Final report: Evidence found in Marcano’s apartment in hours after disappearance

When Miya Marcano’s family members called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to report her missing on a Friday night in late September, the deputy who responded to the Arden Villas apartments was shown several indications that all was not right.

Marcano’s roommate — who entered Marcano’s bedroom through a window — noted that a small shelving unit was wedged against the door, evidently “to prevent anyone from entering the room from the outside,” according to OCSO’s final investigative report, which was released Tuesday.

Locks Marcano’s father had installed that should have prevented anyone from opening the window were missing. Jewelry was on the floor and luggage for a flight to Fort Lauderdale she’d missed that night, arousing concerns, sat next to her desk. And there was a “small patch of dried red substance” on her pillow — where tests would later confirm hers and her killer’s blood had been spilled, the report said.

Though Marcano’s loved ones called twice more that night and named the man later identified as her killer, Arden Villas maintenance worker Armando Caballero, as a possible perpetrator, it would take eight days before her decomposing body was found.

The report released Tuesday confirmed several details that Marcano’s family had previously made public, including that a security guard at Arden Villas and family members discovered potential evidence in her apartment — including a box cutter that was under a rug and a fingerprint on her windowsill — that the initial deputy to respond didn’t find.

Marcano’s family has repeatedly accused OCSO of initially failing to treat her disappearance seriously. However, Sheriff John Mina has defended his agency’s investigation, saying that it’s likely Marcano was killed in her apartment before the agency was ever called and deputies lacked probable cause to detain Caballero the night she disappeared.

Key fob data documented in the report shows Caballero accessed Marcano’s apartment using a master key shortly before she came home from work. According to investigators, Marcano was likely killed in her apartment after a struggle and put in the trunk of Caballero’s car from her bedroom window, which leads to a parking lot and a wooded area, to avoid witnesses.

“This is the most logical explanation as Miya’s front door is surrounded by numerous other apartment doors and leads to the main parking lot, which was very active and busy around this time based on surveillance footage reviewed by deputies,” the report concluded.

Marcano’s family, who are suing Arden Villas for wrongful death and negligence in hiring Caballero, have argued the use of duct tape over her limbs and mouth indicated she might have been alive when she was taken.

A spokesperson for the family’s lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the report. In December, Daryl Washington, one of the attorneys, blasted what he said was the Sheriff’s Office’s inability “to take Miya’s disappearance seriously and the Preiss Company’s failure to provide the Key Fob reports in a timely manner.”

“We do know that you do not duct tape and bound a person if they are already dead, which gives us reason to believe Miya may have left that apartment alive,” Washington said at the time.

Marcano’s loved ones said Caballero pursued a relationship with Marcano, who also worked for the complex, but was rebuffed multiple times. According to the report, Marcano’s friends described Caballero as obsessive, sending Marcano inappropriate texts and offering her gifts, including hundreds of dollars which Marcano declined.

Her body was found Oct. 2 in a wooded area near Tymber Skan, a dilapidated apartment complex in Orlando. The OCSO report shows that deputies went there Sept. 28 to see if anyone had information about her disappearance but, unlike other areas investigators were looking at the time, no search of the complex was done.

Officials would later reveal a cellphone belonging to Caballero had pinged there the day the 19-yearold Valencia College student went missing. During the search, Caballero killed himself in the maintenance shed of an apartment complex in Longwood.

After her death, Marcano’s family created the Miya Marcano Foundation, which offers its support for other missing persons cases, including the controversial disappearance of Osceola County woman Paola Miranda Rosa.

The foundation also pushed for Miya’s Law, which would require apartment complexes with more than five units to conduct national background checks, including of sex offender registries, for new hires and keep a log of who has access to apartments.

The law, which unanimously passed the Florida Legislature this month, would also give tenants 24-hour notice for non-emergency maintenance work.

Though Arden Villas issued a statement saying Caballero’s background check came up empty for “charges of burglary or sexual assault,” a background check report provided by a lawyer of Marcano’s family showed he faced past charges, including a 2016 conviction for aggravated assault.

The report released Tuesday shows investigators were looking at Caballero’s roommate as a possible accomplice after he was allegedly caught trying to create a false alibi.

According to the report, the roommate initially told deputies he was with Caballero at their apartment watching movies the night Marcano went missing, which was later found to be a lie.

The roommate later said he had been asleep and didn’t notice Caballero had left the apartment, but phone records showed the two spoke on the phone that night, the report said.

Investigators attempted to search the phone but couldn’t recover deleted records and cellphone data suggested he wasn’t with Caballero at Arden Villas or Tymber Skan, according to the report.

The report concluded there was “no clear evidence” implicating the roommate with Marcano’s disappearance, and he wasn’t charged with a crime.