by Lee Butcher
Soroya Benitez, Paula’s old friend, was struck by how attentive Paula was as a mother. “I was almost in shock to see how much she adored this girl,” Benetiz said. “My cousin had a child around the same time. She was a very wonderful human being, but Paula was unbelievably attached, an unbelievably wonderful mother. It was all talk of Ashley, Ashley. ‘Ashley is doing this.’ We were at her mom’s house, and she had brought all of her toys with her. It was like Ashley, Ashley. She didn’t take her eyes off of her for two seconds.”
But even Paula’s talk about Ashley stopped when Chino was around. She immediately became quiet, submissive, and withdrawn. Benitez thought she was like two different people.
Those who thought Chino was a good father might have changed their minds if they had seen him on a Sunday trip to church with the Gutierrez family. They were in Luis’s car, with Chino and Paula in the front seat with Luis. The others were in back, with Ashley securely fastened in a child’s safety seat.
On an expressway Ashley cried to be fed. Paula reached back, lifted the baby from the safety seat, and started to breast-feed her. Chino hit the ceiling. He cursed and slammed the dashboard. He accused Paula of endangering Ashley’s life by taking her out of the safety seat.
“Put her back right now!” he demanded.
Paula put the baby back, then climbed into the back and crouched down so that Ashley could nurse from her seat. Chino continued his rampage.
“It was terrible,” Luis said. “She was feeding the baby standing up. When I saw that, I seek to pull out, get out of the expressway.”
Luis had never seen Chino like that. Chino’s face changed: it twisted into a mask of anger and hatred. He shook his fists, clenched his teeth, and punched the dashboard. Everyone was terrified.
Luis finally got off the expressway and pulled into a fast-food restaurant. Suddenly everything changed. Chino laughed and joked as if nothing had happened. The others were shaken up still.
Chino went through the motions of straightening out his life. He went back to Cathy Donnelly and asked her to give him his old job back. Donnelly turned him down.
“I understand,” Chino said. “Thanks for being so nice to me. I’m sorry I disappointed you.”
This reaction from Chino was not at all what Donnelly expected from her explosive former employee. She was touched by it.
“He didn’t have to do that,” she said. “It was a very sweet gesture.”
Meanwhile, Lissette Santiago, Chino’s mother, decided to give up on New York, where she had such a difficult time making enough money to live on. She moved to Tampa, Florida, where at least the weather would be more to her liking. Chino joined her in December 1999, and for a few months, Paula was free.
April Hildreth’s bad luck was about to become worse. A pretty fifteen-year-old blonde, Hildreth was living with her brother in Temple Terrace on the northern side of Tampa. She had run away from an abusive home. Hildreth had very low self-esteem, like most abused children, and was a prime target for a controlling man.
The air conditioner for her brother’s apartment needed repairs and he had telephoned a service for a technician. Chino showed up with the company truck and tools. April thought he was cute. He joked with her, complimented her, and told her she was pretty. Hildreth was flattered by the attentions of a man who was five years older, and who had his own money, car, and apartment.
Chino asked for a date on their first meeting, but Hildreth turned him down. He kept calling, flattering her more and more, until she gave in. In a short time she left her brother and moved into Chino’s apartment.
“I thought I was so in love with him,” she said. “But, you know, a fifteen-year-old girl doesn’t know what love is.”
The pattern of the relationship was familiar. Chino treated Hildreth well for the first three months, and “then he started to show his true colors.” He exploded into fits of rage for no reason that Hildreth could see. He punched, shoved, and scratched her. Several times he knocked her down, straddled her, grabbed her by the ears, and beat her head against the floor.
“He did it on a regular basis,” April said. “He would beat me for no reason—maybe just because he was having a bad day.”
April didn’t think she had anywhere to turn. She didn’t want to go to the police because they would discover that she was a runaway and take her home. She couldn’t contact her parents because she was afraid of being abused again. April simply took the beatings.
Chino’s mother noticed the cuts and bruises all over Hildreth’s body and asked about them. Hildreth always made up a story to cover for Chino. Lissette seemed to accept the stories as the truth.
Beating Hildreth was not enough for Chino. He told her constantly about Paula, his girlfriend in New York. “She’s my one love, the one who is always true to me,” he said. Chino made Hildreth wear the same perfume, lip gloss, and lotions that Paula did, so Hildreth would be more like her.
Hildreth left Chino once, but she went back to him after he begged her, promised that he would change, and told her that he loved her. It was the same routine he had used so successfully with Paula. Once Hildreth was back, Chino would keep her in the apartment for days and the cycle repeated itself. Chino saw her talking to a man on Florida Avenue and gave her a severe beating. Later that night, April told him she was leaving.
“I’ll kill you if you try to leave!” he told her. “The only way you’re leaving is in a body bag.”
When Chino went to sleep, Hildreth slipped out of the house and fled to her parents’ home. They were shocked when they saw their battered daughter. She was covered with scratches and bruises, and there was an abscess the size of a golf ball on her breast, where Chino had punched her. Hildreth’s parents reported it and Chino was arrested by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on a charge of assault and battery. Contrary to all logic, Chino talked April Hildreth into seeing him one last time. This contact occurred before Chino was indicted and the authorities had no choice but to drop the charges against him.
Hildreth stayed with her parents, but she said she wished she could see Chino one more time. “I want to spit in his face,” she said.
In 2000, Lissette began living in other quarters and told Chino he could live in her apartment at the Crossings without paying rent. He immediately drove to New York and brought Paula and Ashley back with him. It was a pretty two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a two-story group of apartments called the Crossings Apartment Complex.
Located in North Tampa, the Crossings was not far from Busch Gardens, one of Florida’s most popular tourist attractions. There were four apartment buildings situated to make a large square that enclosed a big courtyard with a pool, dining tables, and grilling areas.
Things seemed tranquil, but, in fact, were getting worse. Chino was fired from one job after another. His temper was worse and he took each rejection as proof that society was never going to let him get ahead.
“This is a caste system,” he told his neighbor, David Honeycutt, while lounging at the pool. “I’m poor and I’m always going to be poor unless I take what I want.”
Chino was making plans to start taking things by force. Some of his ideas were far-fetched. He tried to convince Julio Palau, one of his few friends, to loan him a gun. Palau refused, but Chino persisted.
“We could make sixty thousand dollars by robbing a Lamborghini dealership,” he told Palau.
“Man, you have to be crazy to try anything like that,” Palau said. “You’re better off robbing a bank.”
Then Chino approached Edelmiro Alvarez, a friend he partied with sometimes. “Man, you want in on a robbery? It would net one hundred fifty thousand.”
“I don’t do robbery,” Alvarez said. He also refused to loan Chino a gun.
Melba and Luis were concerned because Paula got in touch with them rarely. In the winter of 2001, they took their other two daughters to Tampa. They found Paula very withdrawn and almost like a zombie. She kept her eyes downcast, and she was
so tired and disinterested that she could hardly take care of Ashley. Paula had even enlisted Chino’s mother, Lissette, whom Paula didn’t like, to help with Ashley. Lissette usually picked Ashley up in the mornings and brought her home at the end of the day. Paula never left the apartment without Chino and never spoke to anyone. One of her neighbors thought she was unable to speak.
“Why don’t you go out or have friends come to visit, Paula?” Melba asked.
“Chino won’t let me. He says friends are no good. He doesn’t want me to have friends.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Melba said. “You can come back home.”
“I miss my friends and family in New York,” Paula replied, “but my home is with Chino and Ashley.”
Paula was hiding a secret. Chino was more violent and unpredictable than ever and talked about committing a robbery to get money. They lived rent free in Lissette’s apartment and she also made payments on Chino’s Xterra SUV, but they were still desperate for money. Chino was increasingly disinclined to work for a living.
A few days before Paula’s family went back to New York, Chino invited everyone to the beach. It was a clear, sunny day, with a gentle sea breeze that made the palm trees do a hula dance. The turquoise water on the way to the beach was dotted with expensive motor yachts and colorful sailboats.
The beaches on Florida’s Gulf Coast are so white and fine that they appear to be made of confectioner’s sugar, and the ocean moves gently, with small waves breaking on the beach in a shower of white foam. Melba and Luis basked under the sun while Paula and Chino took Ashley into the water on a plastic raft.
Chino suddenly splashed water on Ashley and she started to cry. This made Chino so angry that he shouted profanities and threw as much water on her as fast as he could.
“Stop!” Paula shouted. “She doesn’t like it.”
But Chino kept at it while Paula tried to protect their daughter. Chino circled and splashed. Finally Paula grabbed Ashley from the raft and ran up on the beach. Chino was so enraged that he took the plastic raft Ashley was floating on and tore it to pieces. He roared for more than fifteen minutes while Ashley cried and the others cringed in fear. Chino, face gorged with blood, kicked the sand and snorted in disgust.
“Pack up,” he ordered. “We’re leaving.”
None of them wanted to get into the car with Chino driving, but they were afraid he might hurt one of them if they refused. They had previous experience with his episodes of road rage. They were right to be worried.
Once everyone was in the car, Chino burned rubber as the car screeched out of the beach parking lot. He drove the SUV as fast as it would go, weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating other drivers, pounding on the horn, and cursing. They all were scared to death, and were glad when they arrived at the Crossings.
Chino was still in a rage. He dragged Paula, who was carrying Ashley, into their bedroom and slammed the door. Luis and Stephanie heard things being thrown and smashing against the walls and floor. Paula screamed, Ashley cried, and over it all, Chino roared.
Luis was afraid of Chino’s rages, but he had never seen one like this. He opened the door to the bedroom and stepped inside. Chino had Paula against the wall and was strangling her while Ashley watched from the bed. Luis knew that if Chino had one soft spot in his barnacle-encrusted personality, it was Ashley.
“Chino! Stop it!” he yelled. “You’re scaring the baby! Don’t let Ashley see this. Stop it! Think of Ashley!”
Luis continued yelling as he and Stephanie tried in vain to pull Chino away from his daughter, wondering when one of them would feel a fist smash into them. He looked for a telephone to call the police, but Chino had torn it from the wall. Suddenly Chino threw Paula across the room, smashed the bedroom door, and ran from the apartment.
Luis remembered another one of Chino’s road rages about six months prior, on a previous visit from New York.
Chino invited them to go to Busch Gardens. They spent several hours wandering through the lush gardens, watching zebras, giraffes, and other jungle animals in an exotic setting. They had a good time until the trip home. On the expressway a car swerved in front of Chino, missed a turn, then pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. The driver seemed to be lost.
Chino screeched to a halt, leaped out of his car, and ran to the other vehicle. He jerked the driver’s-side door open, grabbed the driver by the front of his shirt, shook him, and tried to drag the man out of his car. All the while Chino screamed in the man’s face and called him names. Paula’s family screamed at Chino to stop. They didn’t know how far he would push this. He was a madman. Fortunately, the other driver didn’t fight back.
“Stop it, Chino!” Paula screamed. “You’re scaring the girls. You’re scaring Ashley.”
“Get out!” Chino shouted. “If you’re a man, get out!”
The light changed and the car shot forward. Chino ran back to his SUV and raced after it, pushing close to the bumper, or moving into another lane, then trying to sideswipe the other driver. Chino jumped out again at the next red light and ran to the other car. He tried to jerk the door open, but it was locked. Chino pounded on the roof and kicked the door before going back to his own car, cursing. He tried to run the other car off the road until it pulled off the expressway.
That burst of angry behavior, plus the brawl Luis had broken up just before Chino burst down the door and left, made Luis worry about Paula’s safety.
About a half hour later, Chino came home. He had gone to the grocery store and bought some ground beef. Acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, he went about picking up the things he had thrown.
“Okay,” he said when he was finished. “Let’s have a barbecue.”
Luis took Paula aside and gave her the telephone number for a women’s shelter that he had looked up.
“You don’t have to be here,” he told Paula. “You and Ashley can come and stay with us in New York. But if you won’t come, keep this number. You can take Ashley and go there if you need to. What happened here today will happen again. Many times.”
“I can’t, Daddy,” she said.
“Why not?”
Paula shrugged. “I can’t say.”
Chapter 7
In April 2001, Lissette stopped by her son’s apartment. He wasn’t there, but the apartment was a mess. Paula sat on the couch. She was crying and looked frightened. One side of her face was an angry red.
“What happened?” Lissette asked.
“Chino slapped me,” she said.
Lissette wasn’t shocked or surprised. She knew Chino’s violent temper better than anyone.
“What else did he do?”
Paula shook her head and said nothing.
Lissette knew there was a lot more trouble in the relationship than the beatings. Chino had been fired several weeks ago from his most recent job. Chino had come home in a rage and started throwing things.
“They accused me of stealing a check,” he said. “How could I do that when the check was made out to somebody else?”
Actually, Chino had kept several hundred dollars that one of the customers had paid in cash. After he was fired, Chino was so angry that he didn’t bother to turn in the company truck. He drove it home, loaded with thousands of dollars’ worth of tools. The owner was too afraid of Chino to pick it up, and finally negotiated a deal with Lissette to get it back.
Chino was broke and didn’t bother looking for a job. He was increasingly volatile and flew into rages every day. Their electricity was disconnected for nonpayment and Lissette paid that. Chino missed several payments on the SUV, which Lissette tried to make up. But the payments were still in arrears and the finance company threatened to repossess it.
Paula and Chino frequently didn’t have enough food to feed themselves, and Lissette loaned him money. Lissette had a low-paying job and couldn’t afford to support Chino and Paula, although she rarely turned him down when he needed financial help.
Now she had learned that s
he would have to move back into the apartment that Chino and Paula lived in without paying rent.
Chino was desperate, and the more desperate he became, the angrier, moodier, and crazier he became. He threatened to kill himself, and Lissette took him seriously. “If Chino says he’s going to kill himself,” she said, “he’s going to kill himself. I know my son.”
Chino blamed Lissette. “It’s all your fault, Ma,” he said. “You never should have given birth to me. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have all of this trouble.”
Looking at Paula now, Lissette was afraid for her.
“You can’t stay here,” she told Paula. “Chino’s too unpredictable. You have to think of the baby.”
Lissette, convinced that Chino could seriously hurt them, bought an airplane ticket for Paula and Ashley to fly to New York and stay with her parents for awhile. Chino started to telephone Paula’s parents even before she got there. He demanded that she call him the moment she arrived.
After saying hello to her parents, Paula, looking wan and subdued, went into a bedroom to call Chino. Luis and Melba couldn’t make out the words, but Paula sounded anguished. She wept and seemed to plead with Chino. This went on for an hour.
Paula refused to say what was wrong. But later that evening, Luis received an e-mail from Chino with an attachment. The attachment was chilling. Chino had become proficient at using magazines, photos, and computer enhancements to make composite pictures. In this attachment he had depicted himself as the Devil, with red eyes, horns, and a barbed tail, standing in a pit of fire. There was a photograph of Ashley in the fire, and the day and year of her birth was turned upside down to read “666,” the mark of the Antichrist.
The threat was clear to Paula. Chino had told her that if she tried to leave, he would kill her and the entire family. This threat even included his daughter, Ashley. Paula realized that she had to go back, rather than put her family at risk. Better that Chino kill her, she thought, than anybody else.
