Escapee’s attempt at alibi backfired, files show

Dayonte Omar Resiles told his friends he needed an alibi.

DNA on a bloody knife placed him at the scene of a home invasion murder. Lawyers were preparing to argue over whether he should face the death penalty in 2016 when he stunned a packed courtroom by freeing himself from his shackles and bolting out the door, down the stairs, out of the building and into a waiting getaway car.

His escape on July 15, 2016, elevated Resiles from routine murder defendant to the top of Broward County’s most wanted list.

After his recapture five days later, Resiles allegedly got to work on a new plan – to recruit even more people to manipulate the evidence to show that regardless of what the DNA seemed to prove, Resiles could not have committed the Sept. 8, 2014, murder of Jill Halliburton Su in Davie because he was in Georgia at the time.

But the effort to create an alibi backfired, according to documents in the case file. Detectives investigating Resiles’ whereabouts were now able to fine tune their timeline in the murder case, demonstrating what Resiles was doing, and where, in the days before and

after Su’s death.

Resiles also was hit with 37 new conspiracy charges to go along with the 33 charges he was already facing after the escape.

Police say Resiles acted alone when he targeted the Su home in the gated WestRidge community, found the 59-year-old victim at home, and stabbed her to death, leaving her body in a bathtub as he left the house.

But Resiles wasn’t alone when he committed his next crimes, according to prosecutors. Eight people were charged with helping him before, during and after the July 2016 escape from the fourth-floor courtroom, and seven more were charged with helping him concoct the alibi and suggest that he was being framed for the murder by another man, one who conveniently cannot rebut the allegations because he’s dead.

His skill at recruiting so many people to his cause had law enforcement dubbing their investigation “Operation Rico Suave.”

Jill Halliburton Su lived with her husband and her 20-year-old son in a single family home on the 10300 block of Southwest 22nd Place, just west of Nob Hill Road. A distant relative, but not an heiress, of the founder of the Halliburton multinational energy corporation, she was married to Nan-Yao Su, a renowned professor of entomology at the University of Florida’s Food and Agricultural Sciences Research and Education Center in Fort Lauderdale.

Su and her husband had an older daughter as well. According to those who knew her, Su spoke often of her butterfly garden and love of home landscaping. She volunteered for years as a reader at Insight for the Blind, a Fort Lauderdale nonprofit that produces audio recordings of books and articles for the visually impaired.

Justin Su, 20 at the time, found his mother’s body in a bathtub nearly filled with bloody water. He pulled her out, then called 911.

Detectives were suspicious and questioned Justin Su for hours, making it clear that he was a suspect and insinuating at one point that if he wasn’t the killer, he was being framed — possibly by his father.

Days later, police apologized to the victim’s husband and son. Justin Su’s initial confusion about how his mother died was chalked up to the trauma of finding her body.

There was a significant piece of evidence that Justin Su could not have faked — a knife on a welcome mat outside the house had DNA on it that did not belong to anyone in the family. The same DNA was on a belt that had been used to tie the victim up.

The DNA, investigators said, belonged to Resiles, then 20, who had several burglary charges and juvenile cases on his criminal record. Resiles was arrested on Sept. 18, 2014.

Resiles told Broward Circuit Judge Raag Singhal that he escaped to look for evidence to prove his innocence. Investigators who examined the phone he used during his six days on the run said it showed he watched pornography and news accounts of his escape and checked his social media pages.

When he was recaptured, eight alleged accomplices were charged with helping him before, during and after his flight.

But prosecutors say he wasn’t done trying to get away with murder. Late last year, he tried to recruit a Broward detention deputy to contact friends to develop an alibi.

The detention deputy immediately reported Resiles’ effort to recruit him, and detectives read every note Resiles sent out.