Notorious murder

Very few people currently jailed have spent more time behind bars in Miami-Dade than Jorge Barahona, who’s been charged with first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder and several counts of aggravated child neglect against his adopted twin children.

Also charged with the same offenses was his wife, Carmen Barahona.

On Valentine’s Day in 2011, police found 10-yearold Nubi Barahona dead, wrapped in a plastic bag and covered with chemicals and decomposing in the bed of a pick-up truck on the side of I-95 in West Palm Beach.

She had been dead for three days.

Her twin brother, Victor, was in the truck’s cab suffering seizures from chemical burns. Beside him, suffering a similar fate, was Jorge Barahona. Victor lived. Investigators ultimately determined the twins had been beaten and tortured repeatedly in the family’s Westchester home.

Prosecutors also believe they were starved and often tied up in the bathtub for long periods of time with the door locked.

The case also rocked the state’s child welfare agency, which allowed the adoption of the twins and then overlooked repeated allegations of abuse. A court-appointed guardian told investigators the Barahonas barred him from entering the home on official welfare visits.

Trial was delayed for years as lawyers who took hundreds of depositions came and went for various reasons. Then, just as the COVID pandemic hit in February 2020, Carmen Barahona pleaded guilty and accepted a life sentence in exchange for the state dropping its ultimate punishment as death. Trial was further delayed by COVID.

FILE Jorge Barahona sits handcuffed and wearing chains on his ankles in a Miami-Dade courtroom in 2011.