DETECTIVES have solved a chilling mystery of a 25-year-old man who was shot dead in his home after emptying the suspect’s trash can.
Florida officials couldn’t believe their eyes when they found the murder plot written on a piece of paper at the home of their prime suspect.
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Patrick De La Cerda was ambushed and shot four times in front of his own home in Deltona in February 2018.
The killer had “lurked outside” when De La Cerda supposedly came to the door expecting to receive a package containing his fiancée’s engagement ring, according to Detective Chad Weaver.
“You could tell the front door was open and there was glass everywhere,” said Weaver, the official Volusia County sheriff.
Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for officials to find a suspect.
De La Cerda’s fiancée, Jessica Devnani, immediately pointed investigators to her jealous ex-boyfriend Gregory Bender.
Devnani said Bender had been tormenting the couple for months with threatening voicemails and text messages.
It was so bad that Devnani reported Bender to a judge who then issued a restraining order against him, halting the threats for a few months. CBS News reported.
This was short-lived, however, and Devnani was shocked when she received a phone call from Bender on the morning of February 27, 2018.
She didn’t pick up the call, but she knew right away that something was terribly wrong.
Devnani then rushed to check on De La Cerda and found him tragically shot to death in his home.
After Devnani’s tip, Weaver went looking for more information that could lead to Bender’s arrest.
The suspect’s ex-wife, who was still married to Bender during his rendezvous with Devnani, gave incriminating information to Weaver that led to detectives being issued a search warrant.
Daymara Sanchez met Weaver in a public park where she appeared to be very nervous, the researcher said.
She said the reports of De La Cerda’s murder reminded her of some disturbing notes she saw in Bender’s notebook.
The suspect’s ex-wife told Weaver that the notebook contained disturbing plans for a murder, which Bender told her was just a “fantasy.”
However, the chilling similarities between Bender’s “fantasy” and De La Cerda’s death gave detectives a likely reason to search their suspect’s home.
On February 28, 2018, Weaver and a team of investigators entered Bender’s home and were shocked by what they found.
Almost immediately, Weaver spotted the notebooks Sanchez described to him in the trash bin of Bender’s home office.
“I was in shock,” Weaver said.
“It’s impossible that we just found this murder plan.”
But upon further investigation, they found Bender’s exact plan to get rid of almost all of the evidence except the plan itself.
These pages, along with the testimonies of Sanchez and Devnani, gave a clear indication of who had committed the crime against De La Cerda.
On May 28, 2021, Bender was found guilty of first degree murder.
He is now serving a life sentence with no chance of parole.
“The fate of this murderer was determined by the truths of the women he cheated, justice for a jealous murder, and a failure to empty his own garbage,” CBS wrote.
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