A Puerto Rican woman will be sentenced in January after being convicted of hiring a man to kill her wealthy Canadian husband.
Aurea Vazquez Rijos had been charged with offering a man $3 million to kill Adam Anhang, a real estate developer.
In September 2005, the couple were walking through the cobblestone streets of Old San Juan when Anhang was stabbed repeatedly and hit in the head with an object.
It came just 12 hours after he had asked Vazquez for a divorce.
The Puerto Rican woman will not face the death penalty, but attorneys expect she’ll serve a life sentence.
Alex Pabon Colon, the man who was hired to kill Anhang, pleaded guilty 10 years ago and ended up testifying for the prosecution against Vazquez.
Anhang and Vazquez began dating two years before he was killed.
During that time, he bought her a car, an apartment and a business in Old San Juan called “The Pink Skirt.”
Before getting married, they signed a prenup as Anhang’s value was estimated at more than $24 million, while Vazquez’s was only around $60,000.
"These people thought they could get away with murder," the victim’s father, Abraham Angang, told the Associated Press after the verdict came in, adding that it gave him and his family closure.
"It’s been a long haul. They’ve been evading arrest, evading the law, evading taking responsibility and pretending they had nothing to do with it."
Vazquez sued Anhang’s parents six months after he was killed, seeking $1 million in damages and $8 million from his estate, and left for Florence, Italy shortly after that.
Once in Italy, prosecutors said she falsified documents to prove she was Jewish and thought about moving to Israel, asking an attorney whether the country had an extradition agreement with the U.S.
She was arrested in June 2013 after flying from Spain to Italy and was extradited to Puerto Rico with her one-month-old baby two years later, leaving behind twin girls that she had with a man in Italy.
With files from the Canadian Press.
