Son ofwoman found dead in SoBe apartment is charged with her murder

An exterminator’s visit started a South Beach murder investigation Saturday and a bloody fingerprint on a can of disinfectant wipes near a decomposed woman’s body helped end it early Tuesday, according to Miami Beach police.

That’s when police arrested Edwin Chow, 31, on a second degree murder charge for what they believe to be a matricide — police believe the body found in 659 Meridian Ave., unit 12A, to be the apartment’s other resident, Chow’s mother, 63-yearold Candida Navarrette.

Miami Beach police say official identification hasn’t been made “due to her advanced stage of decomposition.”

An arrest report says when an exterminator got no answer Saturday afternoon while doing his rounds, the building manager let him in and they discovered Navarrette’s body in the apartment’s lone bedroom. Police officers described “blood throughout the entire apartment” and “a body partially wrapped in sheets” with a head covered by a pillow.

Sunday’s autopsy said “penetrating injuries to the neck” killed the woman. On Monday, a crime scene unit supervisor found the aforementioned fingerprint, which the report says matched Chow’s fingerprint (he’d completed pretrial intervention after a 2008 misdemeanor marijuana possession bust).

On Monday, a pair of patrol officers picked up Chow at 11th Street and Ocean Drive, two blocks from the Miami Beach police headquarters. The report claims Chow admitted using a kitchen knife to stab his mother as she lay on the living room couch’s pullout bed.