Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Miramar man on trial, charged with murdering his missing wife
Broward prosecutors promised a jury on Thursday that they wouldn’t need to produce the body of Vilet Torrez to prove she was murdered by her estranged husband five years ago.
The actions of Cid Torrez, 43, both before and after his wife went missing, demonstrate his guilt, said prosecutor Lanie Bandell. And other evidence, she said, will give the jury more than enough proof to come back with a guilty verdict.
Vilet Torrez disappeared on March 31, 2012, last seen on surveillance video entering the gates of the Harbour Lake Townhomes community in Miramar. Though her husband no longer lived with her, he was in the home at the time looking after the couple’s three children.
One of the children, the eldest daughter who was 12 when her mother vanished, is expected to testify that she recalls hearing a howling sound followed by her father’s voice saying “No, you wake up!”
Cid Torrez reported his wife missing on April 2.
During a 911 call, he told a dispatcher that he hadn’t heard from his wife since after she said she was on her way to work the day before she vanished. He said she never came home as expected Saturday morning. He also said something that caught the attention of attorneys on both sides of the case. “Now Sunday I definitely did it,” he told the dispatcher.
Attorneys on Thursday clashed over the meaning of that statement, with prosecutors presenting it as an accidental admission and defense lawyer Richard Della Fera telling jurors his client admitted to nothing more than calling Vilet’s mother to say she was missing.
Prosecutors said they intend to play the 911 recording for the jury at some point during the trial, which is expected to last two weeks or more.
Della Fera told the jury Thursday that Cid Torrez knew no more about his wife’s disappearance than anyone else. Cid Torrez didn’t call 911 to report her missing right away because they did not live together and he had no reason to assume anything had happened to her, Della Fera said.
Jurors will hear evidence that the Torrez marriage was in shambles, Bandell said. Cid and Vilet were no longer living together, and she was seeing someone else.
Cid Torrez had installed spyware on her phone to track her movements, and he made statements to a friend before his wife’s disappearance asking for help buying a gun, asking about how to hide a body, and threatening, “if she’s not with me, she will be dead.”
Prosecutors also intend to introduce evidence that dogs trained in the detection of human remains were brought to Torrez’s Miramar neighborhood, and they led their police handlers to the Torrez home, One dog detected the scent of remains in the trunk of a Jaguar that belonged to Cid Torrez. None were found.
The trial will resume today before Broward Circuit Judge Lisa Porter.