Deadly jealousy: how a girl decided to return her beloved and received a life sentence
'15.11.2020'
Source: Lenta.ru report
The Mexican woman dreamed of a happy future with her lover and could not survive the sudden breakup. While her ex was building a relationship with another girl, she thought out a plan to win his love again and eliminate her rival. She organized the murder, and it led to irreversible consequences. He tells about a shocking story of jealousy "Lenta.ru".
Introduction
Brenda Delgado and Ricardo Paniagua met in August 2012 on a dating site. At that time, the Mexican was working as a dental assistant in Dallas, Texas, and her new acquaintance from California was finishing his residency in dermatology at the medical institute of the same city.
Ricardo moved to Texas in 2011 and, having survived a California divorce, was ready for a new romantic relationship. The profile of the brown-eyed brunette Brenda liked him immediately. He invited her on a first date at a Jennifer Lopez concert, and three months later, in November 2012, the couple decided to move in.
Soon Brenda introduced Ricardo to her parents, introducing him to her boyfriend. In April 2013, on Ricardo's birthday, she announced that she was madly in love with him and could not imagine her life without him.
In June, a Mexican woman unexpectedly became pregnant and after talking with Ricardo decided to have an abortion. She did not talk about what happened to the family and secretly hoped that someday they would still have children.
In the fall, Brenda entered a local college to study dentistry. However, by that time, all her thoughts were occupied by Ricardo. According to classmates, at the day of dating, Brenda devoted almost all of her performance to a story about her lover.
Brenda had no doubt that her feelings were mutual. Not surprisingly, in early 2014, Ricardo presented her with a vow ring, which symbolizes devotion and often precedes an offer to marry. She took the gift as a hint of a future engagement and invited Ricardo to Mexico to meet her many relatives.
Double parting
In July 2014, Brenda arrived at college in tears. She explained to classmates that Ricardo left her by writing an e-mail and asked to move out. For what reason he decided to disperse, she did not elaborate.
Brenda found it difficult to survive the breakup: for several weeks she stopped attending lectures, and her grades dropped dramatically. Ricardo, on the other hand, tried to move on. In September, he signed up for a dance studio for salsa. According to the studio's rules, women dance with men for several minutes, then couples change partners.
Once Ricardo arrived at the studio and to his surprise he saw Brenda among the dancers. At some point, they ended up in a pair, and old feelings flared up between them.
“We are back in each other's lives again. We decided to give our relationship another chance. ”-Ricardo Paniagua
Brenda rented a one-room apartment one and a half kilometers from Ricardo. This time he did not offer her to live together, but he helped with the expenses. For several months everything was as before. Brenda's parents believed that their relationship was approaching a wedding. Ricardo vowed that his intentions were serious.
However, the more he thought about marrying Brenda, the more he doubted the strength of their relationship. In February 2015, he again invited her to break up. According to him, he wanted to deal with his life.
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Former lovers are future friends
Former lovers decided to stay friends and keep in touch. From time to time they wrote to each other, and Ricardo often bumped into an ex-girlfriend in the city. He saw her jogging almost every week, and once Brenda even came to a restaurant during a romantic dinner that the doctor gave Nurse Mirlanda.
As it turns out later, Brenda and Ricardo's meetings were not accidental. The girl deliberately spied on her ex using passwords from his email and iCloud cloud storage. She also had the keys to his apartment. To record his movements, she downloaded a special application to her phone.
Thus, Brenda read Ricardo's correspondence with other girls and learned about his plans. She did not interfere in his life and watched carefully from the side, until in May 2015 he made a new acquaintance - 35-year-old children's dentist Kendra Hatcher. She looked like a real model: slim figure, white smile, green eyes and wavy hair.
Ricardo did not hide his feelings for Kendra. He posted joint photos on his Facebook page, where they hugged and glowed with happiness. “Everything started spinning really fast,” says Ricardo. - We had the same values. Our interests coincided from the first day of communication ”.
Brenda and Ricardo continued to be on friendly terms. In June, he wrote to her about a new girlfriend, without revealing his name. Brenda hid her true feelings and played the role of a good friend. In July, when Ricardo's car broke down, she sent him to a friend's repair shop. With him, she was always in a good mood and did not touch on the topic of the breakup. With all her appearance, she showed that she was happy to help him.
Rival
Meanwhile, Brenda followed Ricardo's personal life through Kendra's open Facebook account. She saw from photographs of the couple regularly leaving Texas and carefree resorts. Brenda was more and more filled with envy, jealousy and anger towards a pretty rival.
One day, she went to dinner with a dealership worker, Roberto Menendez, who was showing an interest in her. Unfortunately, all evening he had to listen to stories about Ricardo and his new girlfriend. At the end of the date, Brenda asked him to give her a ride to her friend. Roberto had no idea that he had brought her to the house where Kendra lived. He hoped to kiss the Mexican, but she stared out the window and paid no attention to him.
Brenda's former classmate Milton Martinez also invited her to a romantic dinner. However, according to him, almost the entire evening his companion talked about the ex-boyfriend and his passion. She even asked Milton if he had any acquaintances who could "hurt someone." He did not go into the details of her plan and advised her to give up this venture.
However, jealous Brenda did not even think to leave her rival alone. She met her cousin Moses Martinez one day for a cocktail and brought with her a metal baseball bat. She invited him to intimidate Kendra, and in exchange promised to buy him a car or pay child support. Moses decided that Brenda was drunk and did not take her words seriously.
Find an accomplice
Brenda decided to turn to a former colleague named Jennifer Escobar. She knew that a friend was having a difficult period in a relationship with her boyfriend. Brenda regularly listened to all of Jennifer's complaints and once offered to move in with her.
In early August, the friends gathered. Before Jennifer had time to unpack her things, Brenda began talking incessantly about Ricardo and his girlfriend.
“She was obsessed with them,” Jennifer recalls. At some point, she began to avoid meeting with Brenda and look for another reason to spend her free time outside the home.
During another discussion between Ricardo and his new girlfriend, Brenda offered Jennifer drugs or a car to help remove her rival. She said she wanted to beat Ricardo into a coma with a baseball bat. She also fantasized about thrusting a lethal dose of drugs into Kendra or beating her to death.
In mid-August, intimidated by the conversations, Jennifer hurried to leave Brenda. But that didn't stop the possessed ex. Soon Brenda contacted Jennifer's friend, 23-year-old single mother Crystal Cortez. She knew that she lived with her six-year-old son in her grandmother's house in a poor neighborhood and could hardly make ends meet.
From the side of Brand, Crystal seemed to be the embodiment of success. The Mexican woman dressed beautifully, wore expensive cosmetics and drove a used Lexus. In her apartment there were two sofas made of real leather and two large televisions.
“I thought she could be a good friend,” Crystal recalls.
Brenda took Crystal to restaurants and treated him to dinners. While her companion was enjoying the meal, she talked about her relationship with Ricardo and how he traded her for a new girlfriend.
“She said that it was because of Kendra that he stopped caring about her and paying attention to her. She was going to eliminate her rival. She complained that she could no longer tolerate it, ”said Crystal Cortez.
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Hire a hitman
Brenda promised to pay Crystal $ 500 for assistance in the murder. She agreed.
“I was broke, I had to take care of my son,” she explained. For several days, the accomplices followed Kendra with night-vision binoculars. They decided that it would be easier to shoot the opponent. Since none of them knew how to handle weapons, they decided to hire a hitman.
“She asked me if I knew anyone who could take it. I lived in a dysfunctional area, ”said Kristall Cortez.
They drove through the Kristall district, offering to random passers-by to shoot a man for money. Then they drove to the home of Crystal's mother. There, they ran into a former neighbor and his 31-year-old friend Christopher Love.
While wandering around the area, Brenda and Crystal heard that Christopher, a marijuana seller with a criminal record, was looking for seed money to open a den. They drove the drug dealer to his apartment and dropped in for a serious conversation. In an attempt to impress, Brenda lied to Christopher that she had ties to a drug cartel. She offered him drugs and money totaling three thousand dollars if he agreed to kill a man. He agreed.
Murder
In late August, Ricardo and Kendra visited the California city of San Francisco. They shared photos of riding tandem bikes and racing cars on Facebook. The couple wrote about their plans to travel to Cancun, Mexico in September, and then visit Kendra's homeland - the elite town of Pleasant Plains in Illinois - and meet her parents. After three months of relationship, the couple was going to get married.
Ricardo continued to correspond with Brenda. He supported her and wished her the best in her final exams at medical college. Ricardo also warned her that he was offered a job in another city, and in October he would leave.
Brenda was scared that very soon her lover would disappear from her life forever. She planned the assassination for September 2, 2015, the day before Ricardo and Kendra left for Cancun. The Mexican borrowed a silver BMW from a friend, but the car broke down on the fateful morning. He and Crystal drove the car to a workshop owned by Brenda's friend Jose Ortiz. He kindly invited clients to take his black Jeep Cherokee crossover while the BMW was being repaired.
They waited until Kendra finished her shift and got into her Toyota Camry. On the way, they lost sight of her in the traffic. It turned out that on the way home, she stopped by friends to borrow a waterproof camera for underwater photography in Cancun. Crystal and Christopher decided to wait for her in the covered parking lot near her house. Kendra arrived just a few minutes later.
As soon as the girl got out of the car, Christopher put a bullet in her head. Then he grabbed her bag and camera and ran into the black crossover. Crystal immediately pressed the gas pedal to the floor and disappeared from the parking lot.
All according to plan?
At this time, Brenda was sitting with a classmate in a restaurant after preparing for exams. The girls returned home at about nine in the evening. At home, she called Crystal to make sure everything went according to plan. All they had to do was change the workshop owner's crossover to BMW. Kendra Brenda kept her bag.
It seemed to Brenda that her plan to get Ricardo back was working perfectly. When the police questioned Ricardo on the day of the murder, he said he had no idea who could have done it. Of course, he did not think about Brenda, and that same evening he wrote to her that Kendra had been killed. She pretended to deeply regret his loss and did her best to cheer and support him.
The police had only one lead: a video from a video surveillance camera, where an unknown woman driving a black Jeep Cherokee leaves the parking lot. They decided to show this recording on the news air. The owner of the crossover recognized his car in the footage and demanded an explanation from Brenda. She was worried and said that Crystal had been using the car all day.
Brenda explained to Jose that her friend was addicted to drugs. She assumed that Crystal drove into the parking lot to pick up a dose from the drug dealer. Jose admitted that he is now afraid to drive a Jeep Cherokee around the area, as the police are hunting for this car. Brenda advised him to repaint the car in a different color and not expand on their conversation.
Miscalculation
After talking with his family, Jose decided to tell Detective Eric Barnes about Brand and Crystal, who was investigating the murder. Having learned about this, the policeman met with Ricardo. After talking with the detective, he himself began to suspect Brenda.
Eric Barnes directed the officers to the library where Brenda was studying and asked them to bring her to the station. During interrogation, she pretended not to understand why her name came up in the investigation into Kendra's murder. The interrogation lasted over two hours. She claimed that their relationship with Ricardo was not serious, and after parting, she easily returned to her former life. According to her, she was never interested in Ricardo's new relationship, so she did not know anything about Kendra.
When Brenda was asked to describe what she was doing on the day of the crime, she hid the trip to the auto repair shop. Instead, she constantly reminded that at the time of the murder she was having dinner at a restaurant with a classmate. She even brought proof - a neatly folded check.
Crystal was brought to the next cell for interrogation, who was worried and confused in her testimony. The interrogator confirmed that she was driving a Jeep Cherokee that day. She first stated that she was looking for a parking space to dine at a Mexican restaurant. The suspect then began to claim that she was with her son that day and parked her car to go with him to a nearby park.
After a series of leading questions, Crystal lied that a stranger named Lamar forced her to come to the parking lot because he wanted to rob Kendra. As a result, she almost completely split. Crystal stated that Brenda paid her and Lamar to carry out the robbery. According to her, she had no idea that Lamar would shoot. When the man committed the murder, he got back into the car and ordered Crystal to leave. She did not resist, as the killer threatened her with a weapon.
The edge of patience
Eric Barnes returned to the cell where Brenda was waiting. Instead of taking her out into the open, he spoke to her like a daughter who made a mistake.
“They broke my heart too, this feeling is familiar to me,” he said in a soft, fatherly tone. - I know how it feels when you want what you cannot get. I also know this feeling when you desire something so much that you are ready to do anything. "
Brenda pretended that the words had nothing to do with her, but the detective continued, “You couldn't get him back as long as Kendra was alive. I think you hated the very idea that you weren't good enough for Ricardo. (…) Perhaps his bar was too high for you. But be that as it may, you were not enough for him. This information is difficult to accept. Damn hard. Look in the mirror and say to yourself: "What was there in her that was not in me?"
Then he lowered his voice and almost whispered, “I don't think you're a bad person. But you know what? You were broken. You've been hurt. You had no other choice. ”He paused and continued. - Everyone has a border of patience. I think it was to her that you were brought. "
It seemed that Brenda was about to give up. However, she remained silent. On this, the detective decided to end the interrogation. He tried to detain her for an unpaid car fine, but she quickly paid off the debt and left.
The detective arrested Crystal and, through her correspondence on the phone, figured out the killer of Kendra, whom she called Lamar, Christopher Love. Soon he was also detained. Then the police tried to find and arrest Brenda, but by that time she had disappeared without a trace.
Unhappy ending
For half a year, Brenda lived with relatives in the Mexican city of Torreon. She was discovered by FBI agents working for the Mexican government. She had dual citizenship - Mexican and American. According to the laws of Mexico, a Mexican cannot be sent to another country, where he faces the death penalty for a crime. After the Texas district attorney assured that he would not ask the judge to sentence Brenda to death, she was returned to the United States.
Attorney Kevin Brooks understood that Brenda had an undeniable alibi. Then he decided that the only way to bring her to clean water was to force Crystal to testify against her in court. For this, the prosecutor promised Crystal a 35-year sentence. The lawyer assured her that with such a sentence, she could be released on parole in 15 years. The defendant agreed to make a deal and told the truth.
For the murder and robbery, Kendra Christopher was sentenced to death by injection. The trial against Brenda took place in June 2019. The jury sentenced her to life imprisonment without parole.
