- I'm Kate Snow, and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
- So this is where it happened.
- This is it.
He was stabbed in the chest, left to die right here.
- Abe said he felt like his son was targeted, right?
- Correct. - It was a hit job.
- Correct.
- I made a resolve, whoever did this was gonna pay for it.
- When people are desperate, they do desperate things.
- Really evil and conniving.
- She used her sexuality in such a calculated way.
- Yeah, I'm not surprised by anything.
It's just crazy twist after crazy twist.
It really was internationally choreographed.
Good old fashioned sting operation.
- Did you think it was gonna work?
- Honestly, I gave it a 50/50 chance.
- It wasn't about retribution.
It was about justice.
- Hello, and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
Adam Anhang's parents couldn't have been prouder.
He was living his dreams as a successful entrepreneur
in Puerto Rico.
Then Adam was murdered in a seemingly random attack.
Or was it?
Police believed they had their man,
but cracking this killer's secrets
would take a dedicated team of international investigators
and a steadfast father determined to get
justice for his son.
Here's Natalie Morales with...
- It was a quiet, fall night,
close to midnight.
A young couple finished dinner
and then walked the dimly lit,
centuries old cobblestone streets
of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico,
heading for their car.
Suddenly, a man armed with a knife and a loose block
from those cobblestone streets attacked.
The husband, Adam Anhang, fell to the ground.
- What the witness remembers hearing
was Adam screaming, "Run, baby, run!"
- Fighting back as hard as he could,
Adam never stood a chance.
- He was stabbed repeatedly.
- Hit with a brick over the head.
- And like that, it was over.
The attacker melted back into the darkness,
leaving Adam and his wife Aurea,
lying on the street.
An ambulance arrived, loaded Aurea,
who had injuries to her head and leg
onto a stretcher,
and whisked her away to the hospital.
But for Adam, it was too late.
He was 32 years old.
- The police, uh, quickly arrived to the scene,
and they-they cordoned off the area.
- Journalist Jose Sanchez Fournier
covered the murder for Nuevo Dia,
Puerto Rico's highest circulation newspaper.
It happened in September 2005.
Right here on these cobblestone streets.
- Yeah, he-he died right here.
- And that kind of thing doesn't happen.
I mean, Old San Juan is relatively safe, right?
Especially this-this time of night,
that time of year.
- In my year's of experience as a journalist,
I don't remember a murder in Old San Juan.
I'm talking about, like, 20 years.
So the murder of a businessman in Puerto Rico
is something unheard of in Old San Juan.
- Unheard of to Jose,
unfathomable to those who knew Adam,
like friend Lily Gracia.
- It was actually devastating,
because Adam had so much potential.
- Another friend, Andy Weddell remembers finding out
in the middle of the night.
- A professor from business school called me
and told me he was dead.
He had been murdered.
I couldn't believe. I was just, what happened?
- Lissette Calderon got a call from the same professor.
- And he said, Adam passed away.
And I still get chills
and-and I think at that moment,
it just was a wail of--
cry of-of just pain.
And everybody ran in to see what happened.
All I could say was Adam died, Adam died.
- In Winnepeg, Canada, Adam's parents,
Barbara and Abe Anhang learned of Adam's death
from their daughter, Becky.
The devastating news left them reeling.
- It was as if the ground had disappeared
beneath our feet.
We felt like we were whirling through the universe,
and could not even register the information.
- And to hear how it happened, Abe,
how painful was that?
- Well, I'll tell you something.
I made a resolve then and there,
whoever did this
was gonna pay for it.
And that is what I said to myself
five seconds after I heard it.
- That was your mission. - Yep, certainly was.
- Abe Anhang, you'll hear more from him later
and how his love for his son
would lead him on a 13 year quest for justice
that would uncover secrets and span continents.
But in those first hours and days after the murder,
it would be up to the San Juan police
to find Adam's killer.
And in the early 2000s,
that was an almost Herculean task,
because while the tourist heart of Puerto Rico,
Old San Juan, was all but free of violent crime,
the rest of the island was not.
- During that time, Puerto Rico was bordering,
you know, 1,000 murders a year.
We had a higher murder rate than Los Angeles,
and there's six million people in Los Angeles.
Less-less than half in Puerto Rico.
- But this was a high profile case.
Adam was a prominent businessman on the island.
He was also Canadian,
and therefore, considered a tourist.
So his murder, smack in the middle of Old San Juan
became a top priority for law enforcement.
- How much pressure was there on the police then
in the days that followed to make an arrest in the case?
- The detective in-in charge of the case,
he was being very pressured by the higher ups
to solve the case.
- The detective didn't have much to go on.
Robbery didn't seem to be the motive,
because nothing was taken.
- They didn't take his wallet, didn't take the watch.
- Didn't take-didn't take her purse.
Didn't take his watch.
So it looks like a senseless murder.
- A senseless murder with multiple witnesses,
including Adam's wife, Aurea,
who was in the hospital recovering from her injuries.
Detectives got her statement, and fanned out,
looking to speak to any others.
- They had eyewitness accounts.
What did-did the description of the killer look like?
- The general description from two witnesses
who came forth since the beginning
was of a heavyset guy, tall, who attacked them both.
Pushed Aurea, and then continued to attack Adam.
- Heavyset, tall, so the police knew
what the killer looked like.
Now the pressure was on to find him,
and answer the most important question,
why did he kill Adam Anhang?
- Coming up...
Adam had been working on
million dollar real estate deals.
Had one of them gone wrong?
- He's doing this all over the world.
- All over the world.
- And later, marriage and deception.
- He came to realize immediately that it was
all about the money.
- As a father searches for the truth.
- He didn't stop.
- And the FBI launches a sting to catch
an international fugitive.
- Did you think it was gonna work?
- I gave it a 50/50 chance.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Adam Anhang left his hometown of Winnepeg, Canada
as a young man seeking his fortune,
and determined to make his mark on the world.
He returned for a final time in a casket
at 32, still a young man.
But if the size of his funeral was any indication,
he had succeeded in leaving an indelible mark
on those around him.
- There were some hundreds of people.
There wasn't an empty seat inside, uh, the service.
And it was this gloomy day.
To see Abe and to see Barbara and Becky
and to see their pain that day
haunts me still.
- The Anhang family is Jewish,
and part of a traditional burial service
is shoveling dirt on the casket.
- To watch Mr. Anhang, you could see
there was like this pain in it,
and anger and sadness,
and he-- just the way he would shovel quicker.
And it was a very powerful visual
for the rest of my life to see his dad
burying his son.
- Parents aren't supposed to bury their children,
and so for the Anhang's,
it marked the unnatural end to a life that began
with so much promise.
- I heard he used to walk around
with a little briefcase, is that true?
- He came to the first day of Kindergarten
with his briefcase.
I never thought of him as a little boy.
- Mm-hmm. - He was a little man.
He liked to do things on his own.
Always something a little different, creative.
He loved to solve problems,
especially other people's problems.
When people got into trouble, they would come to him.
He was that kind of a personality.
- According to his parents, Adam was a computer whiz
with an entrepreneurial spirit and big dreams
beyond the big skies of his hometown.
- He left home at age 18 or 19,
and he went to the Wharton School, eventually,
which, of course, is
the top business school in the world
for entrepreneurs.
- The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Adam was taking graduate level courses
at the prestigious business school
even though he was still an undergrad.
That's where he found a kindred spirit,
in Lissette Calderon.
- We happened to sit next to each other
in a real estate class.
We just start, you know, talking,
and just not very tall, thin person,
but had this giant personality.
- Andy Weddell was also struck by Adam
the first time they met.
- I was gonna spend the afternoon studying.
I had a great table.
- You're a little older, so you were--
- Yeah, I'm an MBA. - Yeah, uh-huh.
- And I had ear plugs in,
and I sensed somebody was standing next to me.
And there was Adam with his friend,
and he said, can I sit with you?
And my instinct was, hey, can't you see
that I'm busy here?
But he had this great smile and energy,
so he sat down,
and I just felt like I wanted more.
- Mike Waller met Adam at a college competition
for business students.
- Just that kind of friend that was always there,
always available, and our conversations
rotated between business topics and business ideas
to just the kind of things that young kids go through.
- It's a recurring theme among Adam's friends.
The man with the big smile and giant personality
was always there when you needed him.
- What was it about his personality
that, Lissette, to you is the signature Adam?
- He had the biggest heart of anybody I've ever met,
whether you needed the friendship,
you needed the advice,
whatever you needed, he was giving and he was there.
And to this day-- - And very trusting to a fault.
- He was to an extreme fault. - Yeah.
- He was trusting,
and he was trusting of everybody.
And he believed that the kindness that he exuded,
the kindness that he gave out, everybody had.
And that was always the conversation that we had,
that I would say, Adam, not everybody's like you.
- After graduating from college,
Adam dove head-first into the business world,
where he possessed an innate ability
to spot a good deal.
- I always would tell him
you're the smartest person I know
because he could think outside the box
and he saw what nobody else saw.
- He was building buildings, hotels,
in markets that had no hotels, largely, some of them.
- And he's doing this all over the world, then,
at this point. - All over the world.
- Uh, my name is Adam Anhang, and I'm class of Wharton '96.
- Adam's success brought him back to the Wharton School
as a guest lecturer.
- How many men in this room are single?
Okay, how many women do you have to ask
before they agree to go out with you?
Okay, the nature of being an entrepreneur
is you're constantly pitching some idea.
Oh, so I know you're very successful.
You don't need to point this out.
[laughter]
- As Adam's business acumen grew,
so did his reputation as a problem solver.
That reputation is what first brought him
to Puerto Rico in 2002.
Carlos Tidado was working for a real estate developer
who wanted Adam's help in finalizing a hotel deal.
- And what was your impression of Adam.
- Young, innocent, really nice kid.
And he came here and he fell in love with the island.
- Puerto Rico, La Isla del Encanto.
The enchanted island, as it's called.
And with its pristine beaches,
crystal-blue water, and historic Old San Juan,
it's easy to understand why.
But Adam was enchanted by something else
he saw in the island.
Opportunity.
- I thought what is this little kid
gonna come up with? I mean, what can he do?
This is a child.
- Lily Gracia met Adam through his business partner.
- We didn't think there was that much potential there,
but five minutes into a conversation with Adam,
you realized there's something there.
- In fact, Adam helped open
the first major hotel on Vieques,
the small Puerto Rican island once used by the U.S. Navy
as a bombing range, but now a tourist Mecca.
But to Lily, there was much more to her friend Adam
than just his forward-thinking business savvy.
- For me, I loved his wit.
He had that bright, sarcastic humor.
But yet, he was very kind, he wasn't pretentious.
He was just adorable.
Sweet, sweet Adam.
- Sweet Adam had found a new place to call home,
a new place to pursue his dreams.
And it wasn't long before he found himself pursued
by a beautiful, young woman.
- Did she catch his eye right away?
- I don't think it was right away,
because he had other girls around him, too.
It wasn't her.
But she was the most persistent.
- That young woman will be by Adam's side
as he heads out to dinner and into a trap.
Is it a random crime, or has someone with a secret
put a target on his back?
Coming up...
Adam's last hours alive.
- They came down this street
where they were met by the assailant
who killed, uh, Adam right here in this cross section.
- And detectives make an arrest.
- He had no criminal record.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Adam Anhang had not been in Puerto Rico long
before he met 23 year old Aurea Vazquez Rijos.
It was at a party.
His friend Lily was also there.
- The attraction for him was that she was giving him
all the attention that he needed,
that he wanted.
- Adam felt he had hit the jackpot in landing Aurea.
- He thought she was Miss Puerto Rico for him.
And he had hooked the girl.
He was proud of his accomplishment.
Like, he had really done it.
- Lily says Aurea who had a modest upbringing
tried her best to fit in
with Adam's upscale circle of friends.
- She really wanted to belong.
- Yeah. - She really tried
to do all the right things around us
to try to belong.
- Aurea was seen more and more frequently
on Adam's arm,
and he introduced her to his parents
when they visited the island.
- What was your impression of her?
- She was, uh, striking, very attractive.
Um, articulate. - Bright.
- Aurea dreamt of running her own business
so Adam bought her a restaurant and bar
in Old San Juan.
She named it Pink Skirt.
- In March 2005, Adam and Aurea wed in a small ceremony.
But by September, Adam would be dead,
murdered just blocks from Pink Skirt.
- Everyone was shocked because Old San Juan
is not a dangerous place.
In fact, it's quite safe.
Businessmen come and go here, and this doesn't happen.
- The detectives tasked with finding Adam's killer
had pieced together the last few hours of his life.
He and Aurea had driven into Old San Juan that night
to have dinner.
They parked their car,
and were captured on security footage
walking down the street at about 10pm.
And a few minutes later inside the trendy restaurant,
Dragonfly, where they ate.
An hour and a half later,
they can be seen leaving the restaurant,
and walking in the direction of Aurea's bar, Pink Skirt.
Journalist Jose Sanchez Fournier.
So it was just up the street,
what-- they were at a restaurant.
- They-they were at a restaurant,
and Aurea had parked the car.
They went to dinner, and then she told him
that they had to stop at Pink Skirt for a moment.
And after stopping at Pink Skirt,
they came down the street
where they were met by the assailant,
who killed, uh, Adam right here in this cross section.
- Aurea had also been attacked.
- The assailant just pushed her or struck her
and then she fell.
- The police were working diligently
to identify and track down Adam's murderer.
But they weren't the only ones
poking around the streets' of San Juan.
So was Adam's father, Abe.
- You made several trips to Puerto Rico.
- Oh, many times, many times.
- What were you hoping to get out of going there?
- Well, first of all, I had to clean up
his business affairs.
But most important of all, I went to talk to the people
out onto the street in Old San Juan.
Everybody knows the story.
- Abe wanted answers.
- If you wanna know who Adam is,
just look at Abe.
Look at that quiet strength, that strategic intelligence.
- Dateline began covering this story
not long after Adam was killed in 2005.
Abe allowed our cameras to follow him
when he visited the intersection
where his son was murdered.
Adam's family put up a $25,000 reward,
asking for information that would lead
to the arrest of Adam's killer.
Eye witnesses describe that killer
as a tall, heavy set man who fled the scene on foot
towards a neighborhood called "La Perla",
a depressed area of Old San Juan.
But there were discrepancies in the various eyewitness accounts,
including the one Aurea gave in the hospital.
Detectives wanted to clear them up,
so one of them went to talk to Aurea at her restaurant
2.5 weeks after the murder.
She wasn't there,
but someone else caught his attention.
- So he went directly to-to Pink Skirt.
He finds a kid who looks like--
It's the first time he's seen somebody
with a similar description to the assailant.
- When the man refused to answer the detective's questions,
he was arrested on the spot for suspicion of murder.
His name was Jonathan Roman, and he lived in La Perla.
- He had no criminal record.
- The 22-year-old denied killing or even knowing Adam,
but when he was picked out of a photo lineup
by one of the eyewitnesses who was a lawyer,
it was enough for the authorities.
Roman was charged with Adam Anhang's murder.
When you heard Jonathan Roman had been arrested,
did you think, oh, sense of relief,
finally, they caught a guy. - Oh, yeah, of course.
Mm-hmm, sure.
- Roman pleaded not guilty
and was released on bond.
- I am not a murderer.
- He spoke with Dateline in 2007,
as he awaited trial.
- I don't have anything to hide.
I'm innocent.
- Roman said he'd been at home,
sleeping on the night Adam was murdered,
but didn't have anyone to back up his alibi.
- They saw someone, but they didn't see me.
- In September 2007, two years after Adam's murder,
Roman's trial began.
And, of course, Abe was there.
The case hinged almost exclusively on the testimony
of that lawyer who identified Roman
as Adam's killer.
- That lawyer was adamant in his statement,
and he would say I sleep well, every night.
- The jury believed him.
Jonathan Roman was convicted of killing Adam,
and sentenced to 105 years in prison.
But Roman's conviction didn't bring the Anhang family
the closure one might expect.
- Today, uh, part of the truth came out.
- You told the press after Jonathan Roman was convicted,
"Today, part of the truth came out."
- Yeah, right. - "That's just the beginning."
- That's true. - Because there's others involved.
- That's exactly what I said.
And that's what I said. - What did you mean by that?
[laughter] - In retrospect,
I-I had a sneaking suspicion there was
all kinds of craziness that was going on
that didn't make any sense.
- Abe's suspicions were fueled by a theory
the prosecution had raised at trial,
that Adam's murder hadn't been random at all.
Roman had targeted him,
and somebody had put him up to it.
For Adam's family and friends,
it was clear who that somebody was.
- In spite of the pain and the agony,
we all connected the dots very quickly.
There was no doubt in my mind,
I mean, those of us that knew and loved Adam,
that she had something to do with it.
- It was a total game.
She wasn't even attracted to him.
- A very smart guy fooled by the oldest trick
in the book.
- She tricked him into marriage.
- She tricked him into marrying him.
**
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow.
Jonathan Roman was convicted for the murder
of Adam Anhang,
but Adam's loved ones didn't believe
the random attack theory made any sense,
and they suspected the mastermind
could be found closer to home.
A hard look at Adam's marriage
would reveal troubling secrets
and point to a possible motive
for murder.
At least eight million of them.
Here's Natalie Morales with "The Pink Skirt" plot.
- Almost from the moment they learned
that Adam Anhang had been killed,
his friends believed one person
was behind the murder:
his wife, Aurea.
- So you all pretty quickly came to the conclusion,
it sounds like, that she was connected
in some way to his death?
- Mm-hmm. - Absolutely.
- Lissette and the others were convinced
Adam's killing had been a setup.
- We knew it wasn't a robbery.
We knew it wasn't random.
We knew it was her.
- Adam's family also felt
Aurea was somehow involved.
- When did you start thinking
Aurea is somehow implicated in this?
- Well, I had suspected her a little here and there,
of course.
- As Abe and Barbara learned more
about Adam and Aurea's relationship,
they came to an alarming conclusion.
- She is certainly the ultimate con,
and she is very, very skilled
at what she does.
- What she did, says Adam's friend Lily,
was use Adam for his money
and the social circle he brought her into.
- It was a total game.
I mean, she wasn't even attracted to him.
You could tell.
She was mean to him, but she was nice to us.
She wanted to belong, so she needed him
as a ticket to fit in.
- Adam seemed to have his own doubts
about the relationship,
because when they got married,
he tried to keep it a secret.
- He didn't tell any of us. None of us were invited.
None of his friends, not his business partner,
not his family. - You didn't know
he was married at all? - Oh, no, nobody knew.
- How did you find out that he had gotten married?
Do you remember when he told you?
- Well, it was about a month after he got married.
- Abe says the marriage happened so quickly,
because Aurea told Adam she was pregnant.
- Her mother basically said, you know,
you've gotta preserve our daughter's honor
and her name and you gotta marry her.
- He married her because that's the kind
of stand up person that he was.
And that's the kind of individual he was.
So he did what he believed was the right thing to do.
- And knowing full well the kind of kid he was
and the background he came from,
that was probably the strategy that was worked out,
and it was unfortunately successful.
- Friends like Mike Waller say the marriage
was rocky from the start.
- What kind of problems did he tell you
he was having with her?
- He just shared that he'd gotten married,
it had been-- it happened quickly,
and he came to realize immediately
that it was all about the money
and about the prestige of being with him,
and that he realized he needed to get out
of the situation.
- Adam and Aurea lived in a house
in the upscale Ocean Park neighborhood of San Juan.
But they weren't alone.
Aurea brought along her sister, Marcia,
mother Carmen, and her two brothers.
- It was like the whole family was there
living off of Adam,
taking advantage of Adam, very blatant.
It wasn't-- it wasn't subtle, it was obvious.
And Adam would tell us,
"I feel like a stranger in this home.
"The mother's there, they speak Spanish,
"I know they're talking about me,
"And they're making fun of me. I know it."
He was uncomfortable there. He couldn't be there.
- And it got worse.
It soon became obvious
that Aurea was not pregnant.
Never had been.
She had faked it.
Adam was devastated.
- Here's the smartest person in the world
falling for the oldest trick in the book.
- He became real angry about that.
- Because she tricked him into marrying him.
- She tricked him into marrying him.
- Just months after marrying Aurea,
Adam moved into an apartment
and began to plan for a divorce.
- The divorce, for her, would have meant an end
to her being able to move up in the world.
So she was desperate.
And when people are desperate,
they do desperate things.
I guess.
- Adam became afraid of what Aurea might do.
He turned to his friend Carlos Tirado,
hiring him to be his bodyguard.
- So you went with him everywhere?
- I traveled with him. I went with him everywhere.
I picked him up in the morning
and I dropped him off in the evening.
- But fearful as he was, Adam did not cut off
all contact with Aurea.
They went to couples therapy in a last ditch effort
to save the marriage.
But by late September of 2005,
just six months after they had gotten married,
Adam decided to move ahead with the divorce.
He planned to discuss it with Aurea
the night he died.
To keep the peace, he told Carlos
to take the night off.
- He thought she didn't like me.
And he thought that without me there, he had a plan
that he could convince her to give him the divorce.
I went home, and I was hoping that by the next day
we would hear that it was over.
- To this day, Carlos carries the weight
of knowing he wasn't there that night to help his friend.
- The guy that I'm supposed to protect his life,
my friend, this kid was everything
I would like to have in a son,
gone on my time, on my watch.
It wasn't easy for a while.
It doesn't go away, it just--
it's easier to live with it,
you know?
- The grief Carlos and so many of Adam's friends and family
feel over his death is still apparent.
A grief they say Aurea and her family never shared.
In fact, Aurea didn't attend Adam's funeral in Winnipeg.
And Abe says she never offered any condolences
to his family.
- She's not grieving Adam?
- Grieving? She's not grieving him at all.
Nah.
Greeding-Greeding him. Greeding him.
G-R-E-E-D-I-N-- - She's thinking about money?
- Yeah, right.
Greeding him, not grieving him.
- When she recovered from her injuries,
Aurea made a claim to what she said
was her share of Adam's estate,
$8 million.
And Carlos says she and her family
were gathering up as many of Adam's possessions
as they could.
- They all went out to collect
the material things that they had from him.
They got the BMW.
- She was already cleaning his house?
- She was cleaning house.
- As Adam's family and friends thought back to what they saw
as the calculating way Aurea inserted herself
into his life, how she deceived him
for her own personal gain,
and how she acted after his death,
they became convinced
she had a hand in his murder.
But something else was nagging at Abe.
He was beginning to wonder
if Jonathan Roman was not Adam's killer after all.
- When we interviewed you back then for our first
"Dateline" piece. - Yeah, I had no idea.
- That was the beginning. - Yes, it was.
- It seemed like the ending. - That's right.
80% of what's happened has happened since that event.
- Abe was on a crusade to uncover the truth
about his son's death,
and he was about to take a drastic step.
- To know Abe
is to know that justice,
as we know it on this earth,
was going to be served.
- I just had a feeling that it wasn't--
it didn't fit together.
- So what did fit together?
- Abe said he felt like his son was targeted, right?
- Correct. - That it was a hit job?
- Correct, the agents came back and said, you know,
a lot of the stuff that Abe is telling us is checking out.
So we think there's more to this story
than-than meets the eye.
**
- Jonathan Roman had been convicted of killing
Adam Anhang.
Prosecutors hoped he would flip and implicate Aurea,
but he never did.
And for many trial observers,
including journalist Jose Sanchez Fournier,
there was a good reason.
- Was there a sense already that an injustice had happened,
that an innocent man had been convicted?
- There was a lot of indignation
during the trial of people
who knew the parties involved.
And they would say, "why are you prosecuting Jonathan?
"He has nothing to do with this."
- Reporters weren't the only ones who had begun
to question whether Roman was the actual killer.
Abe Anhang also had doubts.
- It wasn't until after the trial with Jonathan,
and I sat through it for eight weeks,
I just had a feeling that it wasn't--
it didn't fit together, you see.
- Abe found himself troubled by the seeming lack
of hard evidence implicating Roman in the murder.
- It was very skimpy.
- It was just a description, eyewitness description.
- A single witness.
- But it wasn't just what Abe was hearing
in the courtroom that gave him pause.
He was out talking to people in restaurants,
bars, even the La Perla neighborhood
where Roman lived.
- You can get more information in a bar,
whether it's alcohol or coffee,
than you'll get in a courtroom.
People talk.
- And what people were saying
was that Jonathan Roman had not killed his son.
- The joke was that everybody in the street knew
but the police.
- Abe was unsettled by the prospect
that Adam's real killer might still be out there.
So he set off on a decade-long odyssey
to uncover the truth about what happened
that September night.
Abe's first step,
not 24 hours after Roman had been convicted,
was to take his doubts to the FBI.
- Abe took it upon himself to go on a crusade
to open our eyes up.
- Carlos Cases is a retired FBI assistant director.
He served seventeen years in the San Juan field office,
three of them as the special agent in charge.
He says the FBI, which operates in Puerto Rico
because it is a U.S. territory,
typically leaves homicide cases
to local authorities,
as they had with Adam's murder.
- Sad to say it, but it was just one more homicide
among the hundreds that occurred here every year.
So the FBI had no reason to even look into the matter.
- Until Abe Anhang walked into your offices.
- Correct.
- Abe was able to sit down with an agent.
- Abe wanted the FBI to investigate his son's murder.
The circumstances surrounding the murder.
And basically figure out why-why he was killed.
And he felt that Jonathan Roman had
nothing to do with the homicide
and had been arrested, charged, and convicted
for something that he did not do.
- Abe said he felt like his son was targeted, right?
- Correct. - That it was a hit job?
- Correct.
- Abe told the agent who he thought
had ordered the hit.
- Abe Anhang had suspected
Aurea had something to do
in the murder of his son.
- But Abe had no real evidence
to back him up
and no idea if the FBI
would be willing to help.
- At the time, did you think, yeah, they say
they're gonna open a file.
My file's gonna be one of many files.
Did you think that they were gonna be as adamant
about pursuing justice as you were?
- Oh, gosh.
I had no idea how much I could--
I mean, first of all, remember, I was Canadian.
I had no real
right to demand things
that an American citizen might demand.
Okay? I mean, I realize that.
Why would they take an interest where we aren't
a priority for them?
And so I had to really rely on the goodwill
of these men, almost all men,
to-to do the right thing.
That was all I had.
- The right thing, in the FBI's mind,
was to take a closer look at what Abe was telling them.
- And the FBI agreed to look at the case. Why?
- We agreed to look at the case
because of the-the notoriety of the case at the time.
And it happened in Old San Juan, smack in the middle
of the crown jewel of the Caribbean.
And it was a very high-profile, very public case.
- The FBI can step in if it believes
a conspiracy has taken place.
So if a hit had been ordered on Adam,
then the FBI would have jurisdiction over the case.
Agents were assigned to investigate Abe's suspicions.
- And lo and behold, the agents came back
and said, "a lot of the stuff that Abe is telling us
"is checking out, so we think
"there's more to this story than meets the eye."
- He said, "yeah, I killed him.
"I beat him in the head, stabbed him,
"and then I just left him there to die."
- A new suspect and a jaw dropping confession.
- We had to corroborate everything he said.
It's a sensational story.
- Or maybe two new suspects.
- Who did he say was part of the ring?
**
- Well, this bench,
Adam and I used to sit here.
- When Adam was a kid, Abe says the two of them
would walk to this nearby park to sit and watch
the airplanes fly overhead.
Adam would memorize the flight schedule
for the local airport.
- He would then tell me where they were from,
where they were going, and we would talk about
what those people were likely talking about
and what they were coming to Winnipeg for
and where they were going.
- Abe says these moments helped Adam understand
and appreciate the larger world beyond Winnipeg.
- And here was a way that we could relate to the world
by a simple act of sitting here on a Saturday afternoon.
- It is bittersweet now for Abe,
knowing that the big plans Adam dreamt up on this bench
would ultimately lead him to Puerto Rico
and his murder.
A murder that the FBI now is looking into.
- And we see discrepancies and we see that there is
a description of an individual that is inconsistent
with the individual that was at the local trial
and convicted.
- Special agents Devin Kowalski and Scott Patterson
would join the team that worked the case.
They say one of the first things the FBI did was
re-interview the witnesses.
- Unfortunately, in Puerto Rico, when maybe local law enforcement
goes out and talks to the community,
there might be a story A, when the FBI goes out
and talks to the individuals in the community
there's story B.
Generally, you know, story B is a little more accurate.
- And story B was leading the FBI
to a different suspect, not Jonathan Roman,
who had been convicted of killing Adam,
but someone named Alex Pabon, known on the street
as "El Loco", "the crazy one".
- When this all happened, the name, you know,
Alex Pabon was provided.
- It turns out it was a name
authorities had heard before.
In fact, during Jonathan Roman's trial,
a defense witness testified that she saw the murder
and recognized the killer.
She said it was not Roman, but a man named Alex.
The jury evidently disregarded the testimony.
The FBI agents did not.
- And they went into La Perla
and started conducting interviews
and talking to people, looking for him.
- Remember, La Perla is the neighborhood
where witnesses said the killer fled after the murder.
It's nestled between the ocean and a cliff
that abuts Old San Juan,
just blocks from where Adam died.
And while it occupies a beautiful piece
of real estate,
it has a reputation for harboring criminals.
- So here is La Perla. - Here is La Perla.
- Jonathan Roman lived here. - Jonathan Roman lived here.
- And Alex Pabon- - So did Alex Pabon.
- Adam's friend, Carlos Tirado,
was born and raised in San Juan.
He says La Perla's reputation is well-deserved.
- There's families that have been here for generations.
Then there's also the drug kingpins that discovered
that they can hide in here and walk out here.
So they don't allow any robberies.
They don't allow anything going on here
that's not supposed to go on.
- They protect the tourists in that way?
- They protect the tourists.
They protect themselves. - Yeah.
- They-they keep the tourism going in the island
and avoid the cops coming in after them.
- Yeah.
- That criminal element was not happy with the heat
Alex Pabon had brought into La Perla.
- La Perla is a little bit of a self-policing area.
And, you know, obviously, like, Alex Pabon was
no longer welcome there.
And they had, you know, told him to leave
or else they probably would have killed him himself
for allowing, you know, a innocent man to be charged
with a crime that he committed.
So he was pretty much in hiding.
- Pabon had left La Perla, but not San Juan.
And in April 2008, the FBI tracked him down.
- What story did Alex tell them?
- Initially, he denied it, but then he started cooperating.
- He didn't just cooperate.
Alex Pabon confessed.
- He said, "Yeah, I killed him.
"I beat him in the head, stabbed him,
"and then I just left him there to die."
- But Pabon kept talking.
He said he didn't act alone,
that Adam's murder was part of a conspiracy.
- Who did he say was part of the ring?
- So he basically said that he had been hired
by Aurea Vazquez Rios.
- Aurea, just as Adam's family and friends
had suspected.
- He basically said that Aurea offered him $3 million
to kill Adam.
- Alex Pabon's confession and implication of Aurea
was a major breakthrough in the case.
But agents couldn't base Aurea's arrest
solely on the words of a killer.
- We had to corroborate everything he said.
It's a sensational story.
- A sensational story.
But was it true?
- She makes multiple phone calls to Adam's work
in an attempt to speak with him to arrange
a dinner later that evening.
- Did Aurea lead Adam to his death?
- She is having dinner at the Dragonfly,
and that is when the plan goes into action.
- And later, Aurea's new plan.
- I guess she figured I don't want anything
to do with this, so let me get away.
Gotta give her credit, she's a very smart woman,
very conniving.
- When "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow.
The shadowy details of who killed Adam Anhang
were coming into focus.
Alex Pabon admitted stabbing him
in a murder for hire scheme,
but his story didn't end there.
Pabon was about to give investigators
a thorough account of the secret plot
starring Adam's estranged wife, Aurea.
If true, they'd want to talk to her.
But first, they'd have to find her.
Here's Natalie Morales with "The Pink Skirt Plot".
- By the spring of 2008,
two-and-a-half years after Adams death,
the FBI had tracked down the man believed to be
his real killer, Alex "El Loco" Pabon.
Pabon not only confessed, but also said that
Adam's wife, Aurea, had offered him $3 million
to kill her husband.
But Aurea wasn't the only person Pabon implicated
in the conspiracy.
According to FBI Special Agent Devin Kowalski.
- He had a series of meetings with Aurea,
her sister Marcia,
her sister's then boyfriend, Jose Ferrer,
in the lead up to the murder.
- Aurea, her sister, her sister's boyfriend,
all allegedly in on the plot to kill Adam.
Pabon, an admitted a drug dealer,
said he often did business at Pink Skirt,
Aurea's bar, where Marcia and Jose both worked.
Pabon said it was there
that the trio first approached him.
- They had met before to discuss beating Adam up.
- Throughout the investigation, the FBI worked
with the United States Attorney's Office in San Juan.
Jose Ruis Santiago and Jenifer Hernandez-Vega
are Assistant U.S. Attorneys there.
- Two days before the murder,
they decide that Adam, uh, has to be killed.
- Pabon also gave investigators
his version of how the murder went down.
- He articulated being called on the morning of the crime,
September 22nd, 2005,
and kind of being hastily instructed
to find some type of a weapon in order to--
a knife, to be able to commit the attack.
And he detailed the choreography that existed
between him and Jose on the day of the murder,
to tell him to be in a certain location
and that to expect that Aurea and Adam
will be walking up in this general direction.
- Pabon said he was told to hurt Aurea
just enough during the attack
so it wouldn't appear he had targeted Adam.
Investigators believed Aurea set the plan in motion
by insisting Adam have dinner with her that night.
- She makes multiple phone calls to Adam's work, um,
in an attempt to speak with him
to arrange a dinner later that evening.
- Adam agreed. And remember,
since he thought they would be finalizing
their divorce terms, made the fateful decision
to give his bodyguard, Carlos, the night off.
Carlos believes Aurea knew Adam
would come alone if she played nice.
So Aurea picked Adam up at his office,
drove them into Old San Juan.
Pabon told investigators what happened next.
- He receives a call from Jose Ferrer-Sosa
indicating that they were ready or it was about to happen.
At that time, Aurea is having dinner at the Dragonfly,
and that is when the plan goes into action.
- The security footage from that night captured
Adam walking with Aurea, unaware these were
the last few moments of his life.
Pabon told investigators it was Aurea
who took Adam from the restaurant to Pink Skirt
after they had dinner, knowing Pabon was waiting nearby.
It was Aurea who gave Pabon the signal
to start following them. And it was Aurea
who led Adam up the cobblestone streets
to his death at the hands of Pabon.
- He follows them up the street,
at all times seeing that Aurea was with Adam.
And at the time then he approaches him
and attacks Adam.
- Witnesses said Aurea just stood there,
watching as Adam was killed. She didn't call for help.
She didn't try to save her husband.
She didn't even run.
Those witnesses also reported a brief conversation
between Aurea and the attacker
before he punched her to the ground.
It wasn't just Aurea's behavior that raised a red flag,
so did her injuries from that night.
- Adam had been brutally murdered with a knife
and cobblestones and bled to death on the street,
and she had a little nick on her head
and forgot to scream and forgot to run.
- And there was something else
that the agents found incriminating--
the couple's prenuptial agreement.
- The terms of her prenuptial agreement,
made it significantly more lucrative
if he died versus a divorce.
Roughly, she would receive $3,500 a month
for three years if they divorced.
If he died, she was going to take home $8 or $24 million.
It was a math equation. - It was motive.
Eight months after Abe walked into the FBI's offices
and asked them to look into his son's murder,
the FBI felt confident there was enough evidence
against Aurea to arrest her.
And so on June 4th, 2008, Aurea was indicted
on charges of hiring a hitman to kill Adam.
Jonathan Roman was released from prison and exonerated.
[cheering]
- But any vindication Adam's family and friends felt
was short lived, because Aurea was not behind bars.
In fact, she wasn't even in Puerto Rico.
- You gotta give her credit, she's a very smart woman.
Very conniving.
- Where is Aurea? The FBI launches
an international search for the fugitive,
but she has a secret plan to keep them at bay.
- Coming up... Aurea has a new country
and a new family, giving the FBI a new problem.
- She had children there, it's our belief, as a means
to justify her citizenship in order to stay there.
**
- The FBI in San Juan had spent eight months
investigating Adam Anhang's murder,
culminating with the indictment of his wife, Aurea.
But Aurea was not in jail, because by the summer of 2008,
she had long since left Puerto Rico.
- And where was Aurea at this point?
- So Aurea had absconded to Florence, Italy,
in 2006. And so I guess she figured,
"I don't want to be in Puerto Rico.
"I don't want anything to do with this.
"So let me get away."
- Nine months after Adam's death,
Aurea had arrived in Florence on a student visa,
supposedly to study filmmaking.
She made trips back to Puerto Rico,
but by the time of her indictment in 2008,
it was clear she saw her move to Italy as permanent.
- It's not as if this lady didn't know
what she had done. She knew.
But she was crafting a new life for herself.
- But she was doing so without any of the money
from the prenuptial agreement.
Abe, as executor of Adam's estate,
had refused to pay Aurea until all investigations
into his son's death had been concluded.
In Italy, Aurea, now a brunette,
was going by the name Beatrice Dominicci,
BB for short.
She started a relationship with a local man,
and in August 2008, she gave birth to twin girls.
- I met her at work.
Firstly, she was my colleague. Then we became friends.
- Ivana Alma met Aurea when they both worked
at a tourism office in Florence.
- She was very professional. She spoke at least
three foreign languages, English, Spanish,
and she was speaking quite good Italian.
She was very kind, very friendly, very gentle.
That is the Church of Santa Croce.
- And Ivana says Aurea was devoted to her children.
- BB was a good mother. She was very sweet with them.
She was very patient, as-as a mother should be.
- Not long after the twins were born, Aurea agreed
to an interview with journalist Jose Sanchez Fournier,
who traveled to Florence to meet her.
- She told us the reason she went to Florence
was because she always wanted to be a tour guide,
and she loved Florence.
- Aurea maintained her innocence,
but Jose was skeptical. - It was a long interview.
We spent a couple of hours with her.
But she seemed oblivious to undeniable facts on the case.
- Like, for instance, the circumstances
surrounding Adam's murder. Aurea maintained
the attack was a robbery, not a hit.
- By then, it was obvious
that this was not a straight mugging.
But she always said, "No, for me, this was a robbery".
- Aurea denied knowing the killer,
Alex "El Loco" Pabon, and claimed she sought
the FBI's help shortly after Adam was killed.
The interview made for a sensational story
back in Puerto Rico. - It caused quite a stir
because the article showed how Aurea
was openly renouncing reality, you could say.
She was holding on to her side of the story.
- Why couldn't you guys just go to Italy,
given the information, and arrest Aurea at that point?
- The FBI does not have jurisdiction overseas.
So we rely on our partnerships
with our foreign law enforcement partners.
But the FBI can't throw on our raid jackets
and walk into a sovereign nation and execute an arrest warrant.
- The FBI would have to request that Italian authorities
arrest and extradite Aurea, something Agent Kowalski
says wasn't going to happen.
- The crime for which she was charged federally
is a death penalty-eligible charge.
And the country of Italy does not extradite
for any crimes that carry that potential sentence.
- Agent Kowalski believes Aurea's move to Italy
was a calculated maneuver.
- Was that the FBI's working theory, though,
that she was living in Italy because she knew
that was a place she could go? - Yes. Yes.
- That she could be safe from extradition?
- Yes. She selected that place purposefully.
- He also says having those twins was part of the ploy.
- She had children there, it's our belief, as a means
to justify her citizenship, um, in order to stay there.
- It appeared as though Aurea had outsmarted
the federal authorities and was perhaps even thumbing
her nose at Adam's family and friends.
- I can honestly tell you she's one of the very few people
that I ran into, in my almost 27 years in the FBI,
that I would say that are-are very evil
and conniving-- calculating.
- But for all her alleged planning to elude the FBI,
there was something, or rather someone,
Aurea had overlooked-- Abe Anhang.
- Now here's an older gentleman who is smaller in stature.
But what was your impression of him?
- Adam's dad, Abe, was just such a brave man.
- Abe may be a small man. He is a powerful, smart man.
Able to modulate his emotions. Strategic.
- Do you think Aurea even knew what was coming her way?
- Absolutely not.
- Abe was not about to give up his pursuit.
- She couldn't run off to Europe
and start a new life all over again
while we buried our friend and Abe buried his son.
It wasn't about retribution, it was about justice,
and Abe didn't stop.
- Coming up... Abe tracks Aurea on his own
and shares what he learns with the FBI.
- She lied about her life, you know,
the minute she showed up in Italy.
**
- Aurea had carved out a new life for herself in Italy,
a country with laws that prohibited
her extradition because the charges she faced
carried a potential death sentence.
- All this, I think, was planned out in her head.
I mean, every-every move she made was-was calculated.
- The ongoing saga was taking a toll
on Adam's family and friends.
- I felt like it was very unfair.
She's indicted, we know what she's done,
and yet she still gets to go on living.
- But the FBI agents pursuing Aurea were not giving up.
Some, like Special Agent Scott Patterson,
felt a special connection to the case.
His even predated his career as an agent.
In fact, it was our original "Dateline" report from 2008
that first brought this story to his attention.
He was in the Army serving in Iraq when he saw it
and says he was touched by Abe's loss.
- I can't believe a father lost his son.
And the things that Adam was doing for that island
and how his life was taken.
- Patterson, who was contemplating
leaving the military for a career
in law enforcement at the time,
says the story made him want to work the hard cases,
help the Anhangs of the world.
- I was kind of on the fence if I was gonna join the FBI or not.
I just remember seeing it and thinking, you know,
like, that's the type of work that I wanna be doing.
- After joining the bureau, Agent Patterson
volunteered to work in the San Juan field office.
He had no idea that the FBI was actually
investigating the murder case that had helped shape
his decision, until it landed on his desk.
- You're handed a bunch of new cases,
and I'm sitting there at my desk
just reading through this thinking, like, I've--
I know this case. I know this case somehow.
I remember just, you know, logging onto the computer
and looking it up, and I'm like,
"Oh, yeah, that's the Pink Skirt murder."
- It was a strange twist of fate, and it became
Agent Patterson's top priority case.
One of the first things he did was call Abe.
- I remember, like, the first phone conversation
I had with him and just still,
the grief in his voice. - Yeah.
- Like, that cut me. - He made a promise to Abe.
- I told him, whatever it takes, like, w-we will get her.
- But Agent Patterson didn't yet fully understand
who he was up against.
Aurea was in Italy and untouchable.
The FBI's hands were tied. Abe's, however, were not.
- The FBI did a tremendous job.
I mean, they did an incredible job,
but they don't have jurisdiction in Italy.
So I had to go out and hire, at my expense
and everything else, the investigators in Italy.
- Abe refused to wait for Aurea to trip up.
He hired private investigators
to keep tabs on her and report back to him.
Abe would put off his own retirement
so he could fund his investigation.
- And it had to be done, because no one else was doing it.
- Abe's investigators surveilled Aurea.
These pictures of her are from one stakeout.
The investigators documented where she was living,
where she was working. - It was like Abe became
singularly obsessed with solving the crime.
- I'd probably use the word determined more than obsessed.
He was just like a machine. Just stayed on top of it.
Wasn't gonna let it go until-until it was done.
- Did you ever tell him, "Abe, maybe just let the FBI--"
- No. - "...let the police--"
- No, no. - "...deal with this?"
- No. - Wouldn't have mattered.
- What did you find out about the kind of life
she had built for herself there? - She wasn't in poverty.
She was able to always to make some money
and somehow have a-- have a good life.
- Abe fed the information gleaned by
his private investigators, what amounted
to Aurea's daily routine, to the FBI.
Former FBI Assistant Director Carlos Cases.
- We knew the Italians were not going to extradite her.
That's why I give Abe all the credit in the world,
because he took it upon himself to essentially
track her for us and tell us what she was doing,
who she was associating with, and what her movements were.
- We were never asking Mr. Anhang for any information.
- The FBI agents made it clear that the information
from Abe's investigators was not solicited
and not automatically taken at face value.
- So it was helpful, but it was also information
that you had to then work on your own and-- to corroborate.
- Yeah, it was extremely helpful information,
you know, and very much appreciated.
It was just information that we would take
and then we would have to figure out
what was factual and what wasn't.
- The agents learned that Aurea's boyfriend
and father of her twins had found out through media reports
about the accusations against her.
Not long after, Aurea moved out of the house with the girls.
- The paper started to reveal that she was
the Viuda Negra, the Black Widow,
and then she sought refuge in the Jewish community.
- In Florence's Jewish Quarter, Aurea passed herself off
as a Jewish widow whose husband had died in an accident.
In fact, when she married Adam, Aurea agreed
to convert to Judaism, but never did.
- She lied about her life, you know,
the minute she showed up in Italy.
In Puerto Rico, we call it, like, the Ay Bendito factor.
Just the oh-- - Ay, bendito.
- Yeah. - Oh, poor thing.
- Exactly. And it's this--
- Right. - ...mother of two.
Like, how could she be-- - Yeah.
- ...you know, charged of this crime
and was telling people she was Jewish.
- Poor me. Look at me.
They're accusing me, and I'm just a widow,
I'm just a Jewish girl trying to get help.
And, you know, my husband was killed,
and here I am in Florence. And for the Jewish community
there, they felt it was a mitzvah to help her.
I mean, it's part of-- you have to help a widow.
It's an obligation to help a widow.
And she knew that. So she was playing that card.
- She played all of them, too. - All of them.
- Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruiz Santiago says Aurea
used false birth certificates to perpetuate her ruse.
- And that was done with the intention
that she would obtain a certification
from the Jewish community of Florence
stating that she was a Jew and her daughters
born in Italy were Jewish, so that she could then
relocate from Italy to Israel.
- Perhaps planning her next escape.
Aurea never moved to Israel, but over the next few years
the FBI continued to keep tabs on her,
largely through information provided by Abe's investigators.
And one piece of information in particular
was game changing.
- She did a fair bit of traveling.
She loved to travel. - She wasn't confined
to Italy then? - No. Oh, no.
She went to Spain. She went to Switzerland.
She went to England. She was in Gibraltar.
She was in Israel once. No, w-we tracked her.
- All those trips she was taking gave the FBI
a new opportunity to break the case,
because a number of European countries
have different policies regarding extradition.
So if she was arrested outside of Italy,
there would be a good chance
of getting her back to Puerto Rico.
- Had the FBI tried to capture her
and arrest her at any of those points
in her travels? - We did.
- But, by the time the agents would get wind
of where Aurea was and filed the paperwork
with the local authorities, it was too late.
She was already back in Italy.
- How close did you get? - Uh, we had, um, officers
in one of those countries right outside her hotel door.
Um, but the steps and the process
that you need to go through with such fast, you know,
changing information, it was-it was really tough.
- How frustrating is that, though, for the FBI agents
knowing that she's there, but she's untouchable?
There's nothing we can do to get her?
- It's very frustrating, Natalie,
but we don't get bogged down in frustration.
We find a way to get it done.
- The game of cat and mouse between Aurea and the FBI
continued for years, but by 2013,
five years after her indictment,
the FBI decided to stop playing defense.
It was time to go on offense.
It was time for a Hail Mary.
- Did you think it was gonna work?
Honestly, I gave it a 50/50 chance.
- Coming up... The FBI sets a trap.
- What are her vulnerabilities? What are her motivations?
And let's develop a strategy to exploit those.
**
- Welcome back. Adam Anhang's widow,
Aurea, was a wanted woman. For years,
the FBI had chased her around Europe,
hoping to corner the cunning fugitive.
But she was always one step ahead.
Now they had a new plan, an elaborate sting operation
designed to lure Aurea into their grasp
and give Adam the justice he deserved.
Question was, would it work?
Here again is Natalie Morales with "The Pink Skirt Plot".
- By 2013, as Aurea continued to evade
U.S. law enforcement, the frustration felt
by the agents pursuing her was palpable.
- We were in a defensive posture because
she had been an elusive person for so long.
- We knew we could not arrest her in Italy
or the Italians would not extradite
if we had her arrested in Italy.
- Even though Aurea would leave Italy
and travel throughout Europe,
the agents never had enough lead time
to coordinate her arrest with the local authorities.
So they decided they needed a new strategy.
They would set a trap.
Carlos Cases was the special agent in charge
of the San Juan field office in 2013.
- The agents came to me one day a-and said, um,
"Boss, we have this plan that we are developing
because we believe that we have the ability
to get Aurea to travel from Italy to Spain".
- The agents felt confident Spain would arrest Aurea
and extradite her to Puerto Rico.
- We developed this strategy to exploit
what she was doing in her daily life.
And she was a tour guide, and she was traveling
all over Europe and elsewhere, and she would provide
tours for traveling Jewish groups.
- The strategy was simple--
present Aurea with a business opportunity.
Come to Spain to meet a group of American tourists
and guide them as they travel through Europe.
- I told my agents, all right,
we're getting all the approvals.
We're doing this.
- The agents set up a fake tour group
that was heading to Europe and in need
of an experienced guide like Aurea.
- So you conducted a good old fashioned sting operation?
- A good old fashioned sting operation in which
we need to design something that's plausible
for her to be able to bite into.
It's not a lot of bells and whistles.
There's not drones. There's not, you know,
wiretaps everywhere. There's none of that stuff.
It's, "Hey, let's use what we know about Aurea Vazquez."
What are her vulnerabilities? What are her motivations?
And let's develop a strategy to exploit those,
to get her to a place where our arrest
can be executed with a little bit less red tape.
- Her weakness, they decided, was money.
And so they plan to dangle a job offer
too good to pass up.
- It had to be very meticulous, Natalie, because
we couldn't run the risk of her getting suspicious
and then backing out and not traveling.
- This was a well-choreographed
and a very thoughtful operation in which there was a manifest,
there was gonna be a multi-stop tour to multiple countries.
And there were down to the-- you know, confirming
what on the agenda for each day would have--
she would be responsible for by providing these groups.
Restaurants, kosher restaurants, that she would have to go to
to take the Jewish travelers at each location.
It was-- wasn't bulletproof, but it was strong.
- But was it enough to convince Aurea?
The FBI agents contacted her through intermediaries
she had worked with before.
- So she trusted these people? - So she had trust.
- Through those intermediaries, the agents
negotiated with Aurea for two months.
Finally, she took the bait and agreed to fly to Spain
to act as a guide for what she thought
was a group of Jewish-American tourists.
- Did you have confidence in the plan,
at that point in time, when you all saw this on paper
and you saw the email exchanges going back and forth?
Did you think "We're really gonna get her this time?"
- I was pretty confident.
- I remember that day was coming,
and I was just worried that she wasn't gonna get on the plane.
- But when the day arrived, the agents got word
Aurea had boarded the plane and was en route to Spain.
- She's traveling to Spain, arrives there thinking
she's gonna meet a bunch of travelers.
What happens? - Authorities from
the Spanish National Police are there,
plain sight in the jetway, to take her into custody.
- The sting operation worked.
On June 30th, 2013, after five years on the run
and almost eight years after Adam's murder,
Aurea Vazquez-Rijos was finally in custody.
- And what was that moment like for you?
- I was ecstatic. I never thought
that we were gonna be able to get her.
- Aurea's arrest triggered phase two of the operation.
- As soon as I received confirmation
that she was in custody, is that then we executed
arrest warrants on Marcia and Jose in San Juan.
- Agents swarmed the homes of Aurea's alleged
co-conspirators, her sister Marcia
and Marcia's boyfriend, Jose Ferrer-Sosa.
- And so it really was like an internationally
choreographed simultaneous arrest.
And, you know, good day for the FBI,
but a tremendous day for the victim's family.
- Carlos Cases delivered the good news
to Abe and his family.
- I was so surprised
that I didn't even say thank you to him.
I sort of dusted him off a bit, which was not right.
- You were in shock. - I was in shock. Yeah.
- I mean, It had been years of pursuing her, and finally--
- Yeah. - --they had her.
- They had her. - But what's it like
to hear those words, "We have her. She's in custody."
- Oh, well. Oh. - Finally.
- Almost the opposite of the other one, you know?
You know, "your son's dead".
- Aurea Vazquez-Rijos was in a Spanish jail cell.
Her sister and her sister's boyfriend locked up in San Juan.
All face conspiracy charges
connected to the murder of Adam Anhang.
But if you thought that this was the end of the saga,
you haven't been paying attention.
- By this point in this investigation,
like, I'm not surprised by anything,
because it's just a crazy twist after a crazy twist.
- Coming up... - She used her sexuality.
- Aurea's little surprise.
- How does that happen? - Well, I don't know,
'cause I've never been to that prison in Spain.
**
- The FBI's meticulously planned sting operation had worked.
Aurea Vazquez-Rijos had been arrested
by Spanish authorities after five years on the run.
But Barbara Anhang had learned
in the years since her son's death
that Aurea was nothing if not cunning.
Barbara, did you think, "Okay, the end is in sight?"
- No, I didn't. Her behavior
is extremely mischievous and slippery.
- So you already were expecting something else?
- Yes, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
But I knew something would happen.
- Call it a mother's intuition.
Because while Aurea was in a Spanish jail
fighting her extradition to Puerto Rico...
- Aurea went back to her playbook,
the one that she used in Italy,
and ended up getting pregnant while in prison.
- How does that happen? - Well, I don't know,
because I'd never been to that prison in Spain.
What I do know is that she got pregnant
by another inmate that was there.
- And is it the FBI's belief that she had this child, again,
as some way to try to delay the process against her?
- Yes, she did it in Italy previously by having twins.
And it's our assessment that she did it again as--
to have some legitimate reason why she shouldn't
be removed to the United States.
- Master manipulator. - Master manipulator.
- The pregnancy meant that Aurea's extradition,
if it happened, would have to wait
at least until after the baby was born.
- So when you heard she managed to get pregnant
in prison in Spain? - Oh, I smelled
that one so quick. - You knew it was coming?
- Oh, I knew it was coming. - She used her sexuality,
you know, in such a calculated way.
It goes to show the sick, evil individual
that really was only thinking about herself
and how to spare herself.
- The baby, a girl,
was born in the summer of 2015.
Just weeks later, Agent Kowalski got the word.
- All of a sudden, the Spanish court says,
"We're done. She's being extradited."
And we were told that, in past experience,
unless you act immediately,
there's potential that the removal evaporates.
- But the FBI was ready. - I don't want to risk
transporting her on a commercial flight
back to the U.S., particularly with a small child,
because my concern was that she was gonna
cause a scene while boarding the airplane,
and the captain was gonna say, you know, "Get out.
"I don't want-I don't want this on--
"on my flight. Too risky."
- Any delay in the extradition could give Aurea
another chance to stave it off and remain in Europe.
- I called FBI headquarters and requested to use
the FBI director's plane
to fly to Madrid, pick her up,
and then bring her back straight to San Juan.
- Headquarters approved the request,
so Agent Kowalski jumped on the director's plane
and flew to Spain to pick up Aurea and her baby.
Finally, they were bringing her home.
He was tight lipped about what Aurea said on that flight.
- I'm not able to discuss specifics on the conversations,
but she presented as someone that was in disbelief
that she was actually apprehended.
And she presented as someone that, in her opinion,
did not believe that she was guilty
for the crimes that she was charged.
- What satisfaction did you feel on that flight back,
though, knowing she's sitting
right there next to you and in custody?
- I felt very fortunate to--
honestly, sitting there and thinking about it.
When we land, Abe Anhang finally has...
not closure,
but has some sense of justice.
That he came to the FBI in 2007
and said "I need your help,"
and we conduct an investigation over several years,
and, you know, where I'm taking the director's plane
over to Spain and bringing her back.
- And the fact that you're flying in the director's plane,
I think, conveys how important an operation
this was to the FBI. - Extremely. Extremely.
- Carlos Cases met the plane on the tarmac
when it landed in San Juan.
- And so I went up into the plane.
I thought I was gonna see a contrite
and a sad Aurea with a somber mood.
Far from it. She was smiling.
- Years of hard investigative work
had culminated in this moment. The FBI had their woman.
Agent Kowalski says Aurea was given the chance
to spend some time with her infant daughter
before they would be separated, perhaps forever.
- And then she requested that she use that time
to make herself up, because she was fully aware
that there would be a tremendous amount
of media coverage and cameras upon her arrival.
- So she was more concerned about making sure
she looked good than about spending her last moments
with her child? - Yes.
- Did that surprise you at all? - It did not surprise me.
- It's the queen of selfish. - Yeah.
- It was September 24th, 2015,
almost ten years to the day since Adam's brutal murder.
For the Anhang family, Abe's relentless pursuit
of Aurea had come to this moment.
Aurea in shackles, brought back
to finally face the charges against her
and face Abe himself in court.
- When they finally brought her back, I--
somebody said to me, "What words do you have for her?"
I said, "Welcome back from your European vacation".
- But Aurea was not about to go down without a fight
and without trying to do what she did best,
exploiting people for her own personal gain.
Would the jury be next?
- Coming up... - She thought that she would
win the jury over and she would get away with it.
- Aurea on the stand
when "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- Aurea Vazquez-Rijos was accused of hiring
Alex "El Loco" Pabon to kill her husband, Adam Anhang.
She pleaded not guilty,
as did her two alleged co-conspirators,
her sister Marcia and Jose Ferrer-Sosa.
Aurea didn't want to talk to "Dateline", but her mother
has been an outspoken defender of her daughters.
- To me, my children are innocent.
- She insists her daughters are victims
of a corrupt legal system.
- There is justice here for people
with a lot of money, but not for others.
Modest people on the street have no chance.
- After three years of procedural delays
and an act of God named Hurricane Maria,
the trial for Aurea and her co-defendants
finally began in August 2018,
thirteen years after Adam Anhang was murdered.
- For me, the case was about greed.
- Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenifer Hernandez-Vega
and Jose Ruiz Santiago prosecuted the case.
- It was important for the jury to understand
why would this have occurred.
The fact that, at the time, they were
about to get a divorce when the murder happens
is all about her wanting to have more.
- The trial was held in a federal courthouse
just blocks from where Adam was murdered.
- Was Abe in the trial the whole time?
- He was. - And his wife?
- He sat right by me in the first row. Yup.
- Abe says it was unnerving,
sitting so close to Aurea at her defense table.
- It was 15 to 20 feet away. That's how close it is.
And we made eye contact a few times.
- Aurea, for her part, appeared to be playing a part.
- She played a character, and every day she would
come very well dressed with all her makeup on.
- Aurea, it seemed, wanted the jury to see her
as Adam's glamorous, yet grieving, widow.
- She came in with her hair blow dried.
Now she was something else, trying to have
the ay bendito work for her. You know, poor thing.
- With no physical evidence tying Aurea to Adam's murder,
the prosecution's case was circumstantial.
And with Aurea sitting at the defense table,
it was by no means a slam dunk.
But after a ten-year investigation,
the case was voluminous in scope.
From testimony about the troubled nature
of Adam and Aurea's relationship,
to the numerous phone calls Aurea made to Adam
to convince him to have dinner with her
that fateful evening, to the prenuptial agreement
granting her $8 million should Adam die.
The prosecutors also presented something else
they believed pointed to a conspiracy--
a handwritten letter by Alex Pabon.
- And this letter was addressed to Marcia.
- And the point of this letter is saying that he had done
his part of the plan, and now it was their turn
to then pay him for what he had done.
- Of course, their star witness was Alex Pabon himself,
who had already pleaded guilty to participating
in the conspiracy to kill Adam.
He told the jury how Aurea and her co-defendants
hired him to do it, although he said they never paid him
as promised. He was one of the last
prosecution witnesses to testify.
- We believed that by putting Alex at the end
and showing all the motive that Aurea had,
and all the steps that she took to have Adam murdered
before sitting down Alex, it would be easy for the jury
to comprehend, yes, this is what actually happened.
- But the defense tried to convince the jury
that something else happened. - I believe the defense strategy
was to paint him like, uh-- like he was so crazy
that he did this-- this was a random killing.
- The defense said Alex, "El Loco",
the crazy one, was just that, crazy,
and had acted alone in killing Adam.
And they dismissed that letter,
which had never been delivered,
as the ramblings of an unstable killer.
In fact, they insisted there was no evidence
of any communication between Pabon
and the three co-defendants.
But the biggest moment of the trial came
when Aurea herself took the stand.
She had spent more than a decade claiming
to be Adam Anhang's grieving widow.
Now was her chance to convince the jury.
- She felt secure that if she had the opportunity
to talk to those jurors, that she would make them
believe that she, in fact, was in love with Adam Anhang
and she had not participated in these events.
- Aurea testified that she had never even met Alex Pabon,
let alone hired him to kill her husband.
And while she admitted that she and Adam had marital issues,
Aurea insisted they were devoted to one another
and were working things out.
Aurea also testified that she had not fled to Italy
to elude authorities, but rather to pursue her dreams.
Adam's friends weren't buying it.
- And how would you describe her on the stand?
- She was the narcissist that we know she was.
She thought that she would win the jury over
and she would get away with it.
- But what would the jury believe?
- We always worry about a jury, because one person can just,
for whatever reason, decide to go the other way.
And you always worry about that, absolutely.
- After two days of deliberations,
the jury reached a verdict.
Guilty.
- And then, nearly fifteen years after
the death of your son-- - Yeah.
- Finally, those words, guilty.
What was the emotion in that courtroom?
[sighs]
- It was quite a moment. Yeah, it was.
- The sentencing was held a few months later
after the victim impact statements.
As Abe was walking past Aurea, she spoke to him.
- She says to me, "Are you happy now?"
She has the audacity.
Well, I knew what she was trying to do.
She was trying to provoke me, right?
- What did you say? - I just said, "Shut up".
Now, in retrospect, there's lots of other things
I could have said. Yeah.
If you're looking for a symbolic moment
that sort of sums it up, it's right there. Yeah.
- Aurea was sentenced to life in prison.
As were Marcia and Jose, although they'd been convicted
of a lesser charge. All three are appealing.
- I don't hate Aurea, but I sure hate
what she did to us and our family
and what she's done to her own family.
I mean, look what she's done.
- Think about the children she left behind.
- Right. I mean, who's gonna look after all these kids?
I mean, she had no regard for the kids
she was bringing into this world
other than it would help her run away.
- Aurea's twins are with their father in Italy.
Her daughter, born in Spain, lives in Puerto Rico
with Aurea's mother.
For Abe and his family, the convictions marked
the end of a journey filled with pain and loss,
but also with determination, determination to fulfill a vow
Abe made the day he learned his son had died.
- We can say now there is justice for Adam,
but will that bring peace at all for Abe?
- I think it brings relief,
some level of closure.
But no, I don't think it will ever bring him
or Becky or Barbara peace.
- I have a photograph of him that sits on my desk
where I see him at his joyful best.
And his optimism
and how beautiful a person he was.
Reminds me of what we lost
and what he could have been today.
- To know Abe is to know that he'll start writing
the next chapter now. And whereas the last chapter
was about seeking justice for Adam,
I'm certain this next chapter
will be about living Adam's legacy.
- That's all for this edition
of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow. Thank you for watching.