FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. (WSVN) - Day two has begun, Friday, in a trial concerning a man who allegedly murdered his wife.
Forty-three-year-old Cid Torrez is on trial for the murder of 38-year-old Vilet Torrez, and their daughter took the stand Friday to say what she heard the night her mother went missing.
Prosecutors said the defendant was angry after he and his wife separated. His wife was moving on and even already had a new boyfriend, who the accused allegedly threatened.
However, on March 31, 2012, prosecutors said, Torrez returned to his wife’s townhouse with their kids and killed Vilet.
Friday afternoon, jurors listened to the 911 call the defendant made days after Vilet’s disappearance in 2012. In that 911 call, the defendant said on Sunday, “I definitely did it.”
Prosecutors hope that this could be the evidence needed since Vilet’s body was never found.
Torrez’s daughter, who is also named Vilet, was 12 years old at the time.
Vilet said that she would talk to her mom everyday, even when she wasn’t with her. “She was like my best friend,” she said.
The now 17-year-old said she is very certain of what happened when she gave her testimony.
“I heard, like, a howling sound and some crying, my dad’s voice, the howling sound and my dad’s voice overlapping,” she said.
“Tell me what your dad’s voice was saying,” the prosecutor said.
“No, you wake up,” the younger Vilet said.
The younger Vilet said she heard her father say this around five or six times, mixed with sobbing and crying.
She said that she told her dad the next day what she heard, and he told her she was dreaming and instructed her not to alert police. She also said the next day, her father was gone for several hours, then he dropped her and her siblings off at their grandparents’ house and was gone the whole night.
She also said that when he returned to pick them up, he was disheveled, his clothes were dirty and his shoes were full of sand. That is when, prosecutors believe, he dumped his wife’s body in the Everglades. His phone also reportedly pinged out in a remote area of the Everglades.
“I asked him if he called her job, to call her job, to call the police, that she’s missing, that something had gone wrong,” Vilet said.
When prosecutors asked what her father said, Vilet said, “Maybe. He’ll think about it.”
The alleged victim’s boyfriend at the time also took the stand. “He told me to stop,” Zoe Rodriguez said. “Told me not to do it. Not to move forward. ‘Don’t do this. Don’t do this. You don’t know what I’m capable of.'”
Earlier in the day, the defendant’s cousin, Ruth Alonzo, took the stand, but was reluctant in answering the prosecutor’s questions. “OK, in a joking way, he went to me, ‘OK, I’m going to go ahead and harm her in that way,'” she said. “That’s it. But it was something in a joking way. I have even talked to my daughter like that when I talk to her in my car.”
This went on for some time in court, and Alonzo was declared a hostile witness. That means prosecutors are allowed to ask her leading questions to get to answers that she originally stated in her deposition.
It appeared to be a difficult time for the the daughter to be on the stand. She did not look at her father at all.
The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.