Dateline NBC - Mystery in South Beach

Episode Date: August 12, 2020

In this Dateline classic, a young bride is found beaten to death just days after the wedding. As detectives begin their investigation, suspicious details are uncovered. Dennis Murphy reports. Originally aired on NBC on May 11, 2014.

I'm Lester Holt. Tonight on Dateline, a mystery in paradise that started as a honeymoon and ended in a murder. I get a phone call, screaming, crying, Wendy's dead. They had been on their honeymoon. Why is this young girl in this industrial parking lot? Where's her husband? I was aware that they were going to some seedy nightclubs. He did admit to having encounters with other couples. This guy definitely did not pass the sniff test. No. Million dollar insurance policy on your life, that's a big red flag. I'm very interested in Yolanda Cerrillo. She loved him. The truth, it was being revealed. It showed the monster behind the mask.

You gotta prove it. You gotta prove it. The years of waiting, the years of mourning her, we needed justice. Here's Dennis Murphy with the latest on the story of the death of a young woman who was killed in the hands of a man who was killed in the hands of a man. Here's Dennis Murphy with Mystery in South Beach.

If you've spent any time down here, you probably sense there are really two Miami beaches. You know this one by reputation anyway. South Beach. A pulsating playground with energy that surges out of the ocean and exhausts itself in the all-night clubs. And then there's the old Miami Beach. Here are the sunburned back streets of squat apartment blocks, where decades past the old people used to sit out in aluminum chairs. And that's where a young couple, Wendy and Michelle, was trying to make a go of it. The rent was cheap, the window air conditioning good enough.

But if you've ever thought beautiful people catch all the breaks, then listen to this story of 21-year-old Wendy Trapaga, because she may be the most gorgeous, doomed young woman to ever walk these streets. She was model pretty. I don't think that she thought of herself as anything spectacular. Didn't become the central part of her personality. I am pretty girl. No, it wasn't who she was about. Her much older sisters, Tiare and Rita, and brother Ralph,

never used the qualifier stepsister when they speak of Wendy. They'll tell you she was a little bit of a daddy's girl. Her father, an international airline pilot, who died, sadly, in a crash when Wendy was just six. Wendy's mother, Miriam, raised her, with big sister Rita always pitching in. I guess I was like that other mother for her because I pretty much was there by Miriam's side raising her.

The love of animals was always a part of Wendy. She was always rescuing some animal or a dog or a puppy or a kitten, anything. And she worked for a vet for a while, huh? Yes. But allergies would end her ambitions to be a vet. I kept telling her, don't give up your

passion, don't give it up. But Wendy did have another passion, and it was for fashion and makeovers. Oh, my goodness. Pretty girl. You got the girls all. At Easter, she memorably dolled up her nieces for a living room fashion show.

And here is the director of the entire operation. How nice a kid was this church-going, slightly sheltered girl? Well, there's this story of the classmate without a dress. One girl couldn't afford to go to the prom, and Wendy got this girl prettied up, got her a dress, everything. That was the heart she had. After graduation, two cousins who owned their own salons urged Wendy to follow in their footsteps. She had a flair for it, and you can do very well in that field.

Yes, she did. So at 21, after a brief marriage, she enrolled in beauty school. And in 2002, that's where she first saw Michelle Escoto rumble up on his fire engine red Ducati motorcycle. Michelle was a self-taught web designer and sometime teacher of computing. But by his early 30s, he was looking for a career change. He thought he'd try hairstyling, so he enrolled, as fate would have it, in the same cosmetology school as Wendy. Michelle, who fancied himself a sensitive guy poet, had a string of

admiring girlfriends. But Wendy, younger by 10 years and prettier than most any other woman in his orbit, was clearly a prize catch. Michelle's friend, Ramon Santa Cruz. When I met Wendy, he was on a motorcycle with her. I told myself, it's a beautiful girl. I don't know what he did to get this girl. Whatever he did, it worked. The pair falling quickly and deeply. They were like high school sweethearts. She was totally in love, sparkling in the eye. He said, I'm going to buy her her own motorcycle, and it's going to be great.

Within six months, they were living together on South Beach. Wendy gave Michelle a makeover, dyeing his hair blonde. Perfect for the club scene. They lived for the day, and then came unexpected news for these two butterflies. Wendy was pregnant. Her mother Miriam had mixed feelings. How did Miriam feel about the fact that her baby was having a baby? Delighted with the fact of being a grandmother but not delighted with the circumstances. Wendy had had the big church wedding for her first marriage. This time around, she and Michelle got hitched at Miami Beach City Hall. The next day, Wendy and Michelle set out for a brief weekend honeymoon,

a drive down the Florida Keys to Key West where the road ran out. Sunset drinks, dinner, and a hotel room. Three days after the wedding, they were back in Miami Beach, Sunday evening. Wendy called her mother to say they were going to a movie and then dancing later at a club. Her mother urged her pregnant daughter

not to drink. Then, in the middle of the night, the wee hours of Monday morning, Wendy's mother got an unexpected call from her new son-in-law, Michelle, saying they'd had an argument. Wendy had stormed off saying she was going to her mother's house. Since then, the bridegroom said he'd repeatedly called Wendy without success. Right around then, in a bleroom said he'd repeatedly called Wendy without success. Right around then, in a bleak warehouse district miles and miles from the after-hours bars in Miami, a sanitation worker was startled to see the body of a young woman in a blue dress slumped between two vehicles. It was the newlywed, Wendy.

News traveled fast. I get a phone call from my stepmother, screaming, crying, Wendy's dead, they took her from me. She told me it's on the news, and I went looking, and there's my sweet little sister being put on a gurney, and it's just so surreal.

This desolate warehouse place. All I kept thinking about was her being alone there, by by herself and praying to God that she didn't suffer. The killer who bludgeoned her to death also erased the beauty of her young face. A honeymoon weekend for the new bride had ended behind yellow police tape. Who killed Wendy and why? Did it have something to do with Miami's wild nightlife? What's been going on with Michelle in this club scene?

He did admit to having encounters with other couples there. Or was this murder closer to home? Miami-Dade police detectives Maria Medeiros and Gus Baez had barely clocked in for their Monday morning shift when word came down of a homicide in a bleak warehouse district. It's where they found, in a parking lot, the body of Wendy Trapaga, lying between a car and a van. We could see the spatter of the blood on the van, meaning that whoever did this to her did it to her right here.

So this body hadn't been disposed of there. This was the place where she was killed. Correct. Her head had been bashed in, but there was no weapon to be found. What type of a homicide is this? Is this a robbery? Is this maybe a drug deal that went bad? Tell me what you're taking in about the victim.

She is a young girl dressed like she may have gone out the night before. She didn't have her shoes on, which was unusual. Why is this young girl in this industrial parking lot? No reason to be out in this forlorn part of the county. No, no, unless she met up with someone. So the detectives headed out to do the part of the job that never gets easier. So you're delivering terrible news. Horrible news.

Amid the shock and tears, the detectives pieced together from the mother a sense of who their victim was and what her final days and hours had been about. Sunday evening, the phone call, Wendy sounded okay, the detectives were told. But that next call at 5.48 a.m., the one from Michelle asking if she was at her mom's, was worrisome. A few hours later, Michelle was waiting for Wendy's mother at the school where she worked. He met her at her job. She tells me, you know, he was very disheveled

and very worried about where she could be. Michelle Escoto, it turned out, was about to get an official answer to his where-is-she question. And while we're talking, the phone rings, and it's Michelle Escoto calling. Again, asking his mother-in-law had she heard from Wendy. Detectives grabbed the phone and asked where he was. They headed over to Michelle's apartment to deliver the news

about his girlfriend of eight months, his bride of four days. We walked into his apartment. When he blurted out, is she dead? And we explained that we're investigating the death of Wendy, etc. He started bawling up. Doubled over, crying. Police gave him a few minutes to compose himself before asking him to come down to headquarters to answer some more questions. There he recounted the brief honeymoon. Michelle told the detectives that Wendy had the idea of adding a little more spice before rejoining their workweek lives.

Well, we haven't had much of a honeymoon this weekend. Let's extend our honeymoon. So as Michelle Escoto told it, around midnight, they checked into a Miami hotel that features fantasy suites with a private pool and jacuzzi. He says they had sex, slept a little, and Wendy dozed off in the jacuzzi. Around 4 a.m., Michelle says, they checked out and headed home. And that's when, he said, the newlyweds had their first argument. Michelle says he walked into the apartment, leaving Wendy in the car. Three minutes later, he comes out. He says when he comes out, the car is gone. Wendy is gone. Michelle Escoto spoke with detectives for 14 hours.

They asked him repeatedly if he could identify anyone with a motive. He said he couldn't. After leaving police headquarters, he saw his friend Ramon Santa Cruz. He was looking depressed. He looked down, maybe tired. Five days after her murder, Wendy was laid to rest, and then friends and family gathered at her parents' home. Detective Bias was there as well, and he learned something about the couple that would send the investigation down another path. A thread of this investigation takes you into the Swinger lifestyle. What's been going on with Michelle and Wendy in this club scene? After I'm informed of this, that Wendy was part of a swingers club, a place called the Miami Velvet down here in South Miami. The first thing I did was I called Michelle.

He did admit to having encounters with other couples there. So now you've got to wonder, did somebody have a thing they developed about Wendy? And is that person maybe the killer? It turns out the club is within a mile and a half of the scene, so I wanted to explore that. The Swingers Club was cooperative, and detectives took DNA samples from a few employees and members. They would have to wait for the results. In the meantime, the investigation was turning up a new lead, a former girlfriend of Michelle's, her name, Yolanda Cerillo. Yolanda Cerillo is a person that had a relationship with Michelle before he met the victim.

According to her, Michelle left her for Wendy. She loved Michelle Escoto. She was very much in love with him. Yolanda, a single mother, was she also a woman scorned? Michelle left her just six months earlier and to add insult to injury, asked her to watch his dog while he was on his honeymoon with Wendy. To go to the extent of taking care of somebody's dog during their honeymoon, it's just, as a woman, very strange to me. Does Yolanda become a suspect? A woman who feels that she was cashiered, fired because of as a woman, very strange to me. Does Yolanda become a suspect?

A woman who feels that she was cashiered, fired because of this younger woman, and nobody gets away with that and I'm going to kill you. There's a lot to Yolanda. There's a lot to Yolanda. A lot of bad, if you ask Ramon Santa Cruz. I didn't like her from the beginning because she was very evasive. The apartment was always dirty. She was never a good person to begin with.

Detectives met with Yolanda Cerrillo, who freely admitted that she'd been devastated when Michelle dumped her. But she had no idea who beat his wife to death. She said she didn't know anything about it. But the detectives noted something else about Yolanda. She lived just a few minutes from the parking lot where they'd found Wendy. When you start adding up all the little things together, then her proximity to the crime scene, I'm very interested in Yolanda Cerillo. No one knew yet what Yolanda was hiding. That would come later, and so would the revelation of a motive that seemed to explain every violent little thing.

Coming up, a million reasons why someone wanted Wendy dead. I asked him, how much is the life insurance policy? And he said a million dollars. When Dateline continues. Who would want to murder pretty Wendy Trapaga? Did her killer meet her at the sexual swapping club that her boyfriend Michelle Escoto took her to? The cops ran down those leads, and the swingers club theory went nowhere. What about Yolanda, the husband's ex-girlfriend?

Enraged, perhaps, to be traded in for Wendy, the younger model. The detective's guts told them that Yolanda knew way more than she was saying. But if so, how to crack her? And then there was the husband himself. They kept going back to their notes from their 14-hour interview with him. At times, it had been pulling teeth. Once we ask him over and over again, is there anybody with a motive, anything, anything at all, anything you can tell us, I bring up the point, well, don't you have a life insurance policy?

And he says, yeah, we do. A hefty one, it would seem, for a healthy 21-year-old woman he wasn't even married to at the time of purchase. I asked him, how much is the life insurance policy? And he said, a million dollars. And I said, a million dollars. And you don't think that's a motive. You don't think that's important to tell us. And he said, no, I don't, because I have a million dollar life insurance policy on myself, too. So, well, that's not in question because you're here. You're alive.

One thing Escoto did reveal, Wendy was not pregnant. He said that was the cause of their argument that night. He said Wendy had lied to him about the whole thing. As the detectives' questions got sharper that day, Michelle shut down. He didn't talk himself off your list of sons? He did not. He did not. The working theory of the crime was as simple as it was brute. He'd bashed in her skull for the million-dollar insurance payout. A tire iron was missing from her car, a likely weapon, but nowhere to be found. So you two go to the

prosecutor, the state attorney, and say, we got it. Let's go. Grand jury. No, it's not that easy. We're done. No. Why isn't it that easy? You got to prove it. You got to prove it. So the police let their person of interest go. In the meantime, Wendy's family had huge suspicions about Michelle. The revelation that he'd bought a million-dollar life insurance policy on Wendy only confirmed their belief that he'd killed her. And then Michelle did something bold. He actually sued the insurance company to pay him his million dollars. Would a guilty man be so brazen as to try that?

Absolutely, the family said, and by then they'd had enough. The family got a lawyer, Jorge Barone, and together they went after Michelle Escoto. And we believed he was the killer. Two years after the murder, the family filed a wrongful death suit against Michelle. MetLife put the insurance money in escrow and waited on the sidelines as Michelle and Wendy's family fought it out in civil court. But if Michelle wanted to see so much as one cent of that money, he would have to do something he hadn't done before. He has to testify. He cannot plead the fifth,

especially since he's pursuing the claim. So he has to testify. Michelle Escoda was videotaped as he gave a sworn deposition. And we took his deposition and his story just kept changing. So the story about a fight and she takes a hike just doesn't add up? No, it didn't add up. It doesn't add up. For instance, he testified that Wendy had, it was her idea, all of a sudden, that night to go to the Miami Executive Hotel. However, back in 2002, Yolanda, the ex-girlfriend, told police Michelle had asked her to make the hotel reservation for her.

It wasn't Wendy's idea at all, a factual discrepancy also known as a lie. When the civil case finally went to trial, Escoto got so roughed up that on the second day, he was a no-show in court. Wendy's mother got the insurance money, and prosecutors got to hear firsthand about his constantly shifting stories. The state attorney sat in the courtroom and was taking notes. So did you have a little chit-chat in the hallway outside? We did. What did he say? This is your case. I mean, you have all the evidence right now. And of course, we gave a little chit-chat in the hallway outside? We did. What did he say?

This is your case. I mean, you have all the evidence right now. And of course, we gave him the deposition testimony and everything. We had everything outlined. Michelle Escoto was arrested three days after his court no-show and was charged with the murder of his bride, Wendy Trapago.

But police still thought they needed more. So they fixed their eyes on the girlfriend, Yolanda Cerrillo. I knew that eventually, as time goes by, that relationship would deteriorate, would deteriorate. Why did you think that? Because if they had that secret amongst each other, that was going to be a friction point. In 2006, one year after Michelle was arrested, Yolanda and her attorney went to prosecutors and said, let's make a deal. She got full immunity in exchange for telling how she helped Michelle that night. She came into the state attorney's office and explained that she did take him away from the crime scene.

So that's a great story to tell a jury. Yes, that's it. Police may not have had a murder weapon or helpful forensic clues, but now they had Yolanda, who was about to give her version of that night. It was cold-hearted and calculating. Coming up. An arrest and a witness who was there. It's not the end of the story, but the beginning of a whole new drama that would play out in court.

Every story has two sides, especially when it's a lover's triangle. I don't put it past her as being a person who would have committed this crime. And should a spurned lover be believed anyway? He said to calm down. It was all a plan. That he didn't love her, he loved me. Nearly 12 years after the murder of Wendy Trapago, her husband, Michelle Escoto, was finally on trial for her murder.

He pleaded not guilty to first-degree charges. Money is the root of this defendant's evil. Prosecutors offered the most chilling detail to the case, that Escoto actually picked Wendy to be his bride, just so he could insure her life and kill her. He would prey on an unsuspecting 21-year-old girl and marry her. Four days, four days after that marriage, this defendant bludgeoned and strangled Wendy Trapaga to death. Among the first witnesses, Wendy's heartbroken mother, Miriam Benitez. Speaking through an interpreter, the mother said she was shocked when she learned the couple had taken life insurance policies out on one another just before their marriage.

I did not feel good. I expressed to her, why insurance? They're not even married. They didn't have children. Why insurance? On the stand, Detective Maria Madero said she zeroed in on that insurance policy when she questioned Escoto a day after the murder. I told him if he couldn't muster up a tear for his wife for four days, to muster up a tear for the million dollars he's never going to see. What was his reaction? That lack of emotion, was it indifference to Wendy or a disregard for women in general?

Detectives say Escoto was a man with a history of mooching off girlfriends. This former lover testified she supported Escoto for years. How much money did you give him a month? Approximately maybe $1,500. Go figure, the state said, but for whatever reason, women threw gifts at Escoto. One bought him the Ducati motorcycle, another a car. But still another former lover who also supported him for years would be the prosecution's star witness. Yolanda Cerrillo.

Yolanda Cerrillo. The prosecution argued she was the girlfriend with intimate knowledge of how Escoto carried out this brutal crime. She'd been given immunity in exchange for her testimony here. Wiping away tears, she recounted how it all started, how she fell hard for the defendant she thought to be a charmer. Have you ever had a man that you could share your life with? I thought it was Michelle. Only to realize he was dumping her for the younger and more attractive Wendy.

Yolanda said she then confronted Escoto in this restaurant parking lot and heard for the first time, she said, that his impending marriage to Wendy was all a sham, that in the end he'd come back to Yolanda with pockets full of cash. He said to calm down. It was all a plan, that he didn't love her, he loved me. He was going to marry her, they were going to have an insurance policy, and she was going to die. All right, so he told you he had a plan. Yes. The plan was murder. It was during that conversation, Yolanda told jurors, that she became a co-conspirator, not only helping Escoto cover up his crime, but also helping him carry it out. This was the plan. On his wedding night, Yolanda said Escoto would drug and drown Wendy.

To make sure he got it right, Yolanda admitted that she took part in a grim dress rehearsal of what was meant to look like an accidental death. We filled up my tub and I got in the water and he pushed me down with his hands. You let him push you under the water? Yes. What did you say once he let you up? I told him that wouldn't work. Why? Because the force of him holding her down in the water will leave bruises. So what did you suggest? I suggested he use a towel to hold her down. Yolanda said she even helped him whip up the drug-laced concoction to knock Wendy out. He came over and he brought some Percocet pills and he and I started squishing them and I think it's a mortar and pestle thing.

Well what was he going to do with the Percocet pills that you ground? He was going to give it to her so she would be drugged. And then drowned, said Yolanda. But she added the plan to kill Wendy hit an unexpected snag. At the Honeymoon Hotel in Key West, Wendy balked at the taste of the drug cocktail. So Escoto tried again later that weekend at the Miami Fantasy Suite Hotel. This time she drank the cocktail, but for some reason he couldn't manage to drown her. That's when Yolanda recalled Escoto showed up at her place in the middle of the night with a dazed Wendy in the front seat of a car. Did you see anything in the passenger seat? I saw a movement of somebody inside the car.

Wendy was still alive. Yolanda said Escoto ordered her to follow him in her car. And then what happened? He got out of the car. He walked over to my car. And he told me, drive around, give me 20 to 25 minutes. Eventually, Yolanda said she spotted Escoto again, walking down the street, splashed now in blood and carrying a tire iron.

She said she drove him to the bay in downtown Miami, where he got out of the car with the weapon. And as he's walking, I saw him when he threw the thing in the water. After dropping him off at his apartment, she said, she took his bloody clothes and threw them in a dumpster. Happy with yourself? No. I'm worthless. That's how I feel right now. Is this about you?

No, it's not. It's about a mother who lost her daughter and I had something to do with it. And Yolanda's time on the witness stand would get tougher still. Two old lovers were about to face off in court. One defending himself, the other testifying against him. A roiling, boiling drama in real time. Coming up, Michelle Escoto acts as his own lawyer. Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be.

And on the stand, his ex-lover, now the star witness against him in Wendy's murder. Did you wish she was dead? I wish she would go away. When Dateline continues. News. The state of Florida had succeeded in painting Michelle Escoto as a man who used women for money. In other words, a cad. Then again, a cad is a far cry from a killer. I don't think he's a killer. I think there is problems with this evidence. You're not just saying that? I'm not just saying that.

There's problems with this evidence. Attorney Terry Leneman served as Escoto's standby counsel. He says that despite the teary theatrics, the state's case against Michelle Escoto was weak from start to finish. There was, he pointed out, no murder weapon, no blood, no DNA linking the defendant to the crime. Which is maybe why Michelle Escoto, who had already pleaded not guilty to the charges, did what so many men facing a life in prison sentence would never dream of doing. He defended himself in court. I believe the evidence will show that only an imbecile and an imbecile who's in love with money would kill somebody four days after they were married to that person.

Was it Lincoln's advice about fool as a client? Those who represent themselves? We'll see. Wearing glasses, khakis, a sweater, and speaking in a soft voice, Escoto seemed less like a killer and more like a geek, a hopeless novice getting pummeled by the prosecution. I'm telling him that he was being sandbagged because he has... One time, the newbie seemed near tears, another overwhelmed. Wow, this is harder than I thought it would be. Was this klutzy moment all about winning sympathy from the jury the time he stumbled?

Sorry. Twist on my ankle, Judge. And one particularly wince-worthy moment came when civil attorney Jorge Barron, his nemesis from the failed insurance trial, took the stand. Under cross-examination by Escoto, he explained just why it was he suspected Escoto of killing his wife Wendy. You have been married to her for three days before you killed her to get the life insurance. So to me that was very clear. Judge, give me a second because I'm going to say something that I shouldn't.

Escoto lost it. Would you say that again? Objection, Judge. It's going to take all of them. Mr. Escoto lost it. Would you say that again? Objection, Judge. It's going to take all of them. Mr. Escoto. All of those guys wearing white, it's going to take all of them and some more. Had Mr. Nerd inadvertently shown the jury the lava boiling within?

That threat won Escoto a contempt of court citation from the judge. He's quiet. But what appeared to be near disaster for the defendant could be spun as a play to his advantage. I think one of the important advantages that he has here is that human connection that he's getting with standing up there and with every witness who says you're a murderer, you're this, you're that, him not backing down. He's never backed down. But Escoto, the hapless underdog, still needed to convince jurors he was not violent, especially when it came to women, Wendy in particular. I'm trying to be as gentle as I can,

Judge. He carefully questioned his former mother-in-law. He may have won points when he got her to admit that Wendy had once confided this to a friend. She told her friend that she was content, that she loved you, Mr. Escoto. So did I. Likewise, this former girlfriend and self-confessed sugar mama had to admit Escoto was never a violent bully. Did I ever throw anything at you? No. Did I ever punch you? No.

Did I ever slap you? No, no. Did I ever throw you on the ground? No. More important, Escoto wanted to show that the state's theory of the crime was a fairy tale, starting with the idea that he drugged Wendy. A pharmacologist testified that Wendy had only small amounts of prescription narcotics in her blood when the autopsy was performed.

The toxicology report are consistent with normal doses that you would take of any of these medications. She wasn't heavily drugged as the state argued. She wasn't as incapacitated as you might have been led to believe. Absolutely. And that's highly disputed. This was not a knockout punch. Highly disputed.

There was another problem with the state's theory and it had to do with how Wendy died. And if the assailant left-handed began to strike her. A medical examiner for the defense believed that Wendy's extensive injuries indicated two killers, both right-handed. There are several impacts on the right side, which in an altercation suggests to me that the assailant is right-handed. And since Michelle Escoto is left-handed, the implication for the jury was clear. He couldn't be the killer.

What's more, a DNA expert said she expected to find Escoto's DNA on the victim's clothes. After all, they were husband and wife. But she found something more. There were several of the markers where his DNA is not represented. DNA traces for two different males, and get this, traces for a female. To standby lawyer Terry Lenneman, that could mean only one person. Yolanda Cerrillo, Escoto's old girlfriend, who said she was with Escoto just before and after the murder.

She's got to go play immunity. Lenneman says the first thing to know about Yolanda is that she's a liar. First, she knew nothing about the crime. Then she said she did, but only after the fact. The final story, he said, put Yolanda front and center in planning the murder. Lo and behold, we have this story that comes about, about the drowning and the drugging and all this drama that I believe is rubbish. So what did make sense? A killer, he said, who hated Wendy enough to pummel her so badly she was unrecognizable.

And who fit that bill? I felt destroyed because she took you from me, yes. In a beyond weird courtroom exchange, Escoto in cross-examination took on his former lover, Yolanda Cerrio, who admitted her poisonous resentments of Wendy. I hated what she stood for. I didn't know who she was. I didn't. I hated the whole situation. I hated that you left. And did you wish she was dead? I wish she would go away. So you see Yolanda's hand in this directly she's lying because she feels that's in her best interest i don't put it past her as being a person who would have

committed this crime but would jurors see it that way here was the critical moment of the trial a chance for each side to sum up its case. And this potential tipping point, even Michelle Escoto seemed to agree, was no time for amateurs. Coming up, the verdict. The years of waiting, the years of mourning her.

We needed justice. If there's a hung jury, we may have to start over again. After a seven-week trial and testimony from almost 40 witnesses, the prosecutor and the defense attorney. In this case, Michelle Escoto himself would get one last chance to talk to the jurors in closing arguments. Prosecutor Gail Levine acknowledged that her office had to hold its nose in order to get Escoto's girlfriend Yolanda to testify against him.

I can't charge her. I'd love to. But I can't. And she came in here and she filled in the details. She gave you the answers to questions that you have. When it was the defense's turn, Escoto and his backup attorney, Terry Lenneman, surprised the courtroom. We want Mr. Lenneman to take over as your counsel this time. I would like Mr. Lenneman to take over. Thank you, Mr. Escoto. I'm ready to proceed, Judge.

For the first time in this trial, Escoto's backup counsel, Terry Lenneman, a seasoned defense attorney, would take over and urge the jurors to find reasonable doubt in the state's case. Leneman jumped in, attacking what he called the prosecutor's overselling of a mostly circumstantial case. This is a court of law. And no matter how much I scream as an advocate, no matter how much I wave my hands, or say, villain, villain, villain, villain, bad villain, villain. It doesn't make it so. Leneman's strategy was to plant a seed of doubt in just one juror's mind. If there's a hung jury, we may have to start over again. Then the case went to the jury. Wendy's family, as they had done throughout the trial, gathered together once again and prayed. Her mother hugged prosecutor Gail Levine,

who pursued Escoto so ferociously. She's my hero. She is without a doubt my hero. Two and a half hours after the jury went out, cell phones started buzzing in the courthouse. So many years since Wendy's murder, and now in moments her family would know. The years of waiting, the years of mourning her, all of a sudden we're told the verdict is in.

Before I got to the courtroom, I was already crying. I was shaking. Wendy's family members held their breath. Escoto appeared to do the same as the judge instructed the clerk to read the verdict. We, the jury in Miami-Dade County, Florida, this 22nd day of April 2014, find the defendant, Michelle Escoto, guilty of first-degree premeditated murder. Michelle Escoto sat stone-faced in his chair, his lips downturned in a grimace, nodding. For the family, there were more tears, but of a different kind. Now sorrow mixed with relief and satisfaction. Wendy's mother

dropped to her knees and gave thanks. For Detective Maria Medeiros, a 12-year-old case was now officially stamped closed. He'll never do this to another woman again. His lies and his charming and his planning and his evil plan will not affect another person. But there was someone the family felt had gotten away with murder, Escoto's girlfriend, Yolanda Cerrillo. Her immunity deal meant she would never spend a day in jail. They're both monsters. They're both psychopaths. I don't care at all how desperate, how insecure, how lacking in self-respect you have.

You're a mother. And you went ahead and planned out the death of another mother's daughter. But investigators said without Yolanda, things might have turned out differently. People are going to be throwing their shoes at the TV screen at this point, Detective. She gave us the additional thing that we needed to charge and keep and bring Michelle Escoto to justice in this case. So he gets a life sentence and she gets have a nice day. That's how it appears. But in lieu of not having anybody held accountable for this, I'll take that. But the family wasn't going to let Yolanda off so easily. They sued her for the wrongful death of Wendy and were awarded a $44 million judgment, though they had no expectations of seeing that kind of money. If she has to pay

one cent a week, it's well worth it as a reminder for the rest of her life how she assisted that monster. Two weeks after his conviction, Michelle Escoto was sentenced for the murder of his new bride. At the hearing, he proclaimed his innocence to Wendy's family. No matter how much satisfaction this verdict has given any of you, an innocent person was convicted in this case. Finally, the family had an opportunity to address the man who killed Wendy. Justice served. Off to hell with you and good riddance. When Wendy's mother Miriam spoke through a translator, there wasn't a dry eye in the courtroom.

Sunday is Mother's Day. Many of you have daughters or sons. And you will receive a kiss from them. I have to go to the cemetery. To put flowers on my daughter's tomb. Judge Marissa Tinkler Mendez gave Escoto the mandatory sentence. Life in prison without the possibility of parole. The only way he leaves prison is in a pine box. On the day Escoto was found guilty, the family went to the cemetery to visit Wendy.

They sat on her grave and talked to her. I kind of just sat back and felt that I could breathe for the first time in so long, and I just felt that she was finally at peace. She can rest now. Rest for Wendy, the kind young woman who loved animals and enjoyed playing dress-up, and who faithfully married a stranger till death he did part. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.