Miami Man Charged In Trangender Prostitute's Murder
MIAMI BEACH (CBSMiami) – A man suspected of stabbing a transgender prostitute to death last March has been taken into custody.
Miguel Pavon, 31, has been charged with first degree murder.
On March 13th, around 2 p.m., Rene Hildago Hernandez told her good friend Javier Menedez Cuesta Daniel that she had "a trick" stopping by her Michigan Street apartment later in the day.
Daniel told police when he stopped by Hildago's apartment around 6 p.m. so they could take her dogs for a walk, he saw her in the apartment with a man wearing a baseball cap whom he didn't recognize. She asked him to come by later.
When he came back around 8 p.m., he could hear her dogs barking but no one answered the door when he knocked. Daniel would later tell police that he tried calling her several times that night but she didn't answer her phone and he left messages on her answering machine.
Daniel said he and Hildago were supposed to get together the following day so they could go the Miami-Dade Police Department Records to get background checks for residency applications. He ended up going alone and when he went to Hildago's apartment around 9 p.m. there was still no response when he knocked on the door.
On March 15th, Daniel met with the building's owner, Conseulo Sanchez, and told her he thought something was wrong. When they went to Hildago's apartment, they found all the doors locked. Josue Alvarez Rojas, who was also according to the arrest report, climbed the security bars on the first floor apartment and looked into Hildago's dining room window where he saw blood on the floor.
Daniel called the police.
When Sgt. Jorge Garcia arrived, Sanchez used the maintenance man's keys to let him in.
Garcia said he found Hildago's nude bloody body covered in a sheet on the floor at the foot of the bed. There was a large pool of blood by the body. There was also blood in the bathroom and in the rub where they suspect Hildago's killer tried to clean up.
Inside the one bedroom apartment, police found bloody clothes, a used condom and an imprint of a large kitchen knife.
The Medical Examiner's Office said Hildago had been stabbed 23 times in the neck, chest, back and hand.
Several friends of Hildago told police she lived as a woman and only wore women's clothes. They said if any of her male clients would leave clothing behind, she would throw it out. They added that she was meticulously clean, would clean with bleach, wash dishes right away and take out the trash several times a day.
The Miami-Dade Crime Lab found that DNA samples taken from male clothing found in the bedroom and from the condom came up as a match to Pavon who was the prime suspect in a Miami police investigation in 2011 when a prostitute was found beaten to death. Police said Pavon voluntarily submitted the DNA sample and then stopped cooperating with detectives on the case which remains unsolved.
Police said additional DNA samples from Hildago's closet and frequent visitors were collected. The only identified foreign DNA sample not belonging to Hildago belonged to Pavon.
Pavon was arrested on November 16th. He's being held on a no bond order.
