The Other Volz

On Dec. 17, an appellate court in Nicaragua declared Eric Volz innocent. Volz—convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend despite considerable evidence to the contrary—would not actually be free for a few more days, but to his family the news must have been some solace. For over a year, the 28-year-old Nashville native languished in a Nicaraguan prison. According to his online diary, he received extra harsh treatment from prison officials. That day in December must have been a good one for almost everyone in the Volz family. Everyone, perhaps, but Eric’s younger sister Megan.

That’s because on the same day a court was vindicating her brother, 24-year-old Megan went to Nashville police to report that she’d been assaulted by her then-boyfriend Guillermo Diemarch and his brother Juan Carlos Diemarch.

The affidavit, filed the next day, alleges that Juan Carlos kicked Volz and that Guillermo (pronounced Gee-sher-mo,) began to choke her while attempting to break up the fight. Reading the charges, the case seems cut and dried: Two men attack one woman, and she presses charges. But according to Guillermo and Volz’s own testimony during a Metro court preliminary hearing, the situation is much more complex.

Friends of the couple say that it was Volz who regularly abused Guillermo physically, hitting and scratching the young man, leaving bruises and nail marks. On at least two occasions, Juan Carlos called 911 because Volz was hitting his brother, according to recordings of the calls. When police arrived on these occasions, the brothers declined to file official reports. Why?

“Because Megan said that if I did, she would have me and my brother deported,” Guillermo says from behind a plate glass window in the visiting room of the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office’s Hill Detention Center. The brothers came to the U.S. legally five years ago on a 90-day visa from their native Uruguay. They never left and never reconciled their immigration status.

For that reason, Guillermo says that he stayed with and never reported a woman he describes as abusive, vindictive, prone to destroying property and lashing out in fits of anger.

“The very first time when he called the police on me,” Volz said during the preliminary hearing, “I told him to call the police on me, go ahead, because they’ll deport you.”

When Guillermo broke up with Volz, she made good on her threat. On Dec. 18, three days after a shouting match—which Volz claims ended in her being physically attacked—she swore out assault charges against the Diemarch brothers. Volz testified that she waited as long as she did to press charges because it took her mother that long to convince her to “take action and protect myself.”

As her own brother Eric’s nightmarish incarceration was coming to an end, Guillermo and Juan Carlos Diemarch’s imprisonment was just beginning.

The two were arrested and charged with one count of domestic assault each for the Dec. 15 incident, both misdemeanors. Guillermo was additionally charged with felony aggravated assault for a fight he’d had with Volz on Dec. 7. In that fight, Volz claims that she received a separated shoulder. While being processed at the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, an immigration background check—now routine under the sheriff’s department’s 287g program—revealed that they were in the country illegally. Now, regardless of the outcome of their criminal trial, both men probably will be deported with little chance of ever returning to the lives that they have built here in the U.S.

Further complicating matters is a bureaucratic error on the part of the sheriff’s department that caused Juan Carlos to be prematurely placed in removal proceedings. Now, though he still has criminal charges pending in Nashville, he is hundreds of miles away in a federal immigration facility awaiting deportation. He may miss his court date in Tennessee, meaning that he will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to return to the U.S.

Juan Carlos’ girlfriend Kate Kalil notes a bitter irony in the situation. “I saw Mrs. Volz [Eric and Megan’s mother] on CNN one evening and she was going on and on about how it’s just not fair that her son is being held in jail without any rights,” Kalil says. “He did nothing wrong, and they won’t let him go. To know that she advised her daughter to do the same to somebody else, it’s very disheartening. [Guillermo and Juan] are both in jail without any rights because they’re illegal. They did nothing wrong. They didn’t hurt her. They didn’t harm her.”

The Scene made exhaustive attempts to get Volz’s side of the story. Calls and text messages sent to Megan’s two out-of-state phone numbers found on police documents yielded no response. Megan and Eric’s parents—Maggie and Jan—are separated. Calls to Jan Volz’s home were not returned. After the Scene contacted a friend of the Volz family, Maggie’s husband Dane Anthony agreed to an interview.