A landscaper in Florida who has been charged with killing the mother of his toddler tried to convince everyone that she had vanished after being taken by ICE, authorities say.
Saul Garcia Gonzalez, 40, who is originally from Mexico, allegedly fired a single shot into the head of Nerida Martel, 37, and left her body in a canal near their home in Miami last month, police reports reveal (see the link from WPLG).
Believing that his girlfriend’s friends and family would get anxious, he told them that “the victim was possibly in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” according to investigators. Yet when the name didn’t turn up in federal custody lists, friends pressed him to file a missing‑person report, which he finally did on Oct. 9—just three days after he claimed the last time he saw Martel was dropping their two‑year‑old daughter off at daycare.
Two days after the missing‑person filing, her body was discovered in a canal close to the couple’s house, with a gunshot wound to the head.
During the investigation, detectives spotted cracks in Gonzalez’s story. They learned that Martel had apparently reached out to a friend for a place to stay with only her daughter, and that family members knew Gonzalez was verbally abusive.
Phone records traced the man to the canal area at the same time she disappeared. He was arrested on Wednesday and charged with second‑degree murder. González was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Thursday and is being held without bond. It’s unclear why he would have mentioned ICE or the possibility that her immigration status was illegal.
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