Dateline NBC - Circle of Friends

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

In this Dateline classic, a circle of friends from a Miami high school are about to embark on a new beginning at college. But one friend surprises them all. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on August 22, 2014.

I'm here in pain and so hurt and so sad. I would give anything for Christian to be here. They were new to college and newly in love, the whole world ahead of them. He grabs my chin and he pulls me up and he just gives me this magical kiss. But their secret romance would lead to something shattering when Christian vanished. Oh God, my young life went out the window. It was tense. We were nervous. We were scared. I'm starting to believe that there might be more to this than just a missing person. Where was he? Did someone have something to hide? There was blood found in the car. A lover's triangle, a circle of friends. Was one of them a killer?

This was planned. This was on purpose. How could you do something so horrific? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Dennis Murphy with Circle of Friends. Remember going away to college? Maybe your first time away from home? There were new friends waiting to be made. The tingling of possibilities. Oh God, the first kiss was amazing. Sometimes disappointments when things didn't work out. I thought he was just depressed. We just didn't take it that seriously.

And, you know, maybe we should have. For three Florida teenagers, the decisions they made as they started campus life had terrifying, lethal consequences. I mean, it all seems so surreal when we're actually told about it. We're like, this can't possibly be happening. The story of our three begins at a high school near Miami. Not quite Hogwarts, but Erica, Pedro, and Christian were as inseparable as Harry, Ron, and Hermione. A trio of friends laughing and wrestling through adolescence together at Doral Academy, a charter school for high-achieving smart kids. I moved there in 2006 for sixth grade. For Erica Freeman, Doral Academy was a special place. I met people from all over the world, actually, which was really interesting.

And they had a lot of opportunities academically that I don't think you get in an average high school. Erica was smart, upbeat, pretty. She loved everything from skydiving to Shakespeare. And in her sophomore year, she caught the eye of a cute guy in class, Pedro Bravo. He was a big clown. He was kind of a funny guy around people. He was always making jokes. Disruptive, act out in class kind of guy? Not really act out in class, but he'd act

out as soon as class was over. And it was just to, you know, get a crowd laughing or this or that. Pedro was a fellow rock solid student with an artistic flair. His journals were full of sketches and doodles that friends thought showed real talent. I mean, he could draw anything, anything you wanted. Robert Lopez was a friend and classmate. So anything from like graphic comics up to... Yeah. Picture art, huh? Right, yeah. He was very, very, very gifted in that sense. Erica and Pedro quickly became an item. Teenage lovers, but with adult dreams.

We were in a pretty serious relationship. We were a little bit more mature than the average. We didn't go out and drink. We were just very focused on school and each other. Another sharply focused classmate in their circle was Pedro's good buddy, Christian Aguilar. I met him through Pedro. He was awesome. He was funny and he was nice and we instantly, we were instantly good friends. Christian was the soccer player who hit the books. The son of Colombian immigrants became the all-American boy. Video games, Kanye West rap in his ears, and plans to become a doctor. It sounds as though, to understand Christian, you have to realize how academically motivated he was.

Oh, yeah. He was very driven. And it wasn't like his family was pushing him. It wasn't, it was just that he, he was very driven. And it wasn't like his family was pushing him. It wasn't, it was just that he wanted to make them proud. These three high-achieving musketeers, Christian, Erica, and Pedro, all doubled at prom together and posed for this snapshot in the waning days of high school. I mean, did you guys do a limo and the whole thing? We did do a limo and we all showed up. We took plenty of pictures. You know, it was fun. For a lot of American kids, it was for these three. Graduation from high school is one of those big paths crossing in the woods. A lot of what are you going to do next? Let's stay friends forever

kind of goodbyes. Mr. Christian Aguilar. Christian, scholar that he was, intent on pursuing pre-med, got admitted to the selective University of Florida in Gainesville. Was Christian happy when his acceptance came through? Oh, he was so happy. He was ecstatic. And though all three friends wanted to be Gators, had the U of F as a top choice school, only Christian got in. Erica was headed to a different college in Gainesville, Santa Fe, while Pedro planned to take classes near his home in Miami. And as graduation neared more life decisions, Erica broke it off with Pedro. She didn't want a long-distance relationship, and after all, they were just 18 years old, and the big wide world was ahead of them both.

I wanted him to find someone and fall in love with them and, you know, live a normal life. I just didn't think he was the one for me. They were barely unpacked, classes just starting, when a sudden change of plans. Pedro didn't want to be left behind in Miami after all. As the fall semester started, he showed up in Gainesville, as his friend Robert remembered. He just visited Gainesville, as his friend Robert remembered. He just visited Gainesville, and that was the intention, was just a visit. And then he ended up signing a lease and enrolling for classes in the fall at Santa Fe College. Maybe there was life after Hogwarts for Pedro, Erica, and Christian.

Could the friendship be renewed and survive a five-hour move up the interstate from Miami? If that was indeed the hope, it was dashed with some awful news on September 21, 2012. It was tense. We were nervous. We were scared, you know, what could have happened. Christian never showed up at his dorm that night and wasn't answering his phone. It's not like Christian to just not answer. It's not like him not to just disappear. There was something wrong. Christian Aguilar had vanished.

What could be behind Christian's sudden disappearance? When we come back, retracing his last steps, a rough neighborhood and a curious stranger. He tells me at one point they stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. tracing his last steps, a rough neighborhood, and a curious stranger. He tells me at one point they stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. And then eventually the hitchhiker was like, I want to get out of the car. And then shortly after, Christian said, you know, I wantainesville, Florida, longtime friends. But now one of them, Christian, was a no-show for meeting with his circle of friends. Didn't pick up the phone, not so much as a text.

And it got later and later, and I start calling our friends, and I'm like, hey, I just want to make sure, like, have you seen Christian? When you're not getting texts back, when do you start to go from worried to really getting freaked out? Well, honestly, all that night, I couldn't really sleep. I had passed by his dorm room to see if possibly, you know, his phone died and he couldn't answer. His phone got wet. I was thinking of all these different scenarios and he wasn't in his dorm. Where was he all night? Where was he staying? Where was he sleeping? Where is he? The next morning, still nothing from Christian. He hadn't come back to his dorm room. So Erica and Pedro, her ex-boyfriend, together went to the Gainesville police. So we go to the window and we start explaining our situation. And the lady pretty much like laughed at me. So they're blowing you off.

Yeah. And I was just there, like, you know, this lady better hope there's nothing wrong here. I was so upset at that point because I just wanted someone to pay attention, and, you know, this is a serious thing. But after all, Christian wouldn't be the first college freshman to go off the grid for a bit, maybe taking a break from his studies, crashing at another dorm. But his friends were worried, and the cops told them to go see if the campus police could help. The big thing that I want to find out is, has anybody been in contact with him?

When was the last time they contacted him? Where was the last time anybody was in contact with him? Officer Tim Peck talked to the concerned pair, found out that Pedro was the last friend to see Christian the previous day. And he kind of walks me through the day, you know, once he meets Christian. They go to the infirmary because Christian needs to get a flu shot. Then they go back to Pedro's car, which is parked on campus. And then at that point, they go to Best Buy. A pretty routine afternoon until Pedro told him they decided to do something a little impulsive.

He tells me at one point they stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. Pedro told Officer Peck and Erica they drove around town for a bit. Eventually the hitchhiker was like, I want to get out of the car. And then shortly after, Christian said, you know, I want to get out of the car too. You know, just pull over. I want to get out. And that was where the friends parted, near this auto body shop a few miles off campus. That neighborhood around the body shop raised alarms for Officer Peck. It had some rough spots. Some of the area is known to be a high drug area, have some gang activity as well. So that kind of concerned me. Were they up there specifically for that reason? Or in the process of Christian getting dropped off, did he run into something or wander into a bad area?

I knew there was a large homeless community in Gainesville, and there still is. So I was a little concerned about that. If he was in the woods somewhere and he stumbled into a campground of homeless people, and they decided to do something to him. You know, that was one of the options I had thought of. A gang area, homeless camps, and a mysterious hitchhiker. There seemed reason enough to be worried. Erica called Christian's parents, Carlos and Claudia Aguilar, down in Miami and told them that Christian was missing.

What did you think? I know that something was wrong. So was that worrying for you that his behavior was not at all Christian? Not at all. That was not Christian. Along with Christian's younger brother, Alex, they jumped in the car to make that long drive up to Gainesville. I can say that car ride was the most silent car ride I've ever had. We really didn't talk. We didn't know what to say to one another. What did that word missing mean to you? Missing at first, I guess maybe me trying to be positive, was just him, maybe he went out to a party, maybe he got injured, maybe he got into a car accident. We couldn't really tell because we don't know who he hangs out with.

And once they arrived, police had questions for Alex and his parents too. They bring us into this small little room and we have an officer who gave us a few questions, asking what type of person is Christian. Is he normally like this? Would he usually go out? Does he drink? Does he do any drugs? What were you seeing in Christian's parents in this period? Confused, pain. There was just pain in their eyes. But Erica says they were all about to channel that pain into determination

with more friends heading up from Miami. But Erica says they were all about to channel that pain into determination, with more friends heading up for Miami. I had a whole group of individuals who were now just as concerned as I was, just as focused as I was, just as driven to find Christian. I didn't feel so alone once they got there. I felt, we're going to find him. We can do this. Christian's family and friends were hopeful he'd turn up, and soon. And for Officer Peck, the case of the missing student got more baffling when he caught wind of a secret.

Christian had been trying to hide something. Was his secret the key to finding him? There's something else going on here that I'm not aware of. What exactly that is, I'm not sure. Coming up. The secret. Turns out someone else knew it too, and it was about to be revealed right there at the police station. I was just concerned that I was going When Dateline Continues. Erica Freeman and Pedro Bravo were at that UF campus police station trying to help the cops track down their friend Christian. Surveillance cameras were rolling as they made their report to Officer Tim Peck.

Then his team quickly went to work, tracing the missing student with the usual technological tools. They pinged his cell phone. It was off. Checked the university computers. Christian had not logged on. We check with the hospitals, the local hospitals, to see if he was in there. Then we'll also check with our notes from the previous night, run his name to see if he's had any contact with us, check with the city and the county, their main dispatch center to see if they had any contact with them. No sign of Christian anywhere. You're still calling, still texting. I'm still calling. I'm still texting. I'm sending him messages like, you know, we're going to find you. You know, I love you so much. You know, I can't wait to see you again. You know, everything's going to be OK. Trying to,

like, calm myself down. And it was in those hours inside the campus police station that Erica disclosed a secret that Christian had been keeping. It was her secret, too. Since high school graduation and her breakup with Pedro, she and Christian had become more than friends. It was very exciting. We thought it was great. We thought this is us learning how to get used to Gainesville. And it was like I had my best friend with me. It was somebody who I could always turn to, somebody I did always turn to, and somebody now that was always going to be there for me. Who made the move for the first embrace? Oh, he did. He drove to my house and I see him and I instantly, we hug and I'm there and I'm just nervous. I'm just, I haven't been this nervous. I had all these butterflies in my stomach and he grabs my chin and he pulls me up and he just gives me this magical kiss. And you became a couple that moment. Oh, yeah.

It was like we, our first date was going to a restaurant Chick-fil-A. And we just both had all those butterflies in our stomachs. And we just felt like, like, is this really happening? Is this still really happening? Like, I just kept, you know, pinching myself like, God, this is crazy. I can't believe this. And in a matter of weeks, their young lives, she and Christian, had changed completely. They were madly, deeply in love.

What do you think the two of you had? Something very rare. Something you don't find every day. Something amazing. I don't even know how to explain what we had it's like not a care in the world because you're just so happy to be with that person young girls are in love sometimes with being in love but this doesn't sound like that oh no no this was something where you clicked on every level but out of friendship and, they'd kept the new romance a secret from Pedro, Erica's ex. Yet his friends knew that something was eating away at Pedro ever since graduating from high school.

He'd been in a kind of funk. Did he change at all? Yes, as a matter of fact. As time went on, he kind of was a little more withdrawn. He was just starting to keep to himself a little more. I thought he was just depressed, you know. We all go through it. We all feel like, oh my gosh. Buddy Robert Lopez had noticed some odd, alarming behavior.

We all went out to this restaurant, The Swamp. It's well known in Gainesville. It's right next to the football stadium. And our tab ran up to like $70. And he picked up the whole tab. And we asked him like, Pedro, why would you pay for a whole tab? You're paying for all your classes out of pocket. And he's like, yeah, I'm not worried about it. I won't need this money soon. Whoa. Yeah. That give you an insight into his head at that point?

Yeah, that was when we realized, you know, he's not doing okay. Was Pedro suicidal? All the more reason for Erica and Christian to keep their happy romance quiet. I was just concerned that I was going to push him off the edge. I didn't want him to go home that night knowing that I was dating one of my mutual friends and him think, you know, I'm just going to end my life right now. But now with Christian's disappearance, the cat was out of the bag. At the university police station that day, Erica blurted it out with Pedro right there in the room.

Do you know Christian? Yeah. How do you know him? He's a girl. You're his girl? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. And she goes on to tell me that her and Christian had started dating, but they didn't think Pedro knew about them dating.

How would Pedro react to hearing that? The officer sensed that something seemed to be brewing in the circle of friends. But what that was wasn't clear. For now, everyone was focused on finding Christian. They were all feeling like, we're all in this together. We're all worried about Christian. He's our friend. We're trying to find out, do whatever we can to help locate him. Officer Peck could see that Erica was becoming increasingly agitated. So as the campus cop was checking out the stories these two friends had told him,

he decided it was time to bring in investigators from the Gainesville PD. And the first thing they'd want to do is to talk to Pedro Bravo. I have to tell you one thing. Okay. Coming up, a dramatic new clue. We find Kristen's backpack. Where would this discovery lead? But I overheard police officers discussing like a love triangle.

I'm starting to believe that there might be more to this than just a missing person. College kids in a college town. That first whiff of freedom can lead to some less than responsible, even reckless behavior. But in the case of missing freshman Christian Aguilar, campus police had begun to suspect something sinister may have happened. So they called in a veteran detective from the Gainesville PD. When I first walked in, there was two girls sitting in the lobby, which was Erica Freeman and her sister.

There was a male, which later I found out was Pedro Bravo, who was in an interview room. Are you Pedro? Yes, I'm Pedro. Since Pedro was the last person known to have seen Christian, he topped the list of people Detective Randy Roberts wanted to speak to. I wanted to hear Mr. Bravo's story from beginning to end exactly as he had told UPD so I could get a feel for what was going on. I hope he's not missing for a while. Me too. In the last 48 hours, when have you seen Christian? Yesterday. Pedro repeated his account of that last day he'd seen his friend. How they'd run some errands, grabbed

a bite to eat, swung over to Best Buy so Christian could pick up the latest Kanye West CD. That's them around 3 p.m. smiling as they walked through the store. Like his shoes were muddy and his shirt was tattered. And again, he told the story of how they picked up a hitchhiker in a rough part of town. How old do you think he was? He's around, I'd say mid-50s, but I can't tell because he had a big white bushy beard with him. But I'd say mid-50s, around that. How else was he dressed? Any hat? He had a cowboy hat. Detective Roberts then pressed Pedro about how and why he and Christian parted ways that night.

Pedro revealed that after dropping off the hitchhiker, he and Christian got into an argument about a girl, but it had nothing to do with Erica. Remember, Christian and Erica had been trying to keep their new relationship a secret. This was about another girl from high school altogether. I made a comment about like this girl that he's had a crush on for like three years, and he's poured his heart out there, and it didn't work out. And he just got mad. It was silent for a few minutes, and then he told me to stop, stop the car. He wants to get out. Okay, and what did you do?

I was angry at him too, so I stopped the car, and I said, fine, get out. The investigator listened with a skeptical ear as Pedro described driving away, stopping at McDonald's and then going home to bed with no idea something had happened until his phone rang at 4 a.m. and Erica told him that Christian was missing. I got up and tried to go back to sleep but I couldn't because I like I was because I felt kind of guilty because I dropped off on the road and I was afraid like what, what if something happened? What if he's lost right now? Pedro let them search his car for any clues related to Christian. And bingo, they found something interesting.

They found a receipt showing that someone, him or someone else using his vehicle, had made a trip to McDonald's during the night. McDonald's, where Pedro claimed he'd eaten right after Christian had jumped out of the car. Call it 7 p.m. and change. And yet, the receipt was time-stamped much later, 12.54 a.m., more than five hours later than he told them. You forget you live to McDonald's in the middle of the night, that maybe you forgot, maybe you forgot something else. The back and forth with detective roberts started sounding more like an interrogation you leave things out kind of like it kind of goes back to you and yes it makes you look like you did something bad you know and as

for that story about the hitchhiker the cops checked it out but couldn't come up with anything we checked uh surveillance video in the area where they said he dropped him looking and didn't find anybody. We checked area businesses to see if there was someone like that that matched the description of the hitchhiker and didn't find anyone. So was Pedro Bravo hiding something? Is there anything we need to change about where you went at what times and things like that? Well, there was. Just when it seemed the interview was ending, Pedro decided to keep talking. There was something he'd left out. It's one thing I have to tell you because you're right, I can't keep everything from you, and I have to tell you one thing.

And that one thing was huge. Like, in the scuffle with Chris, it wasn't just really an argument. I made the comment about the girl that he has a crush on, and he got angry at that. But then he came back with, maybe you should just f***ing kill yourself. And that's when I turned around and punched him straight in the face. A fist fight. This was a new detail he'd never mentioned. Pedro was now admitting to leaving his buddy by the side of the road bleeding from a sock in the nose.

I'm starting to believe that there might be something more to this than just a missing person. But what? While investigators tried to figure it out, they decided they couldn't let Pedro go home. So they charged him with depriving a victim of medical care, for bloodying Christian's nose and then leaving him on the side of the road. Meanwhile, the search for Christian was only getting bigger, and for his family and friends, more desperate. What's going through your head? Is it like, it's me, Alex, I'm out here in the woods, I'm trying to find you, where are you? Yeah, I think when we were searching, it was just more

just to do something, because you feel so useless and so helpless. So you're just there looking. And what posters are going up? We're hanging posters. We're handing out flyers during the football game because this was football season. Gainesville police were doing their own searches too as they focused more and more of their attention on Pedro Bravo and his wobbly story. They executed a search of his apartment less than two days after Christian had gone missing. And what did they find stashed way up in Pedro's closet? We find Christian's backpack hidden inside of Pedro's backpack, then hidden inside of a suitcase. So why would a friend have another friend's backpack? That's our concern. Why would Pedro hide his backpack so excessively?

Because it was very well hidden. So we thought, this is Pedro trying to cover up. Pedro has gone from being a person of interest to a suspect in his disappearance. It was very quickly, I felt, that that all happened. And it's hard to swallow something that huge when it's, you know, this is somebody you've known for so long. Erica had to face the possibility that maybe she and Christian hadn't been so good at keeping secrets. Maybe Pedro had known all about their relationship and it had sent him over the edge. But I overheard police officers discussing

that, that I, you know, like a love, jealous, rage kind of thing. Like a love triangle, I think they had said. So how did you bear up with that? I didn't want to think of that. I couldn't imagine somebody doing something so horrible, especially somebody as smart as Pedro. But when the crime scene techs processed Pedro's SUV, there it was, blood. Now the police believe Pedro hadn't just punched out Christian.

They believed he killed him. On the Friday, a week after Pedro Bravo had helped report his good friend missing, he was charged with first-degree murder. So Pedro, your high school boyfriend who'd been in your life for a long time, is now charged with the first-degree murder of the guy you're describing as the man of your life. Yes, that is exactly what happened. Very strange, strange life I have. But there's an axiom in homicide work, no body, no case. Investigators hadn't found Christian's body. So what else were they finding out about Pedro Bravo? Coming up, the case heads into court and the star witness?

I didn't want to see him. I didn't want to be around him. I just wanted him gone. The young woman at the center of it all, now facing Pedro and a painful past. I got really emotional. You know, I got really, I got really thrown back. I was just like, you know, why do you want to show me this? When Dateline continues. As Pedro Bravo sat in jail, charged with the murder of his friend Christian Aguilar, the search for Christian continued, his family clinging to hope but fearing the worst. You're there looking all day from sunrise to sunset with people you are meeting along the way,

a bunch of volunteers, police officers. But after three weeks of searching... Just down this road here is where those two men found human remains on Friday afternoon. Two hunters walking through some acreage came across a body buried in a shallow grave. It was Christian. In a way, we had expected it. We were just waiting for that phone call to actually happen. Erica could not absorb the news. You never want to just accept that kind of news, but at least we were able to find him. State of Florida versus Pedro Bravo. Nearly two years after Christian died,

his high school friend Pedro was now on trial for murder. He pleaded not guilty. Erica, your personal belief, do you believe that Pedro killed Christian? Yes. Why? For what reason? I think it was a mixture of jealousy academically and a mixture of jealousy involving me.

Central to the prosecution's case, simple high school geometry, a love triangle. Christian, his new girlfriend Erica, and her ex, Pedro Bravo. A motive as old as time, the prosecutor said. Mr. Bravo's plan is not just to murder Christian Aguilar. That's just a part of it. He's got to reunite with Erica. The prosecutor painted a picture of a teenager not just depressed over the breakup, but obsessed with getting Erica back. And his star witness was the very object of Pedro's obsession, a very nervous Erica. I don't want to see him. I didn't want to be around him. I didn't want his family near him. I just wanted him gone. With Pedro barely looking at her,

Erica read just some of the nonstop text messages Pedro had been sending her. I came all this way, and I miss you like crazy, and I love you just despite everything that's happened. And maybe I'm stupid, but I can't help the feeling, and I'm so, but I can't help the feeling. And I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. On the stand, the prosecution asked Erica to read out loud sections of Pedro's journal. Thoughts that would show the jury just how fixated on her he was.

I can win her back. I will win her back. I want to give up everything to be with her again. But it was the sight of an evidence bag containing Christian's backpack, his personal stuff from a carefree, happy time, that caused Erica to lose it on the stand. I got really emotional. I got really thrown back. I was just like, why did you have to bring this out?

Why did you want to show me this? And the prosecution wasn't done. There was more to its theory of motive. Despite their best efforts, Christian and Erica hadn't done a very good job concealing their relationship from Pedro. Pedro went into Christian's Facebook and email accounts and read conversations between Erica and Christian. So Christian was the romantic rival, and he needed to go, argued the state. We know that he knew about it prior to them going off that day. And this wasn't simply a crime of passion the prosecution charged. It was a cold, premeditated murder.

The prosecution alleged Pedro started plotting his friend's murder on September 16th, four days before Christian disappeared. He's at home and he's on his computer. Google searches were found on Pedro's laptop. Questions like, what is chloroform? Can rubbing alcohol knock someone out? And what kinds of murders get solved. And here on security video is Pedro at a Walmart buying a sleep aid product, 55 yards of duct tape and a hunting knife. In his hand was a shovel he just bought at Lowe's. He's literally bought the murderer starter pack. And as the prosecution theory goes, Pedro used those items to drug and strangle his friend right inside his car. A 920 at 411, that blue blazer pulls in.

They show the jury surveillance cam video of Pedro's SUV in a Walmart parking lot. Investigators believe inside the vehicle, the murder is going down. They sit there for a long period of time and then pull up a little further and sit there for another long period of time. When he leaves that parking lot, Christian Aguilar's dead. He murders him in the car. Forensics confirmed that was Christian's blood that investigators had found in Pedro's SUV. And they discovered even more intriguing evidence in the trunk. An empty Gatorade bottle caked with residue from a sleep aid and an antihistamine.

Putting those two combinations together in a large quantity would cause someone to lose consciousness. Once Christian was dead, Pedro had to dispose of his friend's body. And the tale of how that happened, the prosecution said, was told by Pedro had to dispose of his friend's body. And the tale of how that happened, the prosecution said, was told by Pedro's phone. His iPhone had been on airplane mode for more than five hours that night. But investigators could see that Pedro had used an app, the flashlight app, for 48 minutes. He's using the flashlight. He's burying Chris's body. And the prosecution had yet another piece of physical evidence it said tied Pedro, beyond a reasonable doubt, to the murder. Duct tape.

When we found Christian Aguilar's body, he had duct tape wrapped around his ankles, his wrists, and his neck. A piece from his ankle was identified as being torn from the same piece of tape that was inside Pedro Bravo's windshield. When Pedro was done burying his friend, the prosecution said, he stopped at McDonald's for that bite to eat. Then he drove to a car wash. So at 1 o'clock in the morning, we have Pedro Bravo pulling up to a car wash and washing his vehicle for 12 minutes.

It tells me that he's trying to get rid of evidence. When he got home, Pedro washed his clothes and crawled in bed in time to get Erica's 4 a.m. phone call asking of Christian's whereabouts. Who duct taped him? Pedro Brava. Who put him in the grave? Pedro Brava. Who killed him? Pedro Brava. After calling nearly 50 witnesses to the stand, the prosecution rested its case. The defense, though, thought it needed only one witness in response.

Pedro Bravo was about to take the stand. Coming up. I still loved her. He would have a dramatically different story to tell. Did you drink the concoction in the Gatorade bottle? Yes, I drank the concoctioncoction in the Gatorade bottle? Yes, I drank the concoction that was in the Gatorade bottle. Could the evidence presented against him actually help clear him? The prosecution's portrait of Pedro Bravo was clear and unforgiving.

He was so fixated on winning back his former girlfriend, he would kill anyone who got in his way. Anyone. I didn't think Pedro ever deserved to walk the streets. I didn't think it would be safe for anyone for him to be out in the real world with normal people. You know, I think he could be borderline sociopath. But the defense had a flip side to the Pedro Bravo narrative. 18-year-old, honor student from Miami, chartered academy. But he had issues that he wanted to talk to his best friend about.

His best friend. That's what the defense said Christian was to Pedro right up to the time he disappeared. His lawyer insisted that Pedro never saw Christian as a romantic rival. That's because he didn't know that Christian and Erica were dating until that day in the police station. Do you know Christian? Yeah, yeah. How do you know him? He's over there. And now the jury was about to hear from Pedro himself, and only Pedro, the sole witness for the defense.

And when he took the stand, the jurors didn't see some hulking psycho killer, but a pale, intelligent, lovesick boy in a tidy suit. I graduated from Doral Academy, yes. With any distinctions? I graduated magna cum laude. Though he denied any malice toward Christian, Pedro did concede another key element of the state's case. He was desperate to rekindle his relationship with Erica Freeman. I still loved her.

I was still very enamored with her, and I really wanted to get back with her. And when it became clear that she wasn't coming back, he told the jury he sank into a deep depression about Erica and everything else in his sad, disintegrating life. Basically how I felt like a failure. Everything's a mess. Everything feels like a mess, and I feel like I'm breaking apart piece by piece. That's why he made plans to hang out with Christian that afternoon.

He wanted help from his old friend. Chris was one of the people I could talk to about this because he had also gone through the same thing. So how did that man-to-man talk end up in a fist fight? Pedro says it started after Christian said something terrible. And he tells me, why don't you go kill yourself? So what happened next? I turned around and I hit him in the nose with my left fist. While you're driving? While I'm driving, yes. That punch in the face could explain how Christian's blood ended up in the car. Next, Pedro told the jury that he pulled over and the fight moved into the street. But after a few minutes, Pedro left the scene.

What is Chris's condition when you leave? All I could tell was that he didn't get up right away, but that he was still moving. Still breathing? Yes. When you did this, did you have any malicious intent to kill Christian Aguilar? No, it was all spur of the moment. All right, and you decided to leave? Yes. And have you come to regret that decision? I feel like I'm going to regret that decision for the rest of my life. So Pedro admitted he fought Christian, but claimed he didn't kill him.

And as he drove away, Pedro said the only person he wanted to destroy was himself. That's when, he says, he decided to do it. Suicide. Now, was this just suicidal ideation, or were you going to act on it? I was going to act on it. So all that evidence presented by the prosecution wasn't about murder. It was about suicide. The drug-laced Gatorade cocktail wasn't meant for Christian.

It was meant for Pedro himself. Did you drink the concoction in the Gatorade bottle? Yes, I drank the concoction that was in the Gatorade bottle. Obviously an unsuccessful suicide attempt. But the defense argued Pedro's desire to end his own life was very real. Pedro was combing the web for information about chloroform, rubbing alcohol, and sleeping pills because he was planning his own death. He even brought along the shovel as part of his plan. At the beginning, I was going to go and dig myself my grave. So the jury had to decide, who is Pedro Bravo?

A killer without a conscience, or a self-destructive lovesick boy? But before they got the case, prosecutors gave the jurors something else to consider. Some of the weirder evidence ever to come from a jailhouse snitch. Could you state your name, please? Michael Charles Angelo. Michael Angelo, who had cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for leniency in his own case, was a cellmate of Pedro Bravo. And one day, he said he needed my help, so he slid a chip bag under my door that had a note in it.

The note asked the cellmate to find someone on the outside to commit a series of murders similar to Christian's killing, suggesting that the real murderer was still at large and he, Pedro, was innocent. He wrote, three to four people unfortunately must die. They are random individuals, but preference would be two UF students, tased to incapacitate and strangled to kill, then have the hands duct taped. It's basically a plan to convince the world that Christian Aguilar was murdered by a serial killer who is still out there. So just as the jurors struggled to get their heads around this bizarre twist, the trial came to an end, and the fate of

Pedro Bravo was in their hands. So much for one family to go through. You could see the tension on their faces as they began waiting for the verdict. We all talked to each other. That day wasn't a day to celebrate whatever the jury had decided. Whatever the jury decided, Erica knew there would be sorrow all around. In fact, the jurors came back in less than four hours, and they found Pedro Bravo guilty of murder in the first degree. A verdict the family wanted. But there were no winners that day.

About an hour later, Pedro Bravo faced the judge at his sentencing, insisting to the end. I did not kill Christian Aguilar. I know in my heart what I did, and I know God knows what I did. Clearly unmoved, the judge sentenced Bravo to life without parole. The day after the verdict, Christian's family made a heart-wrenching visit to the place where their beloved son's body had been found. And Christian's brother Alex embraced an opportunity that had a bitter sweetness to it, graduating from the University of Florida in Gainesville. I've always followed his example in school, and now that example is gone, so I have to,

I guess, just follow my own route. Erica got her degree in Gainesville, along with memories that she will carry forever. She can't forget that fleeting moment when she fell in love with Christian, and then he was gone, just like that. We weren't even dating that long, and we had the death talk. We had, you know, what happens if something happened tomorrow, and he got hit by a car, and he looked at me, and he was just like, I don't know what I would do without you. I don't know what I would, you know, and I looked at him, and I was like, I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're going to find somebody and you're going to live your life.

Do you ever get up in the morning just shaking your fists in outrage at the heavens? Pedro, why did you do this to me? Not just Christian is the victim. You've become a victim too. It's so difficult sometimes to think of it that way. I would still give anything for Christian to be here. There's not going to be another Jokey Tells and another smile I see when I look up from working or something.

It's not going to happen again. They're just memories. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.