Woman’s dream of a better life led to murder

A judge had just pronounced them husband and wife when the man leaned in for a kiss. Maria Stella Gomez-Mulett refused to lower her mask, not wanting their lips to touch. And so the man kissed his new bride on the cheek.

Somewhat fresh out of a tumultuous marriage, the 44-year-old Colombian was trying to reinvent herself in the United States. The sham marriage to 66-year-old Roberto Colon, she thought, would help

her become a U.S. citizen faster. And then perhaps she — a scientist by trade in Colombia — could get a solid job in medicine in South Florida, friends and family said after news of her killing.

Colon is accused of murdering Gomez-Mulett and burying her body in the backyard of his home in Boynton Beach. Gomez-Mulett’s family and friends, speaking for the first time in interviews with the South Florida Sun Sentinel and El Sentinel, are providing a clearer picture of her life and dreams before they were taken from her.

“It is really a nightmare,” said Sandra Montes, who is related to Gomez-Mulett by marriage. “I still can’t believe this is real — that it is happening.”

Finding a way to help

Not too long before the marriage, Gomez-Mulett began caring for an elderly woman who was in the throes of mental decline. They met in November.

They ventured to the beach together. They got along well. Their needs, it seemed, were being met.

Sometime around Christmas, 86-year-old Gladys Monagas proposed that her caretaker should meet her son. The woman explained that Robert Colon was single and that he could help Gomez-Mulett get her papers faster.

And so on a Tuesday in a courtroom in Delray Beach, Gomez-Mulett and Colon were married. They shared a partial kiss. They cemented their deal.

This arrangement was not going to be romantic, but rather a business partnership.

Gomez-Mulett was to continue to live with and care for Colon’s mother in Hialeah and he, in return, would remain in his Boynton Beach home and would help Gomez-Mulett get her papers, said Margarita Arango, a close South Florida friend and confidante of Gomez-Mulett.

But Gomez-Mulett felt that Colon wanted more, said Arango, believed to be one of just two people Gomez-Mulett actually shared the news of the sham marriage with.

“I think he wanted a more formal relationship,” Arango said. “She didn’t want anything with him. She told him about the papers. And he agreed, but she was very clear and told him that she did not want to have any husband-towife, or intimate, relationship. And he agreed with that.”

A missing woman

A little more than three weeks after their courthouse marriage, the daily check-in phone calls Gomez-Mulett made to those closest to her stopped.

A week after that, police went to Colon’s door asking where Gomez-Mulett was. Colon said he didn’t know.

They asked if they could search his home and his phone, which by then had already been deleted of text messages, police said in court records.

Agents swarmed Colon’s Boynton Beach home, finding blood on the front door. They searched the home collecting things like a shoe and purse. Then they moved on to the garage workshop.

The workshop had blood on the floor, the walls, a window and even on the ceiling, court records say. Colon told them he butchered animals in the workshop, police said. He also suggested Gomez-Mulett “must be swimming with the fishes,” police said.

Police said that as they did their search, Colon called out: “Find the body. Find the body.”

Agents carted away seven handsaws and hacksaws and more than a dozen saw blades from his garage workshop, according to a returned search warrant. Police also seized hammers, mops and a crowbar.

Also taken to be tested were nine gallon-size bags of what turned out to be marijuana. As agents were leaving his home, records say Colon blurted out, “At least you didn’t find the body at my house.”

Days later, Boynton Beach police got a lead when a woman told them she heard Colon threaten to strangle and kill Gomez-Mulett and then bury her in the backyard. The tipster said she heard the threat another time when he announced after hanging up the phone with Gomez-Mulett that he would like to kill and bury her in the backyard.

On March 5, five weeks into the marriage, Gomez-Mulett’s remains were discovered in the backyard of her husband’s home, a place she never lived. For Gomez-Mulett, the American dream became a nightmare, Montes said.

Just before Colon was led away from his home, police said, he blurted: “There’s one thing they can’t do. They can’t put, what’s his name, Humpty Dumpty, back together again.”

Colon is on suicide watch at a jail in Palm Beach County. He has been charged with first-degree murder. A judge has ordered that he undergo a mental health evaluation. Colon’s mother has been moved into an assisted-living facility, Montes said.

In recent days, Colon refused to make an appearance before the judge.

A lawyer from the Palm Beach County Public Defender’s Office, Stephen Arbuzow, entered a not guilty plea to the murder charge on Colon’s behalf. Arbuzow declined to comment Wednesday.

A falling out

Before his arrest, Colon told police he and Gomez-Mulett agreed to marry on Jan. 26, just weeks after meeting each other, but that the deal was off because he didn’t trust her and believed that she had taken thousands of dollars from his mother.

Friends told police the last time Gomez-Mulett was heard from was Feb. 18 as she drove north to Colon’s home to return the car she used to care for Colon’s mother. She, too, wanted to end the arrangement.

Arango said she tried to talk her friend out of driving to Boynton Beach, saying she shouldn’t be going alone if she dropped the car off. She said she worried her friend would be stuck there with the man her friend wanted to be done with.

Arango still was on the phone with Gomez-Mulett as she got to Colon’s place.

Gomez-Mulett told her she’d call her right back, and before she hung up the phone, Arango said she heard her friend say, “Maggie, Maggie. Roberto!”

The went line dead and Arango called back. Nothing.

She tried again. No answer.

Hours later, police were called about a mile away after a bloody purse, just like the one Gomez-Mulett carried, was found discarded on the side of the road.

Inside was a broken set of rosary beads, similar to the ones that were used to ring Gomez-Mulett’s neck, court records say.

It’s unclear when Gomez-Mulett’s body will be allowed to be moved out of the country. It is not likely that her remains will be sent back to Colombia for months, friends and relatives say. Now these same people are left wondering if there was anything they could have done to prevent Gomez-Mulett’s death.

Pedro Mulett, who also lives in South Florida, said he and Gomez-Mulett grew up in the same place, Corozal, Sucre in Northern Colombia, and they both studied in Barranquilla. He said his cousin dreamed of coming to the U.S. and working in a blood blank. He said he would have tried to stop the sham marriage had he known.

Montes said Gomez-Mulett told her about the proposition from Colon’s mother, but never told her she went through with the marriage.

“I still cannot believe this,” Montes said.