Episode 168:
He Cried with Her at the Police Station After Strangle-Killing Her Boyfriend
On the morning of September 21, 2012, 18-year-old Erika went to the University of Florida Police Department in Gainesville. Her boyfriend, Christian Aguilar, a student living in the dorms, had not shown up to meet her the evening before. His phone went straight to voicemail. When she went to his dorm late that night, his roommate said he had not come back, and the laptop he always took when he stayed out was still there.
The last person to see Christian had come to the station with her. His friend Pedro, fighting back tears, said he had been depressed and had asked Christian to meet and talk. They got chicken around 2 p.m., bought a Kanye West CD at an electronics store, and went for a drive. They argued, Pedro said, and Christian got out near a motorcycle shop far north of campus with his backpack and phone. Pedro said he went home, took a sleeping pill around 8 p.m., and slept until Erika called him at 4:15 a.m.
Three Friends from Miami
All three had gone to the same high school in Miami, and Erika and Pedro had been a couple for over two years. In June, after graduation, Erika ended it, saying she did not want a long-distance relationship. In truth she had wanted out for some time because he was so possessive, and she used the distance as a reason he might accept. He did not. He flooded her with calls, texts and emails, telling her he did not want to live without her, and she texted him, "Please, just don't do anything crazy." He turned down a four-year university that had offered him a scholarship, enrolled in a program at Erika's community college that did not even lead to a degree, and at the end of August moved to Gainesville. By then Erika and Christian, who had both gone to college there, had started dating. They kept it secret from Pedro. Christian did not want to meet him that day. He felt guilty about hiding the relationship, but friends told him to have a heart, and he went. Before leaving he texted Erika to focus in class and promised he would keep their secret no matter what.
The Story That Kept Changing
At the station Pedro's eyes were bloodshot and there was black paint on his body. Without being asked, he told officers his windshield was cracked, that he had patched it with duct tape, and that the rest of the tape was missing. He let them search his car. In the back seat a can of black paint with a loose lid had spilled over a reddish-brown stain. He said it had tipped over three days earlier. There was also a McDonald's receipt from about 1 a.m. that night, hours after he said he had gone to sleep; he said he had gone out hungry and forgotten because of the pills. Warned that a small lie could become a serious crime, he said Christian had told him to go kill himself and he had punched him, so there might be blood in the car. Phone records showed Christian's phone had been switched off around 7:20 p.m. far to the south, not in the north where Pedro said he let him out. Pedro then said he had kept Christian's backpack and phone as a prank, turned the phone off himself and shoved the bag in his closet. Once he was read his rights, his story changed again: he had knocked Christian down and beaten him for five to fifteen minutes and left him barely breathing, half in a puddle. Pedro, saying he wanted to die, was held in a psychiatric hospital for 72 hours.
The Grave in Levy County
Helicopters and search dogs went over the spot Pedro named that night and found nothing. Police and volunteers then combed the nearby hills and streets, still hoping Christian was alive, until the search was called off on October 5. A week later, at 2 p.m. on October 12, two men collecting firewood in the woods of a hunting club in Levy County, Florida, followed a terrible smell to a pile of branches and stones and found a human skull. Officers uncovered a body in a shallow grave, badly decomposed, with gray duct tape around the wrists, neck and ankles. Dental records confirmed it was Christian, missing for 22 days. The torn edge of the tape on the body matched the tape on Pedro's windshield exactly. He was charged with first-degree murder. Four days before Christian disappeared, Pedro had bought a knife, a shovel and duct tape at two stores within 34 minutes, along with two kinds of sleeping pills and a drink. He had searched online for chloroform, lethal doses of sleeping pills and statistics on unsolved murders. Cameras and phone records filled in the day. The two were smiling at the electronics store around 3 p.m. At about 4 p.m. Pedro's car pulled into a corner of a supermarket parking lot, and for 2 hours and 37 minutes no door opened. Just before 7 p.m. it left, Christian's phone went off, and around 8 p.m. Pedro's phone lost its signal while heading toward where the body was later found. At 11:30 p.m. it came back on, and its flashlight was switched on and off nine times, for more than 40 minutes in all. Around 1 a.m. he stopped at McDonald's and then a car wash to clean the underside of the car. He got home at 2:25 a.m. and washed only the clothes he had been wearing.
Final Thoughts
Pedro never admitted the killing. A man who shared his cell, Michael, testified that on his first night in jail Pedro borrowed a pen to write a suicide note that read, "To think I'm the one who hurt Chris, I'm a monster," and that Pedro told him what happened in the parking lot: he pretended to look for something in the back seat and strangled Christian in the passenger seat with a packing strap, watching the clock on the dashboard. It took thirteen minutes. At trial in August 2014, Pedro testified that he had hit Christian a couple of times but had not killed him. The jury convicted him on all seven charges, including first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to life without parole. On March 12, 2025, it was reported that he had taken his own life in prison, without ever telling Christian's family the whole truth. Erika still describes Christian as her soulmate and believes they would have married. He was eighteen.
Pedro gave up a scholarship and moved to Gainesville to be near his ex-girlfriend, and his diary warned that no one would be able to stop him. Christian's friends urged him to meet Pedro out of sympathy. Looking back, which signs of Pedro's obsession should have been treated as a danger rather than heartbreak?
WE DOCUMENT.
YOU DECIDE.
Our interpretation is only one possible perspective.
