A woman living in Hialeah disappeared. Cops say they found her in her husband’s backyard
Roberto Colon’s Boynton Beach house was the first place police officers went when investigating the disappearance of Maria Stella Gomez Mullet on Feb. 20. That’s where Gomez’s friends told police she was going when they last heard from her.
And that’s where police found her Friday, according to an arrest report that paints Colon as a homicidal loudmouth. Fingerprints identified the human remains in Colon’s backyard as Gomez.
The 66-year-old Colon, who had taunted detectives a week earlier with “Find the body, find the body,” has been charged with first-degree murder and two counts of misdemeanor marijuana possession.
Gomez had been living in Hialeah as a live-in caretaker of Colon’s mother. She was 44.
ARRANGEMENTS AND ACCUSATIONS
The last Gomez’s friends knew, she was driving up to Colon’s house on Southeast 28th Court on Feb. 18. When police first spoke to Colon on Feb. 20, the arrest report says, he told them he’d married her as part of a deal: She gets
U.S. citizenship, and he gets a caretaker for his mother living with dementia in Hialeah, 60 miles from the house Colon’s owned since 2000.
Colon told police that she stole thousands of dollars via fraud from his mother within a few months. She’d been there two days earlier, the report says he admitted, but the two argued and he fired her as his mother’s caregiver.
On Feb. 23, a friend of
Gomez told detectives she’d talked to the caretaker as she drove to Colon’s home on Feb. 18. The friend said Gomez planned to leave the car, which Colon accused her of getting through defrauding his mother; a purse Colon’s mother had given her; and other things because she wanted a total break of relations from Colon.
The friend also said before the call ended, she heard Gomez said, “No, no, no, Roberto!” Subsequent calls went to voicemail.
Feb. 23 was also when a person found a bloody purse less than a mile from Colon’s house. Among the items inside: a broken white rosary necklace and crucifix. Both the purse and the crucifix were with Gomez in a photo a relative showed police. Friends and family said they talked with her daily and were sure something had happened to her.
That same day, the report says, Colon told detectives Gomez probably was in hiding to escape arrest for stealing from his mother.
‘‘FIND THE BODY’
When police showed up on Feb. 24 to talk to Colon, the report said, he said that during his argument with Gomez on Feb. 18, she dropped her phone after bumping into a wall. The phone hit the floor and the battery popped out. He left for a doctor’s appointment and, when he came back, she was gone and the car remained.
Colon allowed a search of his home, car and phone, and gave up DNA. Detectives said most of the text messages and call history on the phone had been wiped. Then, there was blood.
The blood on the door? Colon: it was probably his from being cut by the aluminum frame he installed in January.
The “large amount of blood splatter going from the floor, onto the wall, onto the window and even the ceiling” in his garage/ workshop? Colon: He’d never noticed it before, but one of his dogs died there about five years ago. One of his remaining dogs bled from a medical problem about five months ago. The dog must have shaken himself, causing the blood splatter.
Police swabbed the blood and were back at Colon’s house on Feb. 26 with a search warrant. The blood had tested to be human blood.
The report said Colon verbally swaggered before the detectives, calling the garage/workshop his “abbatoir,” a place where animals are slaughtered. He told them Gomez was “swimming with the fishes.” He challenged them to “Find the body, find the body” and, as they left, sent them on their way with “well, at least you didn’t find a body at my house.”
A woman told detectives on Wednesday she’d heard a January argument during which Colon threaten to strangle Gomez and bury her in the backyard. She said he’d flat out said he’d like to do that after a January phone call.
When detectives returned on Friday, the arrest report said, they busted Colon for marijuana found during one of the earlier searches. They also came with a search warrant for the backyard.
The report said before Colon was taken to the police station, he was overheard telling a friend, “There’s one thing they can’t do, they can’t put — what’s his name? — Humpty Dumpty back together again” and “There’s really nothing that they can take from my house, you know? It’s no use to them in prosecution. Except parts and s---.”
The report says they found human remains that might be of considerable use — they had fingerprints. Those fingerprints were identified as belonging to Maria Stella Gomez Mullet.
The chaotic scene that unfolded over the weekend at the federal vaccine site in Florida City should be proof enough even for Gov. Ron DeSantis: Florida needs a plan for an orderly rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
We cannot go on like this — nor should we.
On, Saturday, word had spread on social media and through word of mouth that anyone over 18 with a state ID could get a vaccine in Florida City because the recently opened location, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, hadn’t been using up its allotment of 500 shots a day.
Lines formed quickly, and people waited — in the pelting rain and in the beating sun — for as long as six hours for the chance to get the shots, as the Miami Herald reported.
By Sunday, workers at the site added to the confusion — however well-meaning they may have been — when they vacillated between administering the shots anyone in line or following the state’s restrictions, meaning vaccinating only those over 65 or in certain narrow categories. Some people got shots even though they didn’t qualify, while others in similar situations were sent packing.
IT’S NOT A GAME
In a comparison that should mortify the DeSantis administration, one person likened the free-for-all to a game of “real-life monopoly.” Who gets the shot? Roll the dice and see if you land on Vaccine Place.
By the time Sunday drew to a close, only 321 vaccines had been administered, far short of the 500-a-day the site can give out. Even though those unused shots were not “wasted” — unopened vaccines generally can be rolled over to the next day — the entire shameful episode is a symptom of a larger problem: No one except the governor knows who will officially qualify to get the vaccine next. His refusal to outline a clear strategy that leaves no one behind is what led to the kind of vaccine madness we saw on Saturday and Sunday.
Clearly, it’s imperative that community groups and civic organizations relentlessly spread the word that vaccines are available for eligible residents wherever FEMA sets up shop. No opportunity — or dose of vaccine — should go to waste.
Still, if Florida City wasn’t enough proof that Florida’s vaccine distribution isn’t working, Miami Dade College’s North Campus offered another example. Vaccine workers there were accepting doctors’ letters for people with specific medical conditions that put them at risk for COVID complications. The Florida City site, though, turned away people with notes on Sunday, only accepting a state form signed by a doctor. Such mixed messaging doesn’t help things.
In Jacksonville, too, there were signs that the state’s lack of a plan was catching up to it. The FEMA vaccine site there was empty at times on Sunday, and the numbers of those vaccinated there in the last few days had dropped.
The DeSantis administration repeatedly has said it does not want to set a priority list for vaccines because it might have to change the plan, insisting that its vaccine distribution decisions are “data driven.”
If that’s true, we need to see whatever data supports the situations we saw across the state over the weekend. Do the numbers tell DeSantis that sites without enough qualified people should be left idle, with vaccines ready but no one to get them?
A fix for the immediate issue doesn’t seem very hard: Start by setting up two lines at each site, one for those qualified under state rules and regulated line for stand-bys. If no one qualified is in line, we could let others get the shots. The goal, let’s not forget, is to get everyone vaccinated so we can put this terrible year behind us.
ELIGIBILITY EXPANDS
The governor took a step in the right direction on Monday, announcing he’ll lower the eligibility age to 60 and older starting March 15. That will help.
But the larger issue still remains. This administration, which has dodged and slowwalked public-records requests that would help the public determine risk during the pandemic, insists on treating the vaccine program as political capital rather than life-saving medicine. It’s clear the governor prefers to continue his cross-state personal appearances to announce new rounds of vaccines to select communities as he plans for his reelection campaign next year and a potential bid for the White House in 2024.
Florida doesn’t deserve this, though. For all of those still waiting in line, we need more than hope, governor. We need a plan.
Gerald Kogan, who died March 4 at 87, was the epitome of a civic leader. He served his Miami-Dade community in various roles in the legal system, culminating in his appointment to state Supreme Court. There, his drive to open the mysterious processes of the judiciary to the public was part of a lifelong commitment to democracy that easily morphed into a passion for ethical government after he left the bench.
But he also should be remembered for one particular decision by the Supreme Court issued almost 25 years ago. His prescient dissent is an insight into his courage and commitment.The case was Krischer v. McIver, which, in 1997, it involved what was derisively called “assisted suicide,” now more accurately called “medical assistance in dying”.
Dr. Cecil McIver was a physician caring for Charles Hall. As the court told the story:
Mr. Hall is 35 years old and suffers from acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which he contracted from a blood transfusion. The court found that Mr. Hall was mentally competent and that he was in obviously deteriorating health, clearly suffering and terminally ill. The court also found that it was Dr. McIver’s professional judgment that it was medically appropriate and ethical to provide Mr. Hall with the assistance he requests at some time in the future.”
Hall and McIver filed suit to enjoin the Palm Beach County state attorney from prosecuting the doctor. After a six-day trial, the court issued a declaratory judgment and injunctive decree addressing, “whether a competent adult, who is terminally ill, immediately dying and acting under no undue influence has a constitutional right to hasten his own death by seeking and obtaining from his physician a fatal dose of prescription drugs and then subsequently administering such drugs to himself.”
The court concluded that Florida law prohibiting assisted suicide violated the privacy clause of the Florida Constitution (as well as the due-process and equal-protection guarantees of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment) and enjoined the state attorney from enforcing the law against McIver should he assist Hall in ending his life. The state attorney appealed, and the case went to the Florida Supreme Court, with Gerald Kogan as chief justice.
Almost two decades earlier, in 1980, the people of Florida had overwhelmingly amended the state’s
Constitution to add a specific right of privacy: “Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life.”
The Florida Supreme Court then recognized a fundamental right to privacy extending “to all aspects of an individual’s private life …” And almost a decade before the McIver case, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy applied to intimate areas of conduct such as women’s access to an abortion.
Given Florida’s specific guarantee of the right to privacy, it may be surprising that Kogan had to dissent when the Supreme Court overturned the trial court and allowed for McIver’s prosecution should he assist his patient — and that Kogan was the lone dissenter.
“To my mind, the right of privacy attaches with unusual force at the death bed,” he wrote. “This conclusion arises in part from the privacy our society traditionally has afforded the death bed, but also from the very core of the right of privacy — the right of self-determination even in the face of majoritarian disapproval. What possible interest does society have in saving life when there is nothing of life to save but a final convulsion of agony? The state has no business in this arena. Many people can and do disagree over these questions, but the fact remains that it is the dying person who must resolve them …”
And then he issued a challenge to his colleagues that soars and ties abstract law to the reality of daily life — “When his pain becomes unbearable, which one of us on this Court will be at his bedside telling him to be brave and bear it?”
Someday the passion of Kogan’s lone dissenting voice will be reflected in the policies of our country. Then, the constitutional right of privacy will not be just words on paper but a guarantee of freedom in areas of our lives where it matters most.
The Ritz-Carlton Residences in Miami Beach reached $130 million in sales with 30 new buyers since January, proving the demand for high-rise living shows no signs of cooling.
The buyers are from California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, said developer Ophir
Sternberg, CEO and founder of Lionheart Capital. Most work for a private equity firm, hedge fund or bank.
One exception? Model Cindy Crawford and her husband, Rande Gerber, the founder of Midnight Oil and Gerber Group. Sternberg said the couple bought a penthouse unit.
“The demand has been off the charts,” Sternberg said. “The stars are aligning for South Florida.”
Sternberg credits South Florida’s warm weather and tax savings for drawing buyers to his project and other condominiums during the pandemic.
Crawford and Gerber will be joining other wellknown residents, including, former Miss Germany Petra Levin, American Eagle Outfitters CEO and Chairman Jay Schottenstein and Mike Piazza, a former 12-time MLB AllStar
who played for the
Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, San Diego Padres, Oakland Athletics and, very briefly, the Florida Marlins.
The smallest unit sold — a 1,939-square-foot space with one bedroom and 1 1⁄2 bathrooms — sold for $1.25 million. A $15 million penthouse — the largest unit sold since January — spans 14,868 square feet and offers four bedrooms and 4 1⁄2 bathrooms.
Amenities include an artist studio with a guest resident offering classes, and a pool and a marina.
The sales activity is eating away at the decreasing supply of luxury condos — those priced over $1 million. Miami-Dade County has 24 months of supply, a 50% year-over-year drop since January 2020.
“Options are out there,” Sternberg said, “but I would say that supply is tight compared to demand.”
Ten of 110 units remain available, with a starting price of $2.215 million for a 1,100-square-foot unit with two bedrooms and
2 1⁄2 bathrooms.
The building opened in 2019 at 4701 Meridian
Ave. The Ritz-Carlton Residences launched construction of 15 villas on the site in January after seeing the surge of single-family home sales in 2020. Italian architect Piero Lissoni designed both the condominium and the villas.