SANFORD, Fla. – It was a brazen daylight kidnapping of a Homestead woman that seemed to be all tied up.
But on Thursday, Seminole County prosecutors dropped a bombshell in court when they revealed four people were behind the kidnapping and killing of Katherine Aguasvivas back in April.
They say Giovany Crespo Hernandez, the man Aguasvivas drove up from South Florida to meet, who until now was only facing drug charges, made the call to his co-conspirators because he wanted to rob her of $170,000 in drug money she was picking up from him.
Images then showed the alleged kidnappers, Jordanish Torres Garcia and Kevin Ocasio Justiniano, buying lighter fluid at a gas station as they went to intercept their victim.
Another picture showed the convoy of cars driving down a highway to a construction site, where Aguasvivas would be doused in the fluid, shot, and she and the car set on fire.
The latest arrests also include a central Florida man, Dereck Alexis Rodriguez Bonilla, who prosecutors say drove to the construction site in his mother’s car and gave the kidnappers the gun used to shoot both Aguasvivas and a tow truck driver in a drive-by the night before the kidnapping.
Authorities allege the tow truck driver was murdered after towing one of the suspects’ vehicles.
Prosecutors say after the tow truck driver died, the suspects took something out of the back of his truck but did not give any specifics.
According to court documents, some of the suspects have already given partial confessions, which will make it harder for their attorneys to defend them.
The maximum sentence each of the four men could get is death.
Also facing multiple felonies in this case is former Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Francisco Estrella, who’s accused of illegally accessing and sharing information about the case with the victim’s husband, a childhood friend of the deputy’s wife.
However, Estrella claims they have wrongfully linked him to the crimes.