Mom of teen convicted in deadly stabbing at child’s party is accused of trying to hire hit man
A woman was arrested after trying to hire a hit man to kill two witnesses who testified against her teenage son, who was convicted in the stabbing death of a man during a 5-year-old’s birthday party, Palm Beach County deputies said Tuesday.
Josefina Cardona-Cardona, 43, blamed the witnesses for her son’s imprisonment and is accused of trying to hire a man to kill them, according to her arrest report. What she did not know, the report says, was that the man she thought was a killer-for-hire was an undercover agent.
Her son, 16-year-old Manuel Marcos Cardona, from Lake Worth, pleaded guilty in February to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in the 2022 killing, court records show. Palm Beach deputies say Manuel, then 14, stabbed 19-year-old Andres PerezAlvarado during a brawl at the birthday party. He died the next day at a hospital.
Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives first heard about the woman’s alleged plot through an informant on April 17 of this year, according to her arrest report.
The informant told detectives that a woman, whom he knew as “Maria,” was inquiring about finding someone to kill the people she blamed for her son’s imprisonment. The informant gave detectives the woman’s photo and phone number, which they later determined belonged to Cardona-Cardona.
On April 18, following the detectives’ instructions, the informant called Cardona-Cardona and she agreed to meet with the informant and the undercover agent she thought was a hit man. Later that day, they met near a high school in Lake Worth Beach.
Cardona-Cardona, detectives say, identified the people she wanted killed as “Catalina” and “Alonso,” and showed photos of them to the undercover agent. Further investigation revealed their names: Catarina Jimenez and Alonzo Perez-Ramirez, the two witnesses.
Detectives say CardonaCardona was captured on video agreeing to pay $8,000 for the murders, telling the undercover agent she would call her