[tense music]
- A young woman living her new york dream...
- She was smart, she was dedicated,
And she was an immigrant success story.
- Suddenly vanishes without a trace.
- Was she abducted?
Was she kidnapped? Was she killed?
- The trail leads police
To a man with a checkered past.
- He was in the garage
Digging a hole.
This is a major break in our investigation.
- This is where it gets really weird.
- And a wronged lover decides to get even.
- He broke this thing wide open.
- I wasn't gonna let him get away
With what he did to me.
- When he goes on the lam,
He finds you can't hide from the nypd.
- One day, I got a phone call.
"lock your doors. He's coming back."
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
- Around the world, everyone knows
That new york city is a beacon of variety,
Wealth, and, more than anything,
Possibility.
That's what attracted filipino native maria cruz.
But she could never have imagined
How the glittering promise of new york could vanish
In a single violent instant.
♪ ♪
[car horns honking]
In the high-stakes world of international finance,
Monday morning sets off at a blistering pace.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
- At barclay's bank,
People started noticing early on
That a colleague, maria cruz, was not in the office.
[phone ringing]
- Maria cruz was a very consistent woman.
She never missed work. She was a person of routine.
- You have to be very aggressive here.
You have to compete.
Maria possessed those qualities.
- She was a responsible individual,
And very unusual that she never showed up to work that day.
[phone ringing]
- The bank alerts maria's family to her absence,
And over the next four days,
They comb the city looking for her.
But maria doesn't return phone calls,
And she never returns to work.
♪ ♪
- Coincidentally,
She had her brother and another family member were
Coming in to new york from the philippines
To visit with her.
[soft dramatic music]
- Maria failed to meet her family at the airport
As she promised and never contacted them.
- It would've been highly unusual
For her not to be available to meet with her family.
♪ ♪
Her uncle had come into the precinct
To report her missing.
This family is desperate to find maria.
- Detectives in the crime scene team
Go to maria's apartment in hell's kitchen
In west midtown.
[tense music]
- They found "wall street journals"
From Monday and Tuesday piled up in front of her door,
And they knew that wasn't right.
- With a key from the super, they unlocked the apartment.
[latch clicks] [indistinct radio chatter]
♪ ♪
- The apartment was completely pristine.
Beds were made, dishes in the dishwasher.
There was no sign of forced entry.
[indistinct radio chatter]
♪ ♪
We couldn't determine from what we saw in the apartment
As to where she could've possibly have been.
- In any missing person case,
Our biggest ally is information.
Detectives need to speak to her family
And figure out exactly who maria is,
If there's anything that might help us
Locate where she's gone.
[indistinct radio chatter]
- Maria cruz was 35 years old.
♪ ♪
She grew up in the philippines.
She was an excellent student.
- She decided that, you know,
"I have all the credentials to make it in america,"
So she came to pursue her american dream.
[chuckles]
[soft dramatic music]
- She graduated from honors with fordham getting her mba
And got a job working as the senior credit analyst.
She was smart, she was dedicated,
And she was very ambitious.
She was an immigrant success story.
♪ ♪
- From what we gathered from her uncle,
She was a very consistent woman.
And this was highly unusual
That friends and family hadn't heard from her
Or they couldn't account for her.
- There seems to be no reason
For maria to have left her successful, happy life.
And this is so out-of-character for maria
That detectives are concerned for her welfare.
Then the superintendent gives them a possible lead.
The building has surveillance video of the lobby.
- We did locate maria cruz on the surveillance video.
She was leaving her building on Sunday midmorning.
[tense music]
- As they run through the next few days
Of the video,
They realize something disturbing.
Maria never appears again.
♪ ♪
- So we knew we had maria leaving the building,
But we never had her returning to the building.
- As the nypd continues their investigation,
Maria's family searches the city for any sign of her.
- The family took it upon themselves
To canvass neighborhoods.
And they put up missing persons posters
In the vicinity of maria's apartment
And her work.
Detectives fan out,
Knock on doors in the building
Looking for some information
That might help us find out where maria was.
The doorman did say that she was a regular churchgoer.
She went to st. Malachy's church
Located down the block.
- Maria cruz found spiritual comfort
In a catholic church.
♪ ♪
Maria cruz had gone to church in st. Malachy's
In the morning of Sunday.
- No one had seen her since mass.
- Was she abducted?
Was she kidnapped? Was she killed?
- If something did happen to maria,
The first few days after her disappearance
Are where the police know they'll find leads.
Detectives turn to her phone and credit card records.
- Once we receive her cell phone records,
We determine that on the Sunday that she went missing,
The phone did ping on a cell phone tower
In lower manhattan on that Sunday.
♪ ♪
Maria's credit card records indicate that on that Sunday,
She did make a purchase
At a loehmann's department store,
Which is in lower manhattan in the chelsea area.
♪ ♪
She also made a withdrawal at an atm in the area.
She withdrew $400.
We responded to the bank where the atm was located.
We looked at video.
We determined that she was by herself.
And that was the last video evidence,
At the time, we had.
♪ ♪
After that, we concluded that
There were no other incoming or outgoing phone calls.
Now we're gonna turn to any emails
That would give us an indication
What maria had planned for that day.
That process to obtain any email records
Took quite a long time for us to get.
But at this point in the investigation,
Things have slowed, which was frustrating.
♪ ♪
- Maria's family was really torn apart.
The anguish of not knowing
Is something that never heals.
- They came to the church.
I could see the look of anguish
At what happened to their daughter.
[somber music]
- For the next two months,
Detectives look for any leads in maria's disappearance.
- We are looking into maria's personal life
And the people she interacted with.
Was maria experiencing any personal problems?
- They find no useful leads.
Maria hasn't returned
And she hasn't used her credit cards or her phone.
Her family has to return to the philippines
Without any news.
- At this point in the investigation,
We still don't know what happened to maria.
We're very concerned.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- After six months,
Detectives finally receive maria's email records.
The emails give us a fuller picture
Of the missing banker's life
Around the time she disappeared.
- Maria was integrating into
The frantic, always-on lifestyle of new york.
She wanted to project an image of a professional woman,
So she was getting a lot of cosmetic services.
- We found that on the Sunday that maria went missing,
She had a doctor's appointment with a dermatologist
In lower manhattan.
We learned that the name of that doctor
Was dean faiello.
- But there's one line
In the dermatologist's email correspondence to maria
That gives detectives pause.
- The email exchanges indicating
The doctor needed cash
To purchase lidocaine and syringes.
- Normally, a doctor wouldn't ask for cash.
Normally, a doctor would ask for a health plan.
♪ ♪
- Now that's a huge red flag.
♪ ♪
- There are no more emails after that morning.
- The request for cash
Lines up with maria's last appearance on video
Taking out money from an atm.
It seems that she was intending
To visit this doctor that afternoon.
Could this dermatologist, dean faiello,
Have been the last person to see maria?
♪ ♪
- Detectives wanted to know
If she showed up for that appointment
And if she shared
Any of her plans for the rest of the day.
They'd want to know if anyone was with her,
What time she left his establishment.
- We're desperate to find out
If maria is possibly still alive
Or if she's a victim of foul play.
Detectives obviously are anxious
To speak to this doctor
To tell us what happened in that doctor's office.
♪ ♪
[laser wand buzzing] - coming up...
- Having a laser wand is like having a gun in your hand.
- There's an indication that there are human remains.
- He was a narcissistic, pathological liar.
[dramatic music]
[car honks honking]
[tense music]
- In October 2003, the nypd has a new lead
That reignited the six-month-old case
Of missing woman maria cruz.
They've discovered that maria had visited the office
Of a skin care professional named dean faiello
On the day she vanished.
And oddly, this doctor asked her to bring cash.
♪ ♪
- Legit doctors, in my experience,
Never requests you to bring cash.
So that's suspicious.
[suspenseful music]
- They put dean faiello's name into their system
To track down his latest address
And find out that this dermatologist
Isn't exactly what he seems.
He's got a rap sheet. A long one.
- Dean faiello had been arrested previously
For practicing medicine without a license.
And now, this is a major red flag
In our investigation into maria cruz's disappearance.
So at this point, it was determined
That we should pull back a little bit
In order not to raise up dean faiello
For fear that he might flee.
♪ ♪
- So detectives on maria cruz's case
Decide to dig further
Into dean faiello's criminal history.
- In 2003, I was a senior investigator
In the new york state attorney general's office.
I get a call from detective moroney.
♪ ♪
And he said, dean faiello, do I know him to be violent?
I said, "why do you ask?"
"'cause we're trying to find
"this missing person, maria cruz.
And, you know, we saw that she was a patient of his."
- Brian ford, along with joe buffalino,
Who together had previously arrested dean faiello,
Start from the beginning,
Explaining faiello's past run-ins with the law.
♪ ♪
- I'm dr. Laurie polis.
I'm a board-certified dermatologist here in new york.
In the '90s, dean and I were renting in the same office.
He was an independent practitioner
With a completely separate practice.
He was this young, good-looking, strapping,
Well-spoken, affable young man.
I knew that he had worked
At this spa on christopher street
And was gay.
He was not a doctor.
He was doing electrolysis.
Single-hair obliteration for hair removal.
[instrument buzzing]
Electrolysis is a course that anyone can take
And get a certificate.
There's no medical training needed.
- Dean soon took a keen interest
In dr. Polis' more advanced medical procedures
For laser hair removal.
- At that time, hair removal by laser
Was a burgeoning technology in dermatology.
And so he was very interested to watch.
♪ ♪
- But dean didn't have the medical training necessary
To legally operate the laser machine
Or to do the more complicated and risky cosmetic surgeries
He was watching dr. Polis perform.
♪ ♪
- In the state of new york, it is required
That you have a license to perform
Cosmetic surgery and laser surgery.
♪ ♪
- After several months, dean told us
That he had aids and was dying
And was going to florida
To live out the rest of his life.
We were very sad to hear it.
We threw him a little goodbye party,
Wished him well.
Never did it occur to me that it wouldn't be true.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
Two or three weeks later
Was when I noticed this ad in "new york magazine."
"certified laserist dean faiello."
♪ ♪
I don't even have words to express
My bewilderment and shock.
First of all, he had lied and hadn't gone to florida,
And most alarming to me was,
This non-qualified person was out there
Basically practicing medicine without a license.
My heart clenched.
♪ ♪
- After learning about dean faiello's past
From dr. Polis, investigators are getting
More and more indications that the phony doctor
Maria cruz saw on the day she vanished
Might be linked to her disappearance.
♪ ♪
- So these were all factors to make us very anxious
That dean faiello was involved in maria cruz's disappearance.
We really thought that something went very wrong
At that doctor's visit.
- It's dangerous to practice medicine without a license.
If a patient had a cardiac arrest
Or an event on his table, he didn't have the skills
To deal with something if it went wrong.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
Having a laser wand is like having a gun in your hand.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[brakes creaking, horns honking]
- Detectives looking for missing banker maria cruz
Have learned that dean faiello,
The supposed doctor she saw on the day she disappeared,
Had several run-ins with the law.
This raised major red flags for investigators.
In 1999, dr. Laurie polis discovered
That he'd been practicing medicine without a license
And his criminal exploits didn't stop there.
♪ ♪
- I was contacted
By a third-party health plan
Asking me, "why, dr. Polis,
"are you writing so many prescriptions
For this medicine called stadol?"
I had never heard of this medicine.
So I immediately looked it up. It was an opiate.
It was a nasal spray.
Fast-acting painkiller narcotic.
♪ ♪
I immediately said,
"have the pharmacy send me a photocopy."
My signature had been forged. It wasn't my signature.
And shockingly,
The patient's name was dean faiello.
So I thought he stole my prescription pads.
- We're told dean would write out the prescription
And then he would take it for his own use.
♪ ♪
- In January 1999,
Dean was convicted of forging prescriptions
And sentenced to three years' probation
And mandatory drug rehabilitation.
♪ ♪
But we needed proof that he was
Practicing medicine without a license,
So the attorney general's office
Launched an investigation.
- They were sending in people to pose as patients.
- And he was giving them advice about growths on their arms
That he shouldn't have been giving.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Our detectives learned that on October 8, 2002,
Six months before maria cruz went missing,
Dean faiello was arrested a second time.
This time, the police had what they needed
To charge him with practicing medicine without a license.
♪ ♪
- We were very glad and felt a sense of...
Self-righteous "yes!"
♪ ♪
- That's when we went and we got the search warrant
For dean's office,
And we found the laser machine.
♪ ♪
- Now he could go to jail
For quite a considerable amount of time.
- But faiello's boyfriend posted his bail,
So he was free while awaiting sentencing.
♪ ♪
- After his arrest,
He was not supposed to see any patients at all.
- He knew he wasn't supposed to be doing it,
But we found out later he was still doing it
At a friend's apartment down on 16th street.
- And that's where maria cruz came in
On April 13, 2003.
♪ ♪
- The timeline indicates that
Maria attended that medical appointment
And then went missing.
We believe that whatever happened
During that medical treatment
Caused maria cruz's disappearance.
♪ ♪
- Fast-forward to October, 2003.
As investigators are searching for maria cruz,
Dean faiello is now their main suspect.
The missing persons detectives
Want to round him up immediately,
But the detectives on faiello's case
Tell them it won't be that easy.
- So on the date that he was supposed to show up in court,
June 2003, he never showed up.
♪ ♪
- He's gone--nobody's been able to account for him.
- I had to call a friend of mine who worked in customs
And I said, "do me a favor.
I know you're not supposed to do this,"
I said, "but do me a favor.
I'm looking or dean faiello."
I gave him his passport number.
So he goes in back, and about ten minutes later,
He goes, "brian, he's in costa rica."
I says, "costa rica?" I says, "son of a bitch."
- We were itching to hop a plane to costa rica
To round up main suspect dean faiello,
But we didn't have enough to justify a full-out manhunt.
We needed physical proof.
♪ ♪
And then out of nowhere, we get a lead.
- And so this is kind of developing now kind of quick.
Brian ford heard from a former boyfriend
Of dean faiello, greg bach,
Indicating that he'd like to speak to him
And something is amiss.
- Out of the clear blue, greg bach reached out to me.
He knew a whole bunch of stuff about dean.
- He says that he has some information
That might help the investigation.
- He was helpful. He was more than helpful.
I mean, he broke this thing wide open.
[heart pounding]
- My name's greg bach.
Dean and I were boyfriends.
I loved him. He was my other half.
I was invested in trying
To keep him from ruining his life any more.
But then what happened in exchange was,
He ended up ruining mine.
And I wasn't gonna let him get away with what he did.
♪ ♪
- Coming up... - They asked dean,
"were you under the influence of drugs at the time?"
And he said yes.
- He was screaming and yelling at me.
Like, "get out of the garage!" like, "get out of here!"
- That is an "oh, (bleep)" moment.
It's "oh, (bleep)" moment.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
[police siren wailing]
- In October 2003,
Police working the missing person case
Of maria cruz have a possible suspect,
A skin care specialist, dean faiello.
Six months after maria went missing,
As police are searching for faiello,
A disgruntled ex-boyfriend of dean's,
Greg bach, calls police.
He says he may have information on the case.
♪ ♪
- We go up and talk to greg, and greg is forthcoming.
[soft dramatic music]
[birds singing]
♪ ♪
- I met dean--we were introduced by a mutual friend.
He was really charismatic, really handsome.
♪ ♪
At the time that I met him,
He was working on laser hair removal.
He was successful in his sobriety.
- In 1998, the couple began spending weekends
At dean's house in newark, new jersey.
But their moment of bliss didn't last long
Before dean went back to using drugs again.
[nasal spray bottle hisses]
[tense music]
- Dean's drug addiction
Started getting worse and worse and worse.
He wasn't taking care of things.
He owed money in, like, every direction.
Mortgage hadn't been paid in months.
Credit card debts were through the roof.
He had been borrowing money from me.
And then I had to post bail, so that was 5,000.
Now I'm getting up to my eyeballs.
And it added up to, like, $82,000.
I was having to take cash advances
For my credit cards,
And that's a financial tailspin.
Why I was willing to go to such extremes
To see him out of this calamity of his own design
Was because I loved him.
I almost felt it was my responsibility
To see him to safety.
- Greg tells investigators that he was trying to recoup
The money he was owed when dean disappeared.
He heard from a friend that dean may have
Gone to costa rica to avoid jailtime.
♪ ♪
- And then when dean fled the country,
It became clear that he was not
Going to pay me back all of this money.
And that really pissed me off. Such a cruel thing to do to me.
♪ ♪
- Greg said that dean was a user.
He was a narcissistic type of a guy.
You know, obviously a pathological liar.
♪ ♪
- Unbeknownst to greg, at the same time,
Dean's name was at the top of the suspect list
For maria cruz's disappearance.
- So in this process of trying to find out where he was,
I started making phone calls to the prosecuting attorney
On his case
To see if anybody had any idea as to where he'd gone.
- Greg calls us up.
By this time, he's really pissed off
Because dean owes him so much money.
And I ask him, I said, about, you know,
"you know anything about this missing woman, maria cruz?"
♪ ♪
- And I had said, "well,
Was that missing woman a client of his?"
And he said, "yes."
This is where it gets really weird.
♪ ♪
The friend of ours told me he had got
A frantic phone call from dean
That he was treating a woman
And she had gone into shock, and, like, what should he do?
Would have been around April.
- April 13th is when
Maria cruz had gone to dean's office
And then disappeared.
- They advised him, "take her to st. Vincent's hospital
Or call 911 and have an ambulance transport her to it."
- Dean said that he'd successfully got her
To st. Vincent's hospital and that she was fine.
So I figured everything must be fine.
But it occurred to me then
That maybe she wasn't fine.
- When greg tells us this information,
We strongly believe that this may help us find maria cruz.
♪ ♪
We checked all the hospitals in the area
That she might have been taken to.
There was nothing.
- We had evidence that she was a patient of dean faiello,
We had evidence that she was missing,
And we had the evidence from greg, what he had told us.
♪ ♪
- It seems to investigators
That dean might've killed maria cruz,
But what we needed was real physical evidence.
- The idea that dean might've killed somebody
Was really, really bothering me.
I was thinking about it day and night.
- Greg said that all of a sudden,
All the light bulbs went off.
- Greg now tells us something
That completely stops us in our tracks.
- I had completely forgotten about this cement project
That dean was doing at the house in new jersey.
♪ ♪
- He says in April 2003,
Just weeks after maria had gone missing,
Greg was at dean's home in new jersey.
- Greg told us that dean was in the garage of the property
Digging a hole.
He had dug a hole and filled it with cement.
♪ ♪
- He was screaming and yelling at me like,
"get out of the garage!" like, "get out of here!"
♪ ♪
He said, "I'm trying to protect you."
And I was just like, "what the hell does that mean?"
- Greg told us
There was a terrible odor coming from that site.
♪ ♪
- The cement project had now become
Highly suspicious to me,
But I thought he could have put her there.
It was all making me sound like I was crazy.
- But we didn't think this sounded crazy.
This sounded like the case cracking wide open.
♪ ♪
- That is an "oh, (bleep)" moment.
It's "oh, (bleep)" moment.
♪ ♪
So we're like, "wow, this is-- we got something good here."
♪ ♪
- And we got a search warrant for dean's house.
- So at this point, we got out there to the garage.
We open up the garage.
Cadaver dogs immediately sit.
When cadaver dogs sit,
There's an indication that there are human remains.
- The emergency service comes with picks and shovels.
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
- Acting on information from dean faiello's ex-boyfriend,
Detectives are about to dig up a concrete block
At faiello's house in new jersey.
They believe faiello may have buried
Maria cruz's body underneath.
♪ ♪
- Nypd emergency service responds
With shovels and picks.
- And did the--the dig job.
Soon as it broke the concrete, we got the smell.
You know, it's a smell that you just--you never forget.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
- We found a small suitcase
Wrapped in plastic.
♪ ♪
- The suitcase was opened.
And in fact, there were human remains.
♪ ♪
- The body was so badly decomposed,
So what they did is, they used the dental records.
- The remains were determined to be maria cruz
In that travel suitcase.
♪ ♪
- After nearly 11 months of searching and waiting,
The cruz family finally gets the answers
They've so desperately been waiting for.
- Maria cruz's family received the call
That no parent wants to hear.
[somber music]
Words can't describe how they must've felt with this.
And they were crushed as a result of what happened.
♪ ♪
It's a terrible crime.
[siren wailing]
- Now that maria's family finally has the answers,
They can begin properly mourning their loved one.
♪ ♪
- In st. Malachy's we organized, like,
A memorial service for her
Just for the spiritual support for the parents
And for their relatives and friends.
There was a full church.
The mother and the father, like, crying,
Crying in pain, throughout the service.
- The family were full of sorrow
And torn apart by grief.
And it was so horrible.
All they wanted to do was get her remains
And take them home to bury in the philippines.
- Why does god allow these things to happen?
That's a very common question that always confronts me.
There's no good answer to these things.
[tense music]
- The discovery of maria's body
Is a headline story in new york city.
- It was in the news, television, radio
That the body of maria cruz was finally found.
- Every tv station, every newspaper.
- That means the public pressure
Is now on to arrest her killer.
- At this point,
Dean is indicted, the charge being murder.
♪ ♪
- The investigation was ramped up.
Now we had to find him as soon as possible.
♪ ♪
- Now we had everything we needed
To authorize an international manhunt for dean faiello.
We knew he was in costa rica,
But we didn't know exactly where.
[birds singing]
[tense music]
- Dean thought, "I'm good-looking,
"I can get away with things.
"I don't have to follow the rules
Quite as much as everyone else does."
♪ ♪
- We put the word out
And the costa rican newspapers started running photos of dean
Saying he was wanted for maria cruz's murder.
Citizens start calling in faiello sightings.
- The security guy at this nice resort
Had seen his photo.
He told the manager right away.
"we've got a murderer at the hotel."
♪ ♪
The manager, he kind of liked dean.
He couldn't just let dean get arrested
Without getting him an attorney.
Costa rican authorities went to that resort,
And his lawyer was with him at the resort.
He was sitting out, having a drink.
♪ ♪
- The detectives who had previously arrested faiello
For practicing medicine without a license
Have gone to costa rica
To make sure faiello is properly brought into custody.
♪ ♪
- They brought him back to san josé, costa rica, to us.
- So we go to the jail in costa rica.
Dean comes out and he says,
"hi, joe. Hi, brian.
Nice to see your friendly face."
- "hi, brian. Hi, joe.
Isn't the weather beautiful here?"
It appeared that he didn't have a care in the world.
This incident didn't bother him
And he was completely oblivious to what was going on.
- Dean's legal team cooks up an outrageous plan
To help him become a costa rican citizen
And thereby avoid extradition.
- One of the schemes that dean's lawyer came up with
Was this plan to have this costa rican couple adopt dean.
- They were younger than he was and they were gonna adopt him.
- We thought that was wild.
- But it kind of fell through when the judge said
He's just too old to be adopted.
- Finally, after a year of legal delays,
Dean faiello has run out of tricks.
- One day, I got a phone call.
"lock your doors. He's coming back."
♪ ♪
- We were able to get him back to new york city
To answer for maria cruz.
He was escorted off the plane in handcuffs
And remanded to rikers island.
- He was charged with second-degree murder.
♪ ♪
- On July 25, 2005,
Dean pleads not guilty to murder charges.
The case goes to trial.
Now, it seems like we'd finally find out
What happened to maria cruz.
♪ ♪
- What kind of person is this that could just kill a patient
And put this poor woman in a small little suitcase
And cement her in a wall?
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
[tense music]
♪ ♪
- Dean faiello, he was charged
With the manhattan district attorney's office
Initially with second-degree murder of maria cruz.
- Two years after maria cruz's death,
Dean faiello appears in court to answer for her murder.
He tells the judge exactly what happened
The day maria cruz walked into his office for treatment.
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- Dean said maria was being treated by dean
For a not-uncommon condition
In which there's a pigmentation on the tongue.
- When she found dean faiello online,
He said, "oh, well, don't worry.
"what I can do for you with the lasers
Will not hurt because I will numb the area first."
♪ ♪
- Dean went to inject her tongue with lidocaine.
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Lidocaine has what we call cardiotoxicity.
It's dangerous to the heart in certain doses.
We have to be very careful how much lidocaine we use.
But dean wouldn't know that. He was not a doctor.
- Dean said maria had seizures.
She was just convulsing on the treatment table.
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- Dead admits his addiction to an array of drugs
May have clouded his judgment.
- The judge asked,
"were you under the influence of drugs at the time?"
And he said yes.
[nasal spray bottle hissing]
- Dean began making a series
Of spiraling, horrible decisions.
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- He did reach out to a couple doctors he knows,
And they all told him,
"take her to the emergency room right away.
Call 911." and he didn't do any of that.
- The hospital was several blocks from his residence
Where she was.
He could've easily brought her to the hospital
And she probably would've survived.
But he was too self-absorbed to do that,
And she expired in front of him in his office.
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- The judge said that, "basically,
You just let her die?"
And he said, "yes, your honor."
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While dean was doing this q&a with the judge,
Maria's mother was crying in the background and gasping.
[somber music]
- Must have been terrible for them,
Just thinking about the pain, the pain, the pain.
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- If he brought her to the hospital
And she survived
And we found out about it, he would've been charged again
And it would increase the sentence
That the judge was gonna give him.
[tense music]
- And then began his cover-up.
♪ ♪
- Dean put maria cruz in a suitcase,
Then transported maria in that suitcase
Back to his home in new jersey
And buried her in his garage.
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- It was a tough decision to make,
But with legal counsel, dean agreed to a plea bargain.
- He pled guilty
To a first-degree assault charge.
- So why couldn't you charge him with the homicide?
Because they couldn't prove the cause of death.
But we can say she was assaulted,
So that's why they gave a first-degree assault.
The judge at the time gave him the max.
- Dean faiello was issued a 20-year sentence.
♪ ♪
- The satisfaction that detectives
Could take out of this is that we located maria
And that we gave her family a sense of closure.
[somber music]
- I don't think maria's death
Is the only criminal transgression.
Removing lesions without sending them to pathology--
He could've removed a cancer, not done the proper treatment,
And this lesion can have been spreading
Or metastasizing.
That may show mortalities
Later from patients of his.
And so the effects were far-reaching.
♪ ♪
- The police put a closure to a grieving family,
To a grieving parish, to a grieving city.
I prayed for the soul of maria
That she would rest in peace.
I would just leave it to god.
♪ ♪