Speaker 1: Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
Speaker 1: You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
Speaker 1: you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
Speaker 1: because the story starts out with once upon a Times
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
Speaker 1: and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Today's guests are true crime producer Jeff Shane and Leah Rothman,
Speaker 1: writer and host of The Real Killer. You can follow
Speaker 1: Leah on Twitter at Leah Underscore Rothman Episode seventeen, The
Speaker 1: Case of the Best Friends, The Plan, and the Laced Gatorade.
Speaker 1: Christian Aguilera was quote every father's dream. He was a
Speaker 1: hard working student, affable, and had a tight knit group
Speaker 1: of friends. At the Dorill Academy and Leach Harter School
Speaker 1: in Miami, Florida, where Christian attended. People described him as
Speaker 1: shy at first, but behind that he was wickedly funny
Speaker 1: and sarcastic. An animal lover and Kanye West fan, Christian
Speaker 1: was known for his easygoing and charismatic personality. It's no
Speaker 1: surprise he had supportive and loyal friends. Christian's closest friend
Speaker 1: was Pedro Bravo, The two young men met in eighth
Speaker 1: grade and bonded over their love of superheroes and action movies.
Speaker 1: Pedro was described as shy, hard working, and the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who wouldn't heard a fly. Also in their
Speaker 1: group was Erica Freeman, with her wide eyes and long
Speaker 1: brown hair. Erica began dating Pedro their sophomore year, and
Speaker 1: the couple fell in love. The pair dated through the
Speaker 1: rest of high school, becoming the eight couple of their school,
Speaker 1: going on dates and celebrating anniversaries. However, in the summer
Speaker 1: of after graduation and with college approaching, Eric felt like
Speaker 1: it was time to be single, and so she broke
Speaker 1: up with Pedro. In a few months, they would be
Speaker 1: headed to different places, Pedro to school in Miami to
Speaker 1: study engineering, and Erica to Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Florida,
Speaker 1: to study biology. Dating long distance just didn't seem realistic.
Speaker 1: Like Erica, Christian, Pedro's best friend, was also headed to
Speaker 1: Gainesville to attend his dream school, the University of Florida.
Speaker 1: Christian got a scholarship to major in biomedical engineering in Gainesville.
Speaker 1: Erica and Christian ran into each other and felt an
Speaker 1: instant connection. While in high school, they've been in the
Speaker 1: same group. Their biggest connection was Erica's boyfriend and Christian's
Speaker 1: best friend, Pedro, but now in college they could really
Speaker 1: get to know each other. It was not long before
Speaker 1: the pair began and dating. Here's Jeff. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to Pedro for a second. He was always known as
Speaker 1: the class clown in school, so when Erica broke up
Speaker 1: with him, she was really surprised how emotional he was.
Speaker 1: He cried and begged her to get back together. She
Speaker 1: didn't think he would take it as seriously as he did.
Speaker 1: And you know, while she felt bad, she was adamant.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be single going into college, and much
Speaker 1: to her surprise, it seemed that Pedro really thought they
Speaker 1: could be together. In reality, only two percent of high
Speaker 1: school couples actually go the distance, so the idea that
Speaker 1: somehow Pedro and Erica would be together forever just isn't realistic.
Speaker 1: So Erica and Christian may have just been friends in
Speaker 1: high school, but she admitted that she always had a
Speaker 1: secret crush on him, but she thought, nah, it is
Speaker 1: never going to happen. Um, So when they did get
Speaker 1: together in college, she was ecstatic over the moon and
Speaker 1: I think very quickly felt like their soulmates. When they'd
Speaker 1: spend time together, she used to tell him the world
Speaker 1: could end right now, and if in your arms, I
Speaker 1: don't care, which is just like talk about love like
Speaker 1: that's a that's an amazing sentiment. Wow, So it seems
Speaker 1: like she really felt hard for him quickly. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like she maybe had some feelings prior to them
Speaker 1: getting together. She was totally excited when they did get together,
Speaker 1: and then she was like living the dream with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think we can all relate to like that
Speaker 1: feeling of going to college and feeling like you're in
Speaker 1: a new place in your life and you feel a
Speaker 1: little more mature and a little more free, and you
Speaker 1: might look at someone in a different way or feel
Speaker 1: like you're liberated to connect with someone in a new way.
Speaker 1: And that's what sounds like happened with her and Christian totally.
Speaker 1: They're not under their parents roofs, you know, they can
Speaker 1: have an adult kind of relationship and and and that
Speaker 1: just it's almost like a better foundation for a real
Speaker 1: war mature love exactly. It also might be a little
Speaker 1: awkward for them because Pedro was Christian's best friend, but
Speaker 1: I think when you're that age, you just don't really care.
Speaker 1: You want to do what you want to do, and
Speaker 1: if you have feelings for someone, everyone else is just
Speaker 1: a little bit collateral damage. And Pedro wasn't in town,
Speaker 1: so you know what he didn't know wasn't necessarily going
Speaker 1: to hurt him. Well, Erica and Christian moved on. Patro
Speaker 1: was struggling to forget his high school sweetheart. He decided
Speaker 1: to take drastic measures to get Erica back, dropping out
Speaker 1: of school in Miami and transferring to her community college
Speaker 1: in Gainesville. Pedro began texting Erica with progressively frantic please.
Speaker 1: She felt uncomfortable, but didn't want to abandon Pedro in
Speaker 1: his time of need. What Erica did not know was
Speaker 1: that Pedro had a master plan to get her back.
Speaker 1: He wrote in his journal about it, quote I will
Speaker 1: get out of Miami and into Gainesville by January and
Speaker 1: I will get her back. Quote no one will stop me.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she wrote a lot more. He wrote
Speaker 1: about a plan to get rid of his acne, white
Speaker 1: and his teeth and only wear red shirts because, according
Speaker 1: to him, they catch women's attention. More. His journal was
Speaker 1: also filled with intricate drawings of things like women's faces,
Speaker 1: lots of hearts, shattered hearts, hearts and pieces, hearts and bits,
Speaker 1: lots of broken hearts, and tons and tons of writings.
Speaker 1: He was getting more obsessed with the idea of getting
Speaker 1: her back. Yeah, obsessed is an understatement. Despite his best
Speaker 1: laid plans, Pedro ended up hearing through the grapevine that
Speaker 1: Christian and Erica were dating, which was a big blow
Speaker 1: to him, obviously, so on September sevente he ended up
Speaker 1: confronting her. He pulled up a photo of her and
Speaker 1: Christian together and demanded answers. Erica didn't know what to do,
Speaker 1: so she lied and denied everything. She told Pedro that
Speaker 1: she and Christian were just friends, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: lying never seems like a good idea, But I think
Speaker 1: we can all relate to feeling like you're under sure
Speaker 1: and someone's confronting you with something, and the easy thing
Speaker 1: to do is just to deny, deny, deny. Leah, what
Speaker 1: do you make of his plan? Like getting rid of
Speaker 1: your acne and whitening your teeth and just wearing a
Speaker 1: certain color. It all seems so misguided, it does. It
Speaker 1: seems superficial. But maybe that's he was just clinging onto
Speaker 1: anything that could help. I did wonder why he was
Speaker 1: worried about attracting like women of the opposite sex as
Speaker 1: opposed to just Erica. Maybe there was a small part
Speaker 1: of him that was like, Okay, look, I need to
Speaker 1: get myself ready in case I can't get Erica back.
Speaker 1: And I do need to be out in the dating field,
Speaker 1: you know, playing the field again. And I want to
Speaker 1: look good, have a bright smile and clear skin, and
Speaker 1: I and a red shirt's going to help me get
Speaker 1: a lady. I thought it was interesting that he wrote
Speaker 1: that way. It seemed mildly optimistic. And also when you're
Speaker 1: a teenager, you also just want those things in general.
Speaker 1: You want clear skin and you want wait teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, it seems like he just googled best way
Speaker 1: to attract woman and it would say, you know, have
Speaker 1: white teeth, have clear skin. I just googled what's the
Speaker 1: color that attracts woman the most, and red is at
Speaker 1: the top of the search. So he just probably did
Speaker 1: that and thought he's so naive that he thinks this
Speaker 1: is how the world works, that he wears a color.
Speaker 1: Eric will somehow fall back in love with him. It's
Speaker 1: sad really. Increasingly desperate, Pedro reached out to his former
Speaker 1: best friend Christian for answers. Pedro told Christian he was
Speaker 1: depressed and needed help. Christian was apprehensive about meeting up
Speaker 1: with Pedro. He seemed rather unhinged, but ever the nice guy,
Speaker 1: Christian agreed. The pair decided to meet at a public
Speaker 1: place on the University of Florida campus. Here's the recording
Speaker 1: of Erica explaining Christian's frame of mind before the meeting.
Speaker 1: The audio was taken from Erica's testimony on the stand
Speaker 1: in one year later. He was unhappy about meeting a
Speaker 1: police fedro. He was a little I mean, he didn't
Speaker 1: really want to want to um, But we weren't really
Speaker 1: that concerned it going to meet in a public place.
Speaker 1: You know, if anything was going to happen, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: He might try to punch him or something, and Christian
Speaker 1: wouldn't fight, you know, he was he's not much of
Speaker 1: a fighter, so you kind of just walk away. I'm
Speaker 1: sure he thought we're meeting in public, what could possibly
Speaker 1: happen exactly. Maybe he'll punch me, maybe he'll like swear
Speaker 1: at me, or yell at me and they will cause
Speaker 1: a scene, but nothing more than that, especially since they're
Speaker 1: meeting in public. You would never think anything other than that, right,
Speaker 1: you think you're safe? Yeah? And I think at this
Speaker 1: point this just seems a little bit like a teenage
Speaker 1: love triangle. Like I would imagine that Christian probably felt
Speaker 1: like none of this was that big of a deal
Speaker 1: at this point, and he might have something explaining to do,
Speaker 1: but he could probably work past it with someone who
Speaker 1: was once his best friend. Exactly, this was his friend.
Speaker 1: He knows how his friend reacts to things. I mean,
Speaker 1: his friend is going to be mad he's dating his
Speaker 1: ex girlfriend, but that's it that. I mean, he's seen
Speaker 1: his friend over many years react to various things. And
Speaker 1: I didn't think that he was in any danger, right, Leah,
Speaker 1: do we know that anything more about Pedro's frame of
Speaker 1: mind at this point. Pedro was in a dark place.
Speaker 1: He seemed to know that Erica was lying. At this point,
Speaker 1: he wrote in his journal, I feel like someone stabbed
Speaker 1: me and I'm bleeding out and dying. I want her back, please,
Speaker 1: I'll give anything. He was not in a good place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's dark, but I also I mean to play Devil's advocate.
Speaker 1: I think anyone who's kept a journal can probably say
Speaker 1: that they've written what sounds crazy and dramatic in there.
Speaker 1: So how much can we really scrutinize someone's like private thoughts,
Speaker 1: No exactly, And I mean he probably, as we all
Speaker 1: do when we write our private thoughts, think no one's
Speaker 1: ever going to read them, so we are very honest,
Speaker 1: and those honest feelings necessarily mean that anything is going
Speaker 1: to come of them. It's just you know, these are
Speaker 1: my hurt feelings, these are my deep dark feelings, and
Speaker 1: they're for me and me only. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's hard to read someone's journal and say like, oh well,
Speaker 1: if this then that right. I wonder though, what pedro
Speaker 1: support system was at this point. I mean, he clearly
Speaker 1: lost his best friend, Christian, and so if he didn't
Speaker 1: have anyone else to talk to and he was just
Speaker 1: alone in these thoughts, you could see how someone would
Speaker 1: spiral out of control. Yeah, And as we know, if
Speaker 1: one is in a dark place and left alone with
Speaker 1: their thoughts, that doesn't always help. The spiral can be
Speaker 1: worse when you don't have anyone to talk to. Right,
Speaker 1: by all counts, he didn't really seem to have many friends.
Speaker 1: I mean, he wasn't. He went to Miami for college,
Speaker 1: originally stayed there a very short time, and then headed
Speaker 1: to Gainesville with the sole intention of winning back Erica,
Speaker 1: and so it seemed like he kind of just honed
Speaker 1: in on that probably and didn't have much else going
Speaker 1: on in his life. On September, Christian met Pedro at
Speaker 1: The Hub, a popular gathering place for students on campus.
Speaker 1: Surveillance cameras were able to capture many of their movements
Speaker 1: that fateful day. The young men met at one thirty
Speaker 1: nine pm and had lunch. They then drove to best Buy,
Speaker 1: where Christian bought a Kanye West c D. At four
Speaker 1: eleven pm, Pedro's blue Chevy Blazer pulled into a Walmart
Speaker 1: parking lot. The car was there for more than two hours,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until six PM that the car pulled
Speaker 1: out of the lot. By this point, Erico was getting nervous.
Speaker 1: Christian usually texted her all the time, but today he'd
Speaker 1: been radio silent. At four fifteen am, there was still
Speaker 1: no word from Christian. Erica was officially freaked out, so
Speaker 1: she called Pedro. Pedro told her he had dropped Christian
Speaker 1: off and things were fine. By the next morning, Christian
Speaker 1: was still missing. Erica decided it was time to go
Speaker 1: to the police. At ninety four i am, she and
Speaker 1: Pedro went to the University of Florida campus police to
Speaker 1: report Christian missing. Well. Being the last person to see
Speaker 1: Christian alive, Pedro had a lot to say to the police,
Speaker 1: and he ended up talking to them for eight hours.
Speaker 1: While he denied knowing anything, his story didn't add up
Speaker 1: rather quickly. At first, he told the cops that he
Speaker 1: and Christian fought and he ended up dropping him off
Speaker 1: in the woods near the Walmart they were last seen.
Speaker 1: Then he started saying that they picked up a hitchhiker
Speaker 1: in a bad part of town. He described this guy
Speaker 1: as a fifth year old, bearded man. At one point,
Speaker 1: when he described the fight, he said that he punched
Speaker 1: Christian just once. Then just minutes later he told them
Speaker 1: he punched him multiple times. LEO, what else we're police
Speaker 1: doing to figure out what happened this fateful day? Well,
Speaker 1: police began tracking Pedro's movements that day. It turns out
Speaker 1: after he left the wall Mark parking lot at six pm,
Speaker 1: Pedro was off the grid for five hours before reappearing
Speaker 1: at McDonald's, where he bought a Big Mac and a
Speaker 1: Dr Pepper. He had put his phone in airplane mode,
Speaker 1: which was very suspicious to police, and then at one
Speaker 1: thirty he went to get a car wash. At two
Speaker 1: fifty three am, according to building surveillance cameras, he returned
Speaker 1: back to his apartment and did a load of laundry. Now,
Speaker 1: I've never gone to the car wash at one thirty
Speaker 1: in the morning. I didn't even actually know they were
Speaker 1: open that late, so that I would think to police
Speaker 1: would be very suspicious. And then doing laundry at toft
Speaker 1: it could wait till the next morning. Why are you
Speaker 1: doing your laundry in the middle of the night, and
Speaker 1: then of course having your phone off for five hours.
Speaker 1: People barely turn their phone off when they're actually flying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think all of this for police was
Speaker 1: just highly, highly suspicious. I would say, I mean, college
Speaker 1: kids keep weird hours, so maybe you could explain going
Speaker 1: to the car wash or getting late man McDonald's, doing
Speaker 1: laundry in the middle of the night, But I think
Speaker 1: a college student is not putting their phone on airplane
Speaker 1: mode for five hours. That to me definitely seems suspicious.
Speaker 1: Police really quickly could track these men. In that final day.
Speaker 1: There are cameras everywhere, and for some reason this five hours,
Speaker 1: they really just disappear. And that seems weird too, because
Speaker 1: where could Pedro and Christian have gone that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be on camera. But what police thought was very suspicious
Speaker 1: was that during his interrogation, Pedro kept referring to Christian
Speaker 1: in the past tense and you know, having covered a
Speaker 1: lot of true crime, we know that is a very
Speaker 1: common tell when people do that, because at this point,
Speaker 1: Pedro should think Christian is still alive. He said he
Speaker 1: dropped him off. The question was though, for police, when
Speaker 1: they looked at the two men, it seemed unlikely that
Speaker 1: Pedro could have killed Christian. Christian was eight and just
Speaker 1: taller than Pedro. It seemed like if they did actually
Speaker 1: get in the physical fight, Christian would have probably won.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 1: just a moment. The first thing you should do if
Speaker 1: police want to talk to you is call a lawyer.
Speaker 1: But these are practical children. I mean, they're just entering
Speaker 1: adulthood and they don't know any better. And so he's
Speaker 1: sitting there telling different stories and there's inconsistencies. I mean,
Speaker 1: Pedro at this point is in way over in his
Speaker 1: head over these eight hours. You'd also think that you'd
Speaker 1: call your parents and say, come here, I need you.
Speaker 1: Maybe thought he was smarter than the investigators interviewing him,
Speaker 1: and that he, you know, was slick enough that he
Speaker 1: could give answers that could get him out. But as
Speaker 1: the hours are ticking by during this interview, he would think, oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm still here. They're still asking questions, They're trying to
Speaker 1: hone in on things I might be in trouble here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was surprised that he didn't ask for a lawyer
Speaker 1: or his parents. I feel like when you're that age,
Speaker 1: there's two types of people. There's the ones that, like me,
Speaker 1: would call their mom and dad immediately, and then I
Speaker 1: think there's the other type of people who there's like
Speaker 1: a hue Bress that you think you're untouchable, and there's
Speaker 1: a cockiness to you that you think you can say
Speaker 1: and do anything. And it seems like Pedro would fall
Speaker 1: into that latter category. Friends and family began searching the
Speaker 1: Gainesville area in hopes of finding Christian While Love once
Speaker 1: felt it was tragically unlikely that Christian was still alive,
Speaker 1: they were determined to find him or his body. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: eight days after Christian disappeared, police had enough to arrest Pedro.
Speaker 1: He was charged with napping and first degree murder. Twenty
Speaker 1: two days later, two hunters found Christians sixty miles from campus.
Speaker 1: His body had been bound with duct tape, and he
Speaker 1: was found face down in a murky swamp. Two years later,
Speaker 1: the trial began. Christians autopsy showed that the young man
Speaker 1: was drugged and suffocated. Prosecutors were sure that Pedro did it,
Speaker 1: but they had yet to prove how. They started by
Speaker 1: using Pedro's journals as evidence. In one entry, he wrote,
Speaker 1: when I fell. I fell hard. Now I can't pick
Speaker 1: myself up. I feel weak. I want her back. I
Speaker 1: do anything, Yeah, I mean it seems like the desperation
Speaker 1: was at an all time high at that point. Sometime
Speaker 1: after that, Pedro went to Low's and bought pesticide, gatorade,
Speaker 1: and a shovel. He then also went to Walmart and
Speaker 1: bought Nike weel, duct tape, and a knife. He also
Speaker 1: had some pretty damning Google searches. He searched what is chloroform?
Speaker 1: How do sleeping pills kill you can, rubbing alcohol knock
Speaker 1: someone out. And then he was also trying to find
Speaker 1: some info on unsolved murders. Yeah, the police found a
Speaker 1: lot of damning events that um, he was at the
Speaker 1: very least plotting something. And while that all looks pretty bad,
Speaker 1: that technically is all circumstantial evidence. But police also had
Speaker 1: some pretty hard physical evidence against Pedro. They found blood
Speaker 1: in Pedro's car and on his shoe. They also ended
Speaker 1: up finding christians backpack balled up in the back of
Speaker 1: Pedro's closet. They went as far as to match soil
Speaker 1: that they found in Pedro's car to the swamp or
Speaker 1: Christians bo he was ultimately found. And remember how Christian
Speaker 1: was tied up with duct tape. They ended up looking
Speaker 1: at the rip of duct tape on Christian's arms and
Speaker 1: matching it with a tear of duct tape that they
Speaker 1: found on Pedro's car, meaning allegedly he used the same
Speaker 1: role of duct tape to tie up his ex best
Speaker 1: friend that he then used to tape something together on
Speaker 1: his car. It's a plethora of things that he did
Speaker 1: wrong and that police caught him on. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just sloppy like he It's like he wasn't even trying
Speaker 1: to cover up this crime. It's so incredible that they
Speaker 1: could match the tears in the duct tape completely. And
Speaker 1: it's so true about the Google searches. I mean, my
Speaker 1: Google searches as a true crime producer are not good. Now,
Speaker 1: They're pretty bad. You can imagine the kind of searches
Speaker 1: we all have. And so it's true that is circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1: But then when you couple that with the physical evidence,
Speaker 1: it seemed like police had a pretty strong case against
Speaker 1: Pedro now, and I go back to like what I
Speaker 1: was thinking earlier about at that age, you just kind
Speaker 1: of think you're untouchable. And it seems to me like
Speaker 1: Pedro really did think he was, because he did all
Speaker 1: these things and with no attempt to cover them up.
Speaker 1: I mean, he kept his backpack. Why would you do that?
Speaker 1: And then he had the audacity to go and march
Speaker 1: himself into a police station and sit down for eight hours,
Speaker 1: lying straight to CoP's faces. I mean, it's just he
Speaker 1: clearly wasn't thinking straight, right. It is kind of amazing
Speaker 1: that Erica, like she said, you're going to police with me,
Speaker 1: and he goes he doesn't even say I can't, I
Speaker 1: don't feel well, or like come up with some excuse.
Speaker 1: He goes, and it is it's that like I'm invincible
Speaker 1: and I'll be able to talk my way out of this.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Erica, Poor Erica, she must feel so bad
Speaker 1: about this, which is just tragic. Yeah. I don't even
Speaker 1: know how you handle the guilt. And it is absolutely
Speaker 1: not her fault. She couldn't control Pedro. She had no
Speaker 1: idea what Pedro was gonna do. She's not responsible for
Speaker 1: Pedro's actions, but I'm sure she felt awful. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the only thing that probably helped her was
Speaker 1: knowing that she could testify against Pedro and help ultimately
Speaker 1: put him away hopefully. Yeah. Scary to think she was
Speaker 1: going to have to face him in the courtroom though.
Speaker 1: But perhaps the most compelling evidence against Pedro was his
Speaker 1: former cellmate. He was a man named Michael Angelo. Michael
Speaker 1: had bumked with Pedro for two and a half years
Speaker 1: and had gained his trust. According to Michael, Pedro not
Speaker 1: only admitted to killing Christian to him, but also spilled
Speaker 1: every Corey detail. Here's a portion of Michael's testimony. I
Speaker 1: think originally said that he was gonna try to poison
Speaker 1: him with a mixture of sleeping pills and pest aside
Speaker 1: and mixed with soda or something like I had, I
Speaker 1: guess soda. And his backup plan was to have a knife,
Speaker 1: you know, to cut his throat in case it didn't work,
Speaker 1: you know, after he got back in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: and he was you know, I guess, riding around to
Speaker 1: dispose of the body that it was making it sound like.
Speaker 1: And then that's the reason that he held onto the
Speaker 1: driving strap while he was riding around because it freaked
Speaker 1: him out. As we know, Michael Angelo really helped the
Speaker 1: prosecution in their case against Pedro and what he thought
Speaker 1: was pretty damning according to him. When Pedro and Michael
Speaker 1: first met in jail, Pedro allegedly wanted to use Michael
Speaker 1: for his gang contacts on the outside. Pedro's plan was
Speaker 1: to get a gang member to start killing people in
Speaker 1: a similar fashion to Christian so that the public would
Speaker 1: think there was a serial killer on the loose. Um
Speaker 1: Instead of doing that, which thank god he didn't, Michael
Speaker 1: decided to become a jailhous informant for a more leading
Speaker 1: in sentence, and Pedro ended up being very forthcoming with
Speaker 1: his cellmate. He told Michael that the day of the murder,
Speaker 1: he drugged Christian with the laced gatorade that he had
Speaker 1: bought at Loews. He then put a thick moving strap
Speaker 1: around his neck and braced himself around the driver's seat
Speaker 1: and pulled. Christian struggled but was too groggy from the
Speaker 1: drugs to fully fight back, and according to Pedro, it
Speaker 1: took thirteen minutes to kill his former best friend. Do
Speaker 1: we know anything about Patriot's defense to all this, as
Speaker 1: you know, the prosecution is laying all this out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when Pedro took the stand, first of all, there
Speaker 1: was an audible gasp in the courtroom. He said that
Speaker 1: he loved Erica and he wanted to get her back,
Speaker 1: and he was going to get her back. But he
Speaker 1: admitted that when he found out that Erica and Christian
Speaker 1: were dating, he snapped, totally snapped. Um. He then stuck
Speaker 1: to the story that the last time he saw a
Speaker 1: Christian they got into a physical fight, but that he
Speaker 1: left him on the side of the road and never
Speaker 1: saw him again. He said that dishovel and the drug
Speaker 1: he said, those were actually to kill himself. But yeah,
Speaker 1: and he told yours that he was going to dig
Speaker 1: his own grave um. On the stand, his behavior was
Speaker 1: very strange. He was conversational and jovial. At times he
Speaker 1: was smiling and laughing, just trying to imagine what Christian's
Speaker 1: parents were thinking while he was on the stand. His
Speaker 1: testimony just must have been so hard to hear her
Speaker 1: Christians family and friends. Let's stop here for another break.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the murder taking place
Speaker 1: in the Walmart parking lot, because as we know, they
Speaker 1: pulled into the parking lot at for eleven PM and
Speaker 1: then pulled out at so that means somewhere in that
Speaker 1: a little or to our window is when Pedro actually
Speaker 1: killed Christian. Which is just so haunting to think that,
Speaker 1: you know, you can see the car on surveillance and
Speaker 1: sometime in that time period someone's getting murdered. It's just
Speaker 1: hard to wrap your head around. Let's just think about
Speaker 1: how long thirteen minutes actually is. It's not a quick gunshot.
Speaker 1: That is a very very long murder. Yeah, you really,
Speaker 1: you really have to want to do it. Do we
Speaker 1: know if it happened at the beginning of those two
Speaker 1: hours in the parking lot or towards the end. Well,
Speaker 1: we know that he gave him that laced gatorade, so
Speaker 1: I would imagine he gave him the gateorade when they
Speaker 1: pulled in and then waited a little bit. How long
Speaker 1: does Nike will take to kick in forty minutes, thirty minutes?
Speaker 1: But we know that he then pulled out of that
Speaker 1: parking lot and drove somewhere to that swamp to hide
Speaker 1: the body. So he's driving with his dead best friend
Speaker 1: in the front seat. I mean, no, it's awful, you know,
Speaker 1: and thinking about his diary is and what his frame
Speaker 1: of mind was. It wasn't just a teenage boy lamenting
Speaker 1: over heartbreak. This is a very disturbed young man who
Speaker 1: was spiraling out of control over his love of this girl,
Speaker 1: and without help or someone to talk to, he really
Speaker 1: just thought this was his way out, and this is
Speaker 1: what he had to do. It's just really disturbing. What's
Speaker 1: interesting is that on the stand, Pedro said he snapped.
Speaker 1: But when I think of snapped, I think of then
Speaker 1: crime of passion. It happens in the moment. This is
Speaker 1: a lot of planning that went into executing this murder,
Speaker 1: and and something else that's you know, stuck with me
Speaker 1: in terms of, you know, an explanation of the shovel.
Speaker 1: He said he was going to dig his own grave,
Speaker 1: so he might have dug a hole. If this were true,
Speaker 1: he would have dug a hole, but he couldn't have
Speaker 1: covered it. Yeah, I mean it definitely makes no sense.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point about the premeditation. Who I didn't
Speaker 1: think about that, but like he had weeks to think
Speaker 1: about this. I mean, he went to Gainesville with a plan,
Speaker 1: and his whole explanation makes no sense because he's saying
Speaker 1: he snapped, snapped and did what though he's saying all
Speaker 1: he did was maybe punch him a couple of times
Speaker 1: and then left him and didn't kill him. So he's
Speaker 1: kind of contradicting himself once again, like he did in
Speaker 1: the interrogation room, now he's doing it on the stand.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that his lawyer didn't think of a
Speaker 1: better defense. I mean, this is a pretty weak defense,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, very weak considering all the evidence against him.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a completely avoidable situation. Absolutely didn't
Speaker 1: have to happen. I'm not a psychologist. I was not
Speaker 1: inside Petro's brain. Although his journal gave us some insight
Speaker 1: into what he was thinking. And you know, like you said, Jeff,
Speaker 1: he's troubled. He obviously was very troubled. It's too bad
Speaker 1: that he wasn't able to get any help before I
Speaker 1: got to this point. It's just a very, very sad
Speaker 1: case and one that absolutely did not have to happen.
Speaker 1: After nine days of testimony and over one thousand pieces
Speaker 1: of evidence, a jury of eight women and four men
Speaker 1: took just three hours to find Pedro Bravo guilty of murder.
Speaker 1: He made a final statement maintaining his innocence and continuing
Speaker 1: to deny murdering Christian. The judge sentence him to life
Speaker 1: in prison with no parole. During Arika and Christians brief
Speaker 1: but significant romance, Christian was romantic and passionate. He always
Speaker 1: made her feel special, and Erica dreamt of one day
Speaker 1: marrying him. It was a dream that would never become
Speaker 1: a reality. Leah, what can you tell us about your
Speaker 1: podcast The Real Killer? So I'm sure you have experienced
Speaker 1: a case that you cannot walk away from. And I
Speaker 1: told a version of the story of The Real Killer
Speaker 1: in for TV and since then I've just been like,
Speaker 1: I'm not done. I need to go deeper. I need
Speaker 1: to kind of forget what I think I know about
Speaker 1: the case and just start from square one. And that's
Speaker 1: what I did. It's about a horrific murder that happened
Speaker 1: in St. Louis. A single mom was murdered. Her two
Speaker 1: little girls, who were four and seven, were viciously, viciously
Speaker 1: attacked Joan tap the mom, she dies, The two little
Speaker 1: girls survived barely, and the seven year old becomes police's
Speaker 1: only real eyewitness, and a month later, she ends up
Speaker 1: pointing the finger at one of her mom's ex boyfriends.
Speaker 1: Two trials later, he's convicted and sent to prison, and
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be the end of it, but it
Speaker 1: was kind of just the beginning. And in that seven
Speaker 1: year old who's now in her early forties, were cants
Speaker 1: and says he didn't do it. So we reinvestigate the case.
Speaker 1: We talked to those at the center of it, and
Speaker 1: we asked who is the real killer? And what we
Speaker 1: find is shocking. All episodes are out now, all eleven episodes,
Speaker 1: and I still feel like I want to go back
Speaker 1: and do more. It might be one of those stories
Speaker 1: that I've just never going to be able to shake.
Speaker 1: It's kind of shocking to see how it all plays
Speaker 1: out in this case. Yeah, you do such a good
Speaker 1: job of the complex nature of the crime and tracking
Speaker 1: it over all these years. Yeah, it's really interesting and
Speaker 1: like just the human experience of it all and like
Speaker 1: how it affected all these people. You see an article
Speaker 1: or you listen to a single episode of Crazy and
Speaker 1: Love and you kind of forget that, like these are
Speaker 1: real people, and like there's years and years of trauma
Speaker 1: that it happens because of it, And so I think
Speaker 1: in The Real Killer you're really able to explore a
Speaker 1: lot of that over the course of the eleven episodes.
Speaker 1: So great job, thank you. That's the one thing I
Speaker 1: really really wanted to do was to make sure that
Speaker 1: everyone who listens gets a sense of who these people are.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just like the label of victim
Speaker 1: or the label of accused killer, but who are these people?
Speaker 1: What did they go through? It's a case that spans
Speaker 1: almost forty years. Well, thanks for being on today's podcast.
Speaker 1: You offered some of that insight into this very sad
Speaker 1: and tragic case. Thank you very much. Shameless Plug. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review to
Speaker 1: view our recent documentary Murdered Missing in Montana. You'll find
Speaker 1: it streaming now on Peacock. Follow us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy and Love is produced by Stephanie Lydecker,
Speaker 1: Jeff Shane, Chris Graves and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and
Speaker 1: sound design by Jeff Bob. Crazy and Love is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Stay safe, lovers,