repeatedly, Barnett said.

The camera happened to catch Castro-Gutierrez putting Hernandez-Portocarrero's body in the trunk of his car, Barnett said. That is the reason officials were able to determine it was him who killed Hernandez-Portocarrero, he said.

Castro-Gutierrez then took the body to Price County where he put Hernandez-Portocarrero in a ditch and tried to burn the body, Barnett said. Some people came along and saw the fire.

Grau gave Castro-Gutierrez 25 years in prison to be followed by 20 years of extended supervision, which was the joint recommendation of Barnett and Bennett. Since he is not a U.S. citizen, it is likely officials will send him back to Nicaragua when his prison sentence is finished, Grau said.

Grau gave Castro-Gutierrez credit for 281 days already served in jail.

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