In just 14 months, between 2000 and 2001, three women were brutally killed by a mysterious murderer in South Florida.
Their cases made headlines in the media for days, maybe weeks, and then faded into the background.
But
"justice never expires,
" Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony said this week at a news conference.
Although, as in this case, it is by accident.
The first victim, Kimberly Dietz-Livesey, was found on June 22, 2000 in Cooper City.
His body, badly beaten, was
stuffed in a suitcase
on a highway.
On August 9, 2000, Sia Demas' body was found in the same condition on another road near Dania Beach.
A year later, on August 30, 2001, the body of Jessica Good appeared in Biscayne Bay, in Miami.
She had been stabbed to death.
DNA samples and fingerprints were collected, but initially they did not yield any results when they were checked against
criminal databases
.
This image provided by the Broward County, Florida sheriff's office shows Roberto Wagner Fernandes, a Brazilian who died in a plane crash in South America in 2005. AP
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"Usually it takes months, maybe even years, until cold cases are resolved," the sheriff explained.
On this occasion,
the breakthrough occurred in 2011
, when investigators detected coincidences between the evidence of the three crimes that made them think that they were the work of the same person.
At the time, the police had tried to question a suspect, but the man, identified as Roberto Fernandes, fled to Brazil in 2001, shortly after the third body was found.
The United States does not have an extradition agreement with that country, so that investigation
came to a standstill
.
The victims, Kimberly Dietz-Livesey, Sia Demas and Jessica Good, were murdered between June 2000 and August 2001 Sheriff Office Broward County
In Brazil, Fernandes came to the conclusion that a murderer was looking for him to end his life due to his alleged involvement in the death of his ex-wife in 1996. Thus in 2005 he decided to escape by plane to Paraguay, but died when he crashed during the journey.
Investigators in Florida had tracked him down and found that his ex-wife's crime fingerprints matched all three murders in the United States.
But Fernandes was already dead, so how to prove that he was responsible?
The pilot had been buried in Brazil, so they had to convince a judge from that country to order the
exhumation of the body
, after concluding that he had not faked the accident in the plane.
Thus, their DNA samples could be obtained, according to an official report.
[He went to work and never returned: there are 5 suspects in the death of a Venezuelan taxi driver]
"
I think there are other cases. There is no limit to where he could have traveled,
" lamented Detective Zach Scott at a press conference, alluding to other possible murders committed by Fernandes.
With information from Daily News and News4Jax.