South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Arrest warrant: DNA, phone records link pair to Lauderdale Lakes murder
They arranged a meeting under the guise of selling a Rolex watch, but the set-up ended with a 29-year-old man shot to death inside of his car at a Lauderdale Lakes apartment and his accused killers fleeing to another state.
Alexis Lynn Rupert, 21, and Neal Rice, 41, each face a first-degree murder charge in the killing of Emmanuel Antonio Tinoco on May 15, the Broward Sheriff ’s Office said Friday.
About 9:30 p.m. that Sunday night, multiple people called 911 about a shooting at the Pacific Point Apartments in the 2600 block of North Pacific Circle, according to an arrest warrant. There they found an unresponsive man in the driver’s seat of a gray Mercedes Benz riddled with bullets, the passenger door left ajar and 13 spent bullets and the dust cover of an AK-47-style rifle outside on the ground.
Surveillance cameras at the complex minutes before the shooting recorded a woman getting out of Tinoco’s car, walking toward one of the buildings and going back to Tinoco’s car. Two others in dark clothes were seen walking toward the car “in a stealth-like manner,” the warrant says, one of them armed with a rifle as they approached.
The armed person, later identified as Rice, fired numerous rounds while standing on the passenger side of the car before the woman, Rice and the other unidentified person ran away, the warrant says.
Broward Sheriff ’s detectives searched Tinoco’s phone for clues, finding he had arranged to meet with a woman who said her name was “Lexxii” about buying a Rolex watch at the time
of the murder, according to the warrant. Throughout the Sheriff ’s Office’s investigation, detectives learned Rupert used multiple aliases, including Shannon Green, Giselle and Lexxii, while working as an escort.
Inside Tinoco’s car, detectives found a long blonde hair that matched the description of the woman seen on surveillance video before the murder. Phone records showed Rupert called Rice’s phone number four times before the murder and once after, the warrant says.
Investigators learned from Rice’s Instagram photos that he knew Tinoco. Rice had shared pictures of him and Tinoco at a club in Miami in 2020 and messages between the two in September 2021 about Tinoco selling Rice’s gun without asking him, according to the warrant.
Phone records showed that Rice and Rupert traveled together from North Bay Village in MiamiDade County to Lauderdale Lakes and returned to Miami-Dade after the shooting. Their cellphones then placed them both at a hotel in Austin, Texas, the warrant says.
Eleven days after the murder, a Sheriff ’s Office
homicide sergeant traveled to Texas to watch the pair. Both were questioned at the Austin Police Department.
Rice told detectives that Rupert went by Lexxii and that she worked as an escort who occasionally used an apartment at North Pacific Point to meet with her clients, the warrant says. He said he was in Florida during the murder and lived at North Bay Village but denied having anything to do with the killing or ever touching a gun.
Rupert’s Instagram messages showed she arranged for a girl younger than 21 who was living in another state to fly to South Florida so the two could go to clubs and bars to pick up people who “have a lot of money or a nice ass watch,” get them drunk and rob them, records say. Rupert had also met with a man in Miami on his boat and told Rice about the date.
“People with boats almost always have watches,” Rice texted Rupert back, the warrant says.
On Thursday, investigators found DNA that matched both Rice and Rupert at the murder scene. Authorities extradited Rupert to Broward County July 2 and Rice on Wednesday, the Sheriff ’s Office said.