http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/276759.htmlCRIME
Father arrested in girl's '86 killing
A man suspected of killing his daughter and burying her under a floor in 1986 in Miami was caught in Costa Rica.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 19, 2007
BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@MiamiHerald.com Accused of murdering his 2-year-old daughter and burying her corpse under the bedroom floor of their Miami apartment, William Suarez evaded justice for more than two decades in Nicaragua, which does not extradite its citizens.
Then he made a misstep that brought him into the reach of U.S. law: He moved to Costa Rica.
Suarez was arrested there, Miami police said Thursday, and will be returned to South Florida to face a charge of first-degree murder in a grisly case that has haunted detectives for 21 years.
Police say that in 1986, the unemployed construction worker smothered his daughter Elsie because she would not stop crying. After wrapping her in a sheet and burying her under linoleum, he whisked his family back to their native Nicaragua.
In the lore of Miami crime, Elsie's death has been largely forgotten.
Suarez, now 59, had a stormy relationship with his youngest daughter.
For most of her life, they lived apart. She was in Nicaragua; he was in Miami. When Elsie joined him in Miami, she refused to call him ``papa.''
Elsie seemingly responded only to Suarez's brother and his brother's wife, and Suarez also suspected his wife Ruth had conceived Elsie through an affair.
Frequently, Elsie appeared with bruises on her face. His brother-in-law told police that Suarez ``would take Elsie in the backroom and beat her. . . . William did not carry on similar actions toward the other children.''
At a family party, a sister once asked Ruth about a bruise on Elsie's face. ''Ruth told her that Elsie struck her face on a sewing machine,'' a police report said. Family members did not believe the story.
Suarez later told investigators that Elsie filled him with un rencor bastante negro -- a dark, deep-seated resentment.
FATEFUL PHONE CALL
On June 10, 1986, Metro Dade homicide detectives received a phone call from a Coral Gables lawyer, Leonardo Canton.
He told them that a man who used to do work at his house, Jose Lorenzo Vallecillo, confided he feared something terrible had happened to his niece.
The little girl had vanished. Suarez, his wife and two other children abruptly left their Little Havana alley-side apartment, rented by the week.
The flooring in the girl's bedroom had changed. The wall appeared damaged.
Canton asked a private investigator to look into it. The sleuth called Taca Airlines. A manager said Elsie had never boarded the plane to Nicaragua.
Metro Dade detectives soon interviewed Maria Caldera, Suarez's sister.
By phone from Nicaragua, Suarez told her that Elsie had died in a car accident in Mexico City during a layover. The flight does not stop in Mexico City, Caldera shot back.
He finally told Caldera that the little girl had fallen in the bathtub and died and that he had buried her under the bedroom floor.
Suarez claimed that if he called police, ''they would have accused him of killing [Elsie] because he had battered her in the past,'' according to an arrest warrant.
Metro detectives quickly drove to the apartment at 1325 SW 14th St.
They dialed an on-call prosecutor -- Katherine Rundle, now the Miami-Dade state attorney -- who told them a search warrant was not needed because Suarez had left the country.
Because the girl had died in the apartment, the investigation was turned over to counterparts at Miami police.
Miami homicide Detective Luis Albuerne was the lead investigator.
'SPOOKY' ASSIGNMENT
In the dark morning hours of June 11, Miami firefighters used a saw to crack open a five-by-five-foot opening in the tile. Detectives sifted dirt by hand.
Homicide Sgt. Tom Watterson recalled at the time: ``It's the strangest thing I've done in my life. You feel spooky.
``You have to dig slow because you don't want to stick the shovel into anything. I used my hands and a pot from the kitchen. Then I started using my fingers.''
Five feet down, they found Elsie's tiny body wrapped in a white sheet.
Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Jay Barnhart ruled the death a homicide, and that child abuse syndrome had contributed to her demise.
On July 13, after arranging travel documents with the State Department, Albuerne and Detective Andy Arostegui boarded a flight for Managua.
They arrived during a tense time. The Sandinistas were preparing to celebrate the seventh anniversary of their rule. The two stayed with a U.S. Embassy security official. Gunfire erupted nightly between anti-communist rebels and Sandinistas.
For several tedious days, Albuerne and Arostegui waited inside the embassy, watching television, waiting for Managua authorities to grant them an audience.
Finally, on July 17, the detectives met with a Nicaraguan lieutenant in a police office. A framed photo of Lenin hung on the wall.
The Nicaraguans listened patiently. No extradition treaty exists between the two countries, the detectives were told. But Nicaraguan police said they had already interviewed Suarez at the urging of the suspected killer's mother-in-law.
Suarez told Nicaraguan Officer Freddy Lopez this story, according to the case file:
Early in May, Elsie had begun crying. She had soiled herself.
Suarez had carried her to the bathroom. She kept screaming. Suarez began to beat her ''savagely.'' The cries did not stop.
Suarez heard a noise outside. He poked his head out the window. A police car cruised past. The agitated father dipped back inside, pressing his hand over her mouth until her struggling body went limp.
Suarez called his wife, Ruth. He told her he tried saving Elsie, but she drowned. They would hide her death, telling anyone who asked that the girl had died in an auto accident.
Elsie, he said, would be buried under her crib, under the linoleum.
BECOMES A COLD CASE
Nicaraguan police promised the Miami detectives he would be arrested on infanticide charges -- he was briefly detained but was later released because authorities there did not have enough evidence.
''It didn't surprise me, because I didn't see any real urgency for any action the days we were there,'' Arostegui said.
In the ensuing decades, Suarez remained at large.
Detective Albuerne has retired. Arostegui spent nine years in uniformed patrol before returning to homicide -- as a cold case investigator.
In 2004, he began consulting with Assistant State Attorneys Barbra Pineiro and Hillah Katz-Mendez. An arrest warrant was issued for Suarez.
International dialogue began. Lopez, the Nicaraguan officer who took Suarez's confession, was willing to cooperate.
Authorities soon learned Suarez had moved legally to Costa Rica, a stroke of luck. Now, he could be extradited.
''In homicide, you always work one or two cases that stay with you, and this case has done that to me,'' Arostegui said. ``This is an innocent little girl killed at the hands of her own father, and her mother had knowledge of the homicide.''
