20/20 - True Crime Vault: Doctor Deceit

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

An exclusive interview with a ‘fake doctor’ who hid a deadly secret. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

9-1-1, where is the emergency? It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern. Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows. Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie, plays out in real life. I'm Jiu Chang.

from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life. Maria Cruz came to New York from the Philippines to fulfill her dreams, her ambition. Maria Cruz is kind of an example

of the best possible of immigrant success story. The reason people come to America. She's a tiny woman, quiet, incredibly religious Catholic. She was so devout that when Maria first arrived in New York City, she lived in a dorm that was run by nuns. I met Maria, actually 20 years ago, because that's when I moved to the dorm.

Maria is kind of quiet. She's very professional, go-getter, very ambitious. She has all this dream, you know, American dream. American dream. She got an MBA at Fordham. She got a job at Barclays. She worked in an office on Park Avenue. How amazing is that?

She moved from a residential place for women to her own apartment in a high rise on the west side. Maria wanted to make the most of her appearance. She took great care with her skin and got facials and used products to help her skin's health and she was very much aware of how she dressed, how she carried herself, and how other people saw her. Who better to fit into that desire for Maria Cruz, but Dean Fyello, who relished making people look and feel good. According to Dean, she had some scarring on the inside of her legs that she basically wanted

erased with a laser. And that's what Dean says he treated her for. How many times did you see her? I would say somewhere between 10 and 15 times. You know, we spent many hours during the treatment, talking with each other. How did she strike you initially? Quiet and shy. But then I learned that she was a very smart, successful person.

Maria Cruz, like so many other clients of Dean Fiello, acted on faith. He played the party, looked the part, he acted the part. part they had no clue that he was not qualified to inject anybody with lytocane or use a laser wand did you ever tell her that that these treatments are supposed to be accompanied by a medical doctor no she never asked no she trusted you yes you're a doctor so I can trust you I don't have to well you that I mean you could trust me why would you be practicing medicine without a license team imagine what

Maria and other clients must have thought in October of 2002 when the news came out that Dean was not a doctor, but was practicing as if he was. You were all over the news at that point. So what happened to all your longtime patients? Were they not all almost simultaneously alerted that you were bad news? They were all alerted. Amazingly, a few of them stayed with me. Dean actually got out of all this with, you know, a pretty sweet deal. It was given a four-year sentence, but it was cut down to six months

because he agreed to alert authorities to other people who were doing the same type of things illegally that he was. And part of the stipulations regarding his plea agreement was that he had to close down his business and never to work with lasers again. Dr. Frank Spinelli worked out of the same office building as Fyella. are surprise and shock, he showed up the next day. Patients started showing up. He had every intent of continuing to work. My boss had to threaten him by calling the police,

but he thankfully went. Dean had hurriedly taken the laser out, of course. Finally, Dean is forced to shut down skinovations for good. But now he's not just a man without a practice. He's a man with no source of income. Gasolpillar I couldn't even afford to buy food. I have to borrow money from Greg Bach to to buy food.

This is a turning point for Dean, but it's also a turning point in his relationship with Greg. He's out like $7,000 on bail, on legal fees, and Greg puts it because Dean is in debt, and Greg believes there's something there that's salvageable. He's not a bad guy. He's just broken. I was paying the mortgage. I was paying for all the home repairs. I paid up on the back mortgage.

I paid up on the back utility bills. And so all told, it was coming up to about like $85,000. Greg was paying for everything. Greg was chasing Dean around the house with a promissory note, and Dean wouldn't sign it. You owed Greg tens of thousands of dollars at that point? Other people too? Yeah.

People who loved you, who helped you. Yeah. What does that say about Dean Fyello? That I didn't face up to my responsibilities, that I used people, that I didn't care how I hurt them. He has gone to New York, made it. He was the center of nightlife. He had become this practitioner in the beauty industry. He had lots of friends, a beautiful mansion, a handsome boyfriend, all of it.

crumbles right at his feet. For Dean Fialo, this was hell on earth. It was a hell of his own building, but he was in a bad, bad, bad place. I had gotten to a point where the demons were around me. Despite his drug addiction, his debt, his criminal charges, his practice closing down, Dean Fialo is not going to stop.

Now he's taking everything. underground and that means he has not seen the last of his clients including Maria Cruz on Palm Sunday she had disappeared and I was very concerned about this was going to end badly weeks and months after his arrest Dean goes into a deep depression the only career he's ever really had certainly the only place he's ever made serious money it is gone the cold reality is that Dean is out of money. Greg has been sustaining him as much as possible,

but it's getting ugly. There's only one thing for them to do, and that's to sell the beloved historical mansion. I had no choice. I had to sell the house. I had lived in the house for 18 years. I loved the house. He would be despondent and feel defeated and depressed.

He didn't have access. to that stadol. You know, I felt that he was using whatever he could get, like whatever street drugs, whether there'd be cocaine. He was unraveling. It's pretty clear that Dean thought the only way he could get out of this hole was to make money.

The only way he knew how to make money was to go back and do his procedures. Where did those treatments take place in this period? I had a friend's apartment on 16th Street. And how would the word even get out to patients at the time? this point. Phone contact, me reaching out and letting people know if they wanted to continue treatment I was available. It's just so beyond the pale. This was a back alley laser procedure. I mean it's just bad on top of bad on top of bad. It's April 13, 2003. It is Palm Sunday. And for

Maria Cruz, that means attending mass at her church. and her parish St. Malachi. Maria would have been one of the people in the congregation listening to the reading of the scriptures. I led a mass, you know. Maria would have approached the altar to receive communion. She didn't show up for work on Monday. Her coworkers were worried.

When she didn't show up the second day, the co-workers find an aunt, who was the Mercy Contact number in New Jersey, and the aunt called two of her sons. They went to her apartment and saw Wall Street Journal's laying outside of her door. And that wasn't like Maria. The Wall Street Journal was the next thing to the Bible to Maria. And all her co-workers are very concerned.

On Tuesday, April 15th, Maria's uncle walks into the 13th precinct in Manhattan and files a missing persons report. The detectives were concerned because her uncle who came in was so. so concerned that this was out of her normal course of behavior. A thorough search was conducted of our apartment and the building where she lived in, her apartment was meticulous. There was no sign of foul play. Police are able to uncover more details of Maria's activities on that Palm Sunday. They even find surveillance video of Maria stopping by her office building to pick up some paperwork.

We got information back that her credit card had been used in Lohman's department store on the day we suspected she had disappeared. She went to an ATM and withdrew money and we were concerned that maybe she had been followed and abducted while she was taking money at the ATM, but we reviewed the ATM video and there was no indication of that. His siblings flew over from the Philippines. They started putting up flyers in the neighborhood. One of Maria's uncles went up one street every day,

putting up 500 flyers. Every block got a flyer. Manhattan was papered with those flyers about their missing loved one. The parishioners came forward and then said, father, what can we do to help? So I said, let's disseminate the flyer all over the city. Everybody was upset as soon as we found out that she was missing. We look everywhere in the city, downtown, uptown, it's like forever searching for her. At this point, the investigation or

frustration is mounting. You're hoping for a break for some kind of call from the public or some kind of tip, something that can point us in a direction that we haven't already looked at. Meanwhile, Dean Fialo is over in New Jersey, still trying to sell his house, and he has, in fact, found a buyer. But there's a litany of repairs that have to be made, and his friends have all come in to help. When the real estate agent came and saw the house, she gave us four typed pages of stuff to be done. When you get ready to sell the house, they do an inspection and make a list of things that have to be repaired. and there were some repairs that had to be done to the sidewalk. Well, I ended up buying between 30, maybe 35 bags of cement.

One day right before the closing, Greg notices that Dean is out in the garage area of the mansion, that he's pouring a concrete slab, and Greg's thinking, well, what is that for? She didn't make a lot of sense to me, so I walked up to him and said, like, what are you doing? And he's sort of screaming. you know to get out of the garage leave him alone get out of here don't get back

five months have passed since Maria's disappearance and the case has gone cold but then detectives finally get the break they're looking for so we go to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to get a subpoena to access her email account we were able to determine that she had made an appointment for the day she was missing to see a doctor in the vicinity of where she had last use her credit card, and we know that doctor was identified as Dean Fiala. Obviously, police want to find Dean Fialo.

The problem is he, too, has vanished. Now they couldn't find Dean. He's got a date to appear in court in October. But Dean didn't show up for that court date. Didn't tell his attorney, didn't tell the prosecutor, didn't tell anybody. He just doesn't show up. We have a connection to Maria, who we know is Dean, but we can't find either of those people.

Missing man, missing woman. And when detectives finally draw the nexus between those two people, the revelation is mine. Lights and sirens, lights and sirens. When Dean disappeared, everybody began to ask questions of one. This once handsome toast of the town now has the law chasing after him for practicing without a license. And then there's that other matter of a missing client. We have a connection to Maria, who we know is Dean, but we can't find either of those people. How somebody who seemed like they had so much going for them could have everything go so completely and totally wrong.

Now a fugitive on the run. He was the housemate from hell. I'm going into the city and I'll see you later. I never saw Dean again. This guy who could be literally anywhere in the world. He's narcissistic. He likes to make a splash. Dean Fyello makes an impression.

He said he was a doctor. Dean's whole adventure is just crazy. All I could think of is I have to find Dean Fylo. It's just bad on top of bad, on top of bad. Well, these are the pictures of me and Dean. This is at the very, very end. No, we actually look kind of happy. You wouldn't be able to see the stress behind her eyes.

Now that I look back at these images, I mean, I just can't help but be angry. Dean Fialo had everything. Extraordinary good looks. He has money, stature. He's got love. He's got a beautiful mansion. And this man takes all of it. of it and chucks it over a cliff.

Everywhere Dean turned was bad. But in a nasty way, he owed him $85,000. Now everything's coming to a head. You know Dean's legal problems from forging scripts to being busted for practicing medicine without a license. It wasn't the destruction of the work that bothered me so much as my personal descent. into hell.

I was terrified of who I had become. So with no money and no business, Dean sets up an illegal practice out of a friend's 16th street apartment in downtown New York, where one of his patients had happened to be Maria Cruz, the young banker who'd gone missing. Dean still is depressed to lethargent sleeping all the time, and Dean moves in with a neighbor. It's really like a picture perfect suburb. Yes, it really is. And very quiet.

And here's your old house. This is where I lived. And that was going on. On the first day, it became a nightmare. He was the housemate from hell. I was a spoiled ride at times. I didn't want to do things that I was supposed to do, because I was getting away with what I was doing.

Dean eats all his food and starts to wearing his clothes and Mark's like, Dean, dude, quit wearing my clothes. I even put a note on it, Dean do not wear my jeans directly on top of them. He had to move it to get the pair of jeans he had on. And so I was furious. And then all the liquor was gone, all the wine was gone, in the noise. I had it. I had enough.

Then he had a month to leave. He said, I'm going into the city and I'll see you later. And I never saw Dean again. Meanwhile, Maria's family is mired in this horrible mystery. Where is their daughter? As the investigation into the disappearance of Maria Cruz continues, investigators' frustration is mounting. They ran out of clues, and they were hoping somebody would come in.

The angry boyfriend, the person who saw something, something's gonna have to break for us to break the case. break the case. It's now September of 2003. Summer has come and gone. Guess what else is come and gone? All of Dean Bialo's court dates. Dean did not make a court appearance to answer for the charges practicing without a medical

license. There's a warrant issued for Dean's arrest. So I got a call from the bail bonds company telling me that Dean did not show up for a sentencing. Now I'm responsible for the rest of that bail. And I was just so infuriated by the way I'd been treated. And I was determined that I was not going to let him get away with it. I was going to hunt him down and hold him accountable for what he did to me. And now suddenly he's gone and everybody realized, oh, we just thought we hadn't seen him because his life is falling apart. No, there seems to be something else at work. But for the moment, nobody could figure out what it was. It was frustrating for myself and investigators because at this point we have a connection to Maria

who we know is Dean but we can't find either of those people. Where Dean went, you go of course. That's so Dean. The phone rings. They said, is this Dean Fiello? I said yes. And they said, well this is blah blah airlines and we're trying to fill up when you might be coming back. From Costa Rica.

So now I know where he's at. Was the plan to hide out? I can't say I was a plan. It was an escape. So you first went to San Jose, right? Yeah, I landed there. He went to the underbelly. Let's get freaky.

It was all nice and dancing and strippers. He was doing the same thing he did when he was younger in New York City. I went to a few bars down there with, I really felt uncomfortable. What am I doing here? I just didn't know what to do. So I looked for resort hotels. Wound up in Guana Costa, absolutely beautiful on a mountain top, where I watched the sunrise and the sunset every day.

Then I went to the hotel and met somebody who was a manager there. He and his wife living in Esparison. I got to the point where they said to me, like, this is ridiculous. She's spending all this money here at this hotel. So I decided to go live with him. Did they know your backstory? No. In just a few short months, Dean Fyello has managed to create a brand new life for himself in beautiful Costa Rica.

Meanwhile, up in New Jersey, brand new clues emerge that may just lead to revelations in the disappearance of Maria Cruz. I find a gym bag. I thought, well, this is really odd. So I opened it. 2020 is partnering with Vib's Open Ear Wireless Headphones. That's VyBZ. If you listen to a lot of true crime, you probably like to listen with a good pair of headphones.

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See chime.com for details and applicable terms. literally and figuratively, basking in the sun and warmth of Costa Rica with not a care in the world. I didn't have a plan. My intention was to enjoy Costa Rica. Right expression, La Pura Vida, you know, the wonderful, pure life where you enjoy the beauty of Costa Rica. So did you lose yourself in that idea? Yeah, it was easy to use it. It was too easy. He fits right in in Costa Rica. He's moved in with a local family from Esparza. But he cannot hide from the collateral damage of his past.

Finally kicks Dean out. He leaves a bunch of stuff in Mark's garage. And I find a gym bag, a great big gym bag. And when I pulled it open, I found it. I found a woman's purse. I thought, well, this is really odd. Why does Dean have a woman's purse? I opened the purse, and I found Maria's wallet.

It's her driver's license, and all of her credit cards. Maria is Maria Cruz. Now, at this point, Mark Ritchie has no clue who she is or why her identification ends up in his garage. When he sees a phone book, he calls three numbers, really doesn't get anywhere, and then decides, well, I did what I could. Well, I thought maybe Dean was using somebody's credit cards to buy drugs. And then I thought, well, maybe he's into credit card fraud. Before I put everything back in the bag, I said out loud in the garage.

I don't want to know. I really don't want to know. Now it's the Christmas season. Great Bach is angry. Dean owes him $85,000. He decides he's going to call Brian Ford, the investigator from the Attorney General's Office and find out how can I get my money back.

So he calls me up and he says, hey, Detective Ford, I have some information you might be interested. And we had a really long productive conversation. And at some point, Greg says, It just doesn't make sense. This, you know, this probation he's on, it's not that bad. Why would he jump bail and just disappear? Brian Ford, the investigator, says, well, maybe it's because we just went and asked him about a missing person.

And Greg asked him, when did you go missing? And he said, oh, it was back in April 2003. And Greg was like, April, April, April. That was the first eureka moment. Greg decides to share a rather interesting story. It had to do with a phone call, with a mutual friend of he and Dean's. Dean had called him under really dubious circumstances that he had been treating a woman who went into anthropolactic shock and he didn't know what to do. But I had understood that he had gotten her medical help and that she was fine.

A series of light bulbs began to appear over people's hands. Maybe she didn't go to the hospital, like maybe he is responsible for her being missing. And then so in my mind's eye, I walked myself through every room of that house, just trying to think. I had made mention to Dean that like if you wanted to lose something forever, like put it in the garage and you'll never find it. The second Eureka moment came when Greg was like, Dean was building something like a concrete block or a concrete. out in the garage before they moved the house. And then it clicked about that concrete project. And it was like, is that where she could be?

We can only see the front of it here, but it goes back further? Yeah. That's where he was pouring a slab. Pouring a slab of concrete. He was strangely guarded about his garage project, though, right? Yeah. I was just curious as to what he was doing and what was taking. so long. But one thing that I hadn't realized is that there was a suitcase in the garage,

like a black carry-on, but then I do remember having seen it today of the cement project and not seen it. And he started thinking and thinking, and he put two and two together. My concerns was that my hypothesis might be right. Greg decides he has to sit down and write a letter to detective saying he just might know something about a missing person. I had composed a letter to Brian Ford that I might have pertinent information as to the whereabouts of this missing person.

It was a very tenuous moment. I knew that once I did this, like there was no turning back. I was really concerned about what I'd be putting into motion. Mr. Bach was very forthcoming with information. At this point, the breaking the investigation we were hoping for. This, we hoped, was going to lead us to solve the mystery as to what happened to Maria.

Twenty minutes outside of Manhattan, on a beautiful tree-lined street in Newark, New Jersey, police have their eyes on a certain mansion when belonging to Dean Fyello. When Greg told us about the cement block and all that, we wanted to go on out there. And we desperately would like to see what's in that garage and get a hold of Dean. They show up at the house and show the poor new owners, hey, here's a search warrant, and by the way, we're going to dig up a concrete slab in your garage.

It was a big house, a couple of stories, big fences around it, guest house in the back. It looked like an estate. Before they started the jackhammer, I said, look, I have to film this. So I turned the film on, and I said, go ahead. At that point, emergency service got jack hammers and shovels. Jack hammered through the cement floor and the cement foundation that he was building. Once they broke the concrete, the smell of decomposition was very strong.

You could see that they knew they hit something and as they pulled apart the rubble and shoveled out the debris, one of the police officers reaches in. in pulls out a suitcase covered in dust, open the suitcase, and we found what were human remains. We begin with a woman's body found in a basement. Police made the discovery in Newark, and they say the remains may be linked to a bank worker who disappeared from Manhattan nearly a year ago. At some point, you had to figure out what to do with her body. Yeah.

Without thinking, I put Maria in the suitcase. and put her in my car and took her to my house. Weeks passed. Weeks past. She just sat in my garage. I was getting ready to close on the sale of the house. And in the garage, there was a slab that had to be repaired. And the idea came to me to make Marie a part of that slab.

So I just can't believe I did it, because that's what I did. It was like really, really shocking. I was trying to convince myself that I'd been wrong and for it to come to such a dark and sinister conclusion was just like devastating. The decomposing body discovered in a home in Newark is indeed that of Maria Cruz, a New York woman who had been missing for nearly a year.

When I found out, a lot of things hit me all at once. The extra cement I bought a Home Depot. The woman's purse. And when I looked at the handle of that luggage, I said, you son of a bitch. It was the exact piece of luggage that I moved. I unknowingly moved that body. Maria's family flew in. They had a memorial service.

Where's the justice of God? How come this terrible thing happens to a good person? It was a test of faith for the family of Maria. The funeral was very sad. One of the saddest funeral that I've ever attended. It was painful, and it brought with that pain a sense of relief. Now they knew they could bring her remains back to the Philippines. The discovery of the body obviously changes everything.

Dean's situation goes from being a year ago he was Dr. Quack to now suddenly he's the prime suspect. in a murder case. My phone rings, and it's the city desk editor, and he's like, Jeannie Mac, Jeannie Mac, lights and sirens, your guy, Dean Fyello killed Maria Cruz. I stopped for a beat, and I thought, how would Dean Fyello know Maria Cruz, and how would this all come together?

At this point, all we know is that Dean has despair. We don't know if he's in Yonkers. We don't know if he's in Miami. This guy who could be literally anywhere in the world. This story has exploded, and all I could think of is I have to find Dean Filo. Ginny McIntosh has some good law enforcement contacts, and she learns through one of them who did a passport search that Dean has fled to Costa Rica. At the New York Post, it was, why are you standing here and why aren't you on a plane?

I wonder what Dean Fyello was thinking when he first touched down here in San Jose 20 years ago. He couldn't have picked a more beautiful country to escape to. We flew down to San Jose to meet up with Jeannie McIntosh, retracing her hunt for Dean Fyello to see what we could learn about his time on the run. Does it look like it did 18 years ago when you first stepped foot in? It looks more crowded than I remember, you know. It's a lot busier. I think more people.

I have no planned. It's just this big adrenaline rush. It's the thrill of the chase. It's big. It's a country I've never been to. And so the only thing I could think to do immediately was go to the U.S. Embassy. I just walked over to this guard station

and I said, Hi, we'd like to see someone about a fugitive from the United States. This man, Dean Fialo, he's wanted in New York. He's wanted in New York for murder. They knew nothing. They said, look, we don't have any correspondence, any phone calls, anything from New York to go look for this guy. So we can't look for him until we have a warrant.

Back in New York, the wheels of justice are grinding slowly. Police are still trying to determine cause of death. Jeannie McIntosh is staying ahead of the police because she's in Costa Rica, boots on the ground, doing her own investigation. We just went from place to place showing this picture. We showed it in the public square. We showed it at restaurants. We showed it at bars.

We got lucky and we found this internet cafe. He was recognized immediately. They even said, oh, he's in here a couple times a week. I felt like we were really hot on his trail. We went out at night because I knew he liked clubs and gay bars. And we started going to those. We walk in the door with the picture, the woman says, hey, yes, see, see, see.

She's seen him, and he's been there. It's very distinctive. And it's in. I think that Dean would be incapable of going into somewhere and just saying, I'm just going to sit here quietly in the corner. He's narcissistic. He likes to make a splash.

Dean Fiello makes an impression. Dean Fyello makes an impression, yeah. Dean's whole adventure and what he's doing is just crazy in juxtaposition to there's a dead woman under the concrete in his house. I would come back to the hotel in the evenings and I was trying to make a grid to just kind of centralize where he might be. People had seen Dean, but no one had seen Dean today or yesterday.

It was maybe last week. I thought, I wonder if he's left. And that's about the time that I started to hear that had taken off west to this town called Samara. Could you feel the net start to tighten? At that point, it was...

I was fleeing. And what better place for a showdown with police than the pooled bar? Was there a sense that you would... just gonna go out with a bag. The Hulu Original series Love Overboard is now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. 16 singles are headed to this super luxury yacht to fall in love.

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April 8th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Dean has been living pretty comfortably in Costa Rica for several months, but now there's this news of the discovery of Maria's body, and it's hitting the Costa Rican headlines. And Dean is really feeling the heat. One day I went to check my email, and for some reason I clicked on the news.

I remember seeing Maria's photo. The same one that was on those missing posters? Yeah. The same panic and fear that I felt when I realized that Maria had passed away, that returned. I just reacted and grabbed stuff and fled. Bilo Trail continues to a beach resort that's less than 100 miles away, but several hours drive because the rows are so winding. We're going to try and go to that beach resort to see if anybody can tell us more about why Dean would have chosen such a public place to hold up.

You covered the reception this. Take me back to the first time you met him. I see the one guy is coming. He said, you have room available. I don't care how money I want the best. He didn't care how much it costs. I didn't know the guy is rich or the guy is crazy. I say, what do you do in the United States?

He says the doctor. He said he was a doctor. The doctor. My name is Philippe. My family has owned this part. for the last 30 years. We're at Villa number one. This is where Dean was staying when he stayed with us.

He wanted to have the most secluded villa in the complex. He was just in his element, having a great time, spending tons of money. He was known to be a big tipper. Every time he'd give me $100, the propina, the tip. The tip. 100 U.S. dollars? Yes, 100 dollars.

He spends a lot of time sleeping, spends a lot of time drinking, and I'm going way out of limb here, chasing a couple of pool boys. I mean, this was not a guy who was overwhelmed with grief or worried. This was Dean Viallo at the beach. What did you serve him? Melon, coconut cream, and vodka. You drink, drinking, drink. Many drinks?

Many drinks. I believe that he knew his arrest was imminent because he decided to come and enjoy the most of life at the time. It is a measure of Dean's areas that while as a fugitive, he didn't even travel under another name. He was Dean Vialo at this beach resort. You were spending a lot of money. You bought the best room in the whole hotel.

Was there a sense that you were just going to go out with a bang? Yeah, I was on a suicide mission. I was just doing things to just enjoy the last moments. And it was hedonism. Pure hedonism. We found out about Dean through the local newspaper. Our on-site manager called us in the morning and said, look at a picture.

The guy is staying here in one of our units. He had committed murder. I believe my father called one of his friends with a lawyer Vincenzi. They decided to come down to the... come down and talk to Dean first. I told him, you are going to be arrested in the next few hours or a day or two. One way or another? Yeah, exactly.

Did he seem nervous at all? No, no. He was very calm. He just got outside the pool or the disc cocktail and he was drinking it. And what happens next? Almost like an hour or two hours later, the immigration police came up. What's the first visible sign to you that the jig is up? Seeing police in flag jackets walking around the hotel.

After four months of living on the run, a day of reckoning has arrived. Dean Paolo is arrested by Costa Rican immigration police for overstaying his visa. In Costa Rica, they don't do what we do in New York. They don't do a person. a perp walk. I said, look, since we couldn't see him arrested, could we have a perp walk? When they brought him back to San Jose, sure not.

There was their perp walk with all the Costa Rican guys walking him into the jail. Mr. Cahela, do you have anything to say about the case you're serving? I was overwhelmed by this. the amount of attention. There was lights, cameras, and flashes going off. That was a surprise. I really was like, I'm unsure of what was going to happen next. We'd walk into the jail, and it was like really a creepy spot.

The floor was just dirt. I said, wow, what kind of a jail is this, you know? I said, you know why you're in here, right? He goes, yeah. He says, we can't talk to you, but you know what we're bringing it back for? He goes, yeah, I do. Are you related with the Maria Cruz step? New York City detectives want Dean Fialo back in their custody fast.

But it's not going to be so simple. Because Dean Fialo has another trick of his slave. We are in a small town about two hours from the capital city San Jose called Asparza. It was here that Fialo lived for about three months with that couple he met earlier in his travels. They were living in this house that was really run down. And so I found a nice place and convinced them to move and pay the run. After Dean's arrest, he spent months fighting extradition. But it was his time spent with that couple that gave his new immigration attorney an idea.

The attorney I was working with went to them and asked them, you know, would you consider adopting me? And they said, sure. Did that not strike you as absurd? Yeah, I thought this is not going to work. They were younger than I am, but, you know, at this point we were desperate. On its face, it seems to be a brilliant idea because there's a loophole in the extradition policies that if you're a citizen of Costa Rica, you cannot be extradited. So why not let Dean get adopted? There's nothing in the law that says it cannot be done.

But I said, okay, let's give it a try. Hail Mary. Yeah, Halmerie passed. So Dean's attorney fought for months to try and get the adoption approved. But ultimately, because the couple was younger than middle-aged dean, a judge ruled against it. And then after it was turned down, I think two, three days later, they woke me up at 5 o'clock in the morning and said, get dressed, you're going. Our detectives work closely with Costa Rica to get through the extradition process and eventually fly back to New York. I didn't know what was ahead, but there was also a sense of relief that, okay, finally, the truth is out.

When I realized that they were going to charge me with a form of murder, the gravity of the situation took hold. In October of 2006, nearly three years after Maria died, Dean Fialo stands before a Manhattan Supreme Court judge and admits that Maria had come to see him on that fateful day for a procedure. Dean Fialo sat down with me to reveal for the first time what he says are the full details of what really happened to Maria that tragic late afternoon on 16th Street when he says she came to him seeking laser treatment for scarring on her thighs. I know I was drunk and high during her final treatment. She was in a lot of discomfort and it was a long treatment and I used too many vials of lydicane. And you're doing this drunken high. Yeah. There's no logic to it. There's no justification. I knew it was wrong. And deep down inside, I was afraid that something was going to go wrong.

What was the first sign of trouble, Dean? Labored breathing. She was conscious? Yep. But I didn't recognize that she was on the verge of going into shock. Dean told me her labored breathing continued for about 10 minutes before things took a terrible turn. She stopped breathing. I was working on the area and I looked up, there were bubbles emerging from her mouth. Did you call for help?

I delayed calling for help. I tried CPR, could not get her to start breathing again. Had you been trained in what to do if a patient goes into shop? The proper training, no. Dean takes the time to call another doctor, someone he knows, to say this is what's happened, what should I do? An actual doctor who says, how about calling 911, how about taking you to the hospital?

But he didn't either. People can understand panic, ravages of addiction. Very hard to understand how you could not react by calling 911 or trying whatever you could to get this young lady saved. Yeah, I can't understand that either. I can't. I can't give you a logical.

explanation because there is an explanation. What was Maria's posture at that point? She was completely limited at that point. I put my head on her chest and I checked to see whether she was breathing and she had no vital signs. Did you check for a pulse? No, I did not.

Do you even know how to do that? No. Dean then described what he says he decided to do with Maria's body after he believed she was dead. The cover-up began immediately. This is the scary part as to how it was an automated reaction. Without thinking, I put Maria in the suitcase and put her in my car and took her to my house. But obviously, this requires deliberation.

I don't think there was thinking involved. It was just reaction. One upstairs, so I rode and I just laid on the sofa. The Maria's body stayed in my car. I was saved for two days. I didn't know what to do. Soon there would be missing persons posters and an all-out effort by her family, her colleagues, to find her.

I didn't see any posters. I did get some voice messages. Her sister called and left a message on my voicemail. You never returned those calls? No. What was it like to hear the voice of Maria's desperate sister? desperate sister on the phone. Horrible.

Absolutely horrible. From 30 for 30 podcasts. Pat a senior defensive lineman from Miami. Gun down. The key to this case, it's right. Boy, he's grabbed that. An hour before he died, he was on the phone. Argonne was about this might be a hit.

You want the truth. They just want a conviction. We had a killer amongst us. Murder at the U. Listen now. I have great news. Malcolm in the middle. back. My life is fantastic now. In a four-part event. All I had to do

is stay completely away from my family. Your biggest problem is that we exist? Everyone's invited to the can't-miss reunion of the year. This family's behavior is toxic to me. You'll just take turns fighting and creating disasters. That's what families do.

Malcolm in the middle. Life still unfair. Premiers Friday, April 10th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Ready TV 14-0. On December 4th, 2006, Dean was originally charged with murder and he was able to bargain and plead that down to one count of first-degree assault and practicing medicine without a license. The judge calling Dean's actions senseless and depraved. He was sentenced to 20 years behind bars.

You walk in through the gates of Attica to begin a long prison sentence. What's going through your mind now? Fear, uncertainty. I had no strategy there other than to work on my education, to do something with my time there. So I read, I read voraciously. At this point, are you out of the grips of addiction and thinking differently, thinking clearly?

Well, the sobriety and the lucidity allowed me to figure out, okay, what am I going to do? What he did do was take all that time and use it to his advantage. He became a Quaker, learned a lot about criminal justice reform. He began writing very intensive pieces regarding criminal justice. You really threw yourself into the writing. It gave me purpose. There was a hope that I could make sense of what I had been through.

After all these years in prison, has Dean Fialo really changed. I started to think about it, and I realized that I haven't truly expressed my sorrow and my regrets, you know, for what I've done, not only to Maria, but to her family also. Dean Viallo now finally has something to say to Maria Cruz's family. After serving 18 years behind bars, Dean was finally paroled just this January. His life is a bit more humble now. He's working as a maintenance man at a grocery store. Dean, what's life like for you now that you're out of prison and settling back into the free world? You know what I love is the simplicity, doing very simple things like going to the gym, coming back to my apartment, putting on YouTube, and cooking.

I think part of my mission now is to talk about, okay, what happened, what led to it, and what I'm doing now to recover. and re-enter a society as a law-buying citizen. What about people like Greg Bach and other friends? Do you have plans to account to them? I am not refusing to account to anybody. It's unfortunately because of the magnitude of what I've done, it's a big task. Long list? Yeah, long list.

But I have a lot of work ahead and I'm not going to shy away from doing that work. I've heard Dean is expressing remorse, but my immediate response is to just like, don't believe anything he has to say. He's been released, and there's this understanding that he has paid his debts to society,

but he hasn't paid his debt to me. Is he back to his old tricks, saying one thing and doing something else? Because I wouldn't believe the man if he was sitting at this table. Maria Cruz's family, can only be the ones to know if they would forgive him or not. What was unforgivable was his whole behavior and fool-duping the public.

Do you wonder, am I still the man that did that thing? I don't think that I am the same person. I don't believe it. But I have fooled myself many times, and I have fooled other people. That worries me. worries me. I believe people can be rehabilitated. Dean deserves a chance now.

He's out of jail and he has a life to live. What he does with that life is up to him. Dean and I had several conversations about his journey, where he's been, what he did, and what he hopes to achieve. One of the things that he said he wanted to share a statement of apology to Maria's family. This cannot express the depth of my sorrow and remorse for causing the death of Maria Cruz. Not a day passes as I do not think of Maria or think of her family and why I acted like such a coward.

I used more than the usual or recommended amount of lydicane for the pain. She had a reaction, went into shock, and stopped breathing. I did not get her the medical help that she needed and she deserved. I panicked and I covered up her death. I hope that I am no longer the person who took such a risk with Maria's life. I get inspiration from Maria. She was forgiving and supportive. And I like to think that she's helped me to transform and atone

for what I did, for what I did to her family, and helping me to become a better person one day to see. person one day at a time. When we shared Dean's statement with Maria's family, her sister responded. We have wanted to know what really happened on that fateful day for such a long time.

This has shed light. I ended up crying so hard while reading this. The pain doesn't really go away. And that's our program for tonight. Thanks so much for watching. I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Good night.

And you can find all broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday nights at 9 on ABC. Sunday nights on ABC. What happens when the person you love the most turns out not to be who you think they are? Everything he told me was a lie. I was betrayed from the number one true crime podcast, betrayal. He's been living a secret double life. My marriage ended with a 911 call.

The tape is blood curdling. Betrayal, secrets and lies. So many people are living with their own betrayal. Sunday nights at 10-9 Central on ABC and stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.