Already serving life, convict gets 30 years for 1999 murder
Ariel Hernandez, an affiliate of South Florida’s Gambino organized crime family, will serve 30years in prison for the 1999 murder of an exotic dancer whose body was dumped in the Everglades.
Thursday’s guilty plea to second- degree murder means Hernandez, 47, will be spared the death penalty.
Hernandez was part of a South Florida- based Gambino crewthatwas arrested in a sweeping federal crackdownin 2000.
He is already serving a life prison term— in2002, a federal jury convicted him of racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, passing counterfeit checks and bank fraud.
A Miami- Dade grand jury in 2004 indicted him for the strangulation murder and rape of Jeanette Smith, 22, of Pembroke Pines, who performed under the stage name “Jade” at Thee Doll House in Sunny Isles Beach.
Prosecutor Michael Von Zamft told a judge Thursday that the state only agreed to waive the death penaltybecauseHernandez is serving life in federal prison for essentially the same crime.
And Smith’s family agreed to the deal to avoid “torture by going through another trial,” Von Zamft said.
Smith’s mother said the family wanted to avoid the tarring the slainwoman received by Hernandez’s defense at the federal trial.
“Whileweweresitting in the courtroom, Ariel Hernandez looked over at me and said, ‘ she deserved it,’’ Gina Smith wrote in a letter read to Circuit Judge Antonio Arzola. “It is for that reason that I believe he should never be let out of prison, not ever.”
According to investigators, Smith was murdered because the mob mistakenly believed Smith was a FBI informant.
Hernandez strangled Smith in a motel room and her larynxwas crushed. Investigators also found other severe injuries believed caused during the rape.
In his confession, he claimed she merely died during rough sex at the Olympia motel in Sunny Isles. Hernandez also pleaded guilty to sexual battery.
fisherman found Smith’s body, stuffed inside a cardboard box, in thewater near an Alligator Alley boat ramp.