Jurors hear of missing mother’s last day before disappearance

A teenager took the stand on Friday to testify against her father, Cid Torrez, whois accused of murdering her mother five years ago.

Vilet Torrez, 18, shares a name with her mother, who has not been seen since early on March 31, 2012. She told a jury on Friday that she woke up before dawn that morning — she wasn’t sure what time — and heard strange noises coming from the first floor of the two-story townhome where she lived with her mother and two brothers.

“I heard like a howling sound and some crying, and my dad’s voice overlapping,” she said. “He was saying ‘No, you wake up,’ five or six times.”

Cid Torrez has told investigators that his estranged wife, 38, never came home on March 31, but prosecutors LanieBandell and Heather Henricksen are arguing that Cid Torrez killed his wife and hid her body, which has never been found.

Surveillance footage from the Harbour Lakes community in Miramar shows Vilet Torrez’s vehicle arriving at 5:17 a.m. on March 31, and it remained in the parking lot until police towed it days later.

Prosecutors say the couple’s daughter, 12 at the time, heard critical evidence that helps prove Cid Torrez murdered his wife.

Cid and Vilet Torrez were separated at the time of her disappearance, and he had not lived in the Miramar home with his family since September 2011. But he had arranged to take the children to Orlando on March 30, 2012, a Friday.

That afternoon, their motherwentona date with a co-worker, who testified earlier onMonday.

Zoe Rodriguez said he was dating Vilet Torrez in the weeks prior to her disappearance, and they met on South Beach that Friday. They were joined by Rodriguez’s son, also named Zoe.

Rodriguez said they had ice cream, then later had dinner. At the end of the evening, he said, they all went home to Rodriguez’s house in Miami-Dade County.

Rodriguez did not know when Vilet Torrez left his home, but he recalled that it was sudden and disturbing. “She said I gotta go I gotta go. I gotta go,” Rodriguez said.

Cid Torrez apparently knew about the relationship and did not approve, and he made that clear in an earlier conversation, Rodriguez said. “You don’t know what I could do to you,” Torrez allegedly said to Rodriguez.

But Rodriguez said he refused to be intimidated. “She’s 105 pounds,” Rodriguez said he replied, referring to Vilet Torrez. “I am not. Stop being a bully.”

Instead of taking the children to Orlando on March 30, Cid Torrez took themto amovie, his daughter testified. He then took them home to Miramar. The daughter said she knew that her mother was on a date, but she did not tell her father.

Torrez stayed with the children that Friday night and was home when his wife’s car came into the gate.

Defense lawyer Richard Della Fera challenged the daughter on the reliability of her memory of what she heard, suggesting it might have been her imagination.

The daughter said she was certain that she heard the howling sound and the statements by her father.

The trial is scheduled to resumeMonday.

rolmeda@SunSentinel.com, 954-356-4457, Twitter @SSCourts and @rolmeda