Pedro Bravo, the killer convicted of murdering a University of Florida student and his former friend in 2012, was charged with getting others to lie for him to get a new trial before he was found dead in his prison cell this week.
Pedro Bravo, the killer convicted of murdering a University of Florida student and his former friend in 2012, was charged with getting others to lie for him to get a new trial before he was found dead in his prison cell this week.
While the 2012 crime happened in north Central Florida, all three of the main people involved – the killer, his victim and the young woman Bravo was obsessed with – were graduates of Doral Academy.
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WATCH HEREChristian Aguilar was murdered in September 2012. And Bravo, a jealous ex-boyfriend of Aguilar's girlfriend, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder, claiming innocence to the end.
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The overwhelming evidence said otherwise. But some people have trouble believing a then 18-year-old could be so cruel and violent, and a woman who saw a YouTube video sympathetic to Bravo claimed she saw Aguilar walk away from a fight with Bravo and get into someone else’s car the day he disappeared.
That and the recantation of a jailhouse snitch, who testified against Aguilar in 2014, supported a motion for a new trial.
But prosecutors say both Kelcie Edwards and Michael Angelo were lying, conspiring to commit perjury.
Then days before Bravo was to appear on those new charges, he apparently died by suicide in prison Wednesday.
"We’re very sad about his loss and we regret we didn’t have our day in court to go forward with the motion," said Bravo's attorney, Hani Demetrious.
One other person named in the witness tampering charges was Bravo’s own mother Azucena Duque, an uncharged co-conspirator, the Alachua County prosecutor said.
The two surviving defendants have pleaded not guilty. NBC6 reached out to Duque for comment, but have not heard back.
The state attorney said there was enough evidence to name her as a co-conspirator but insufficient evidence to charge her, though she’s listed as a possible witness against the others.
