Original subtitles

- Harlan, over here!

- Ladies and gentlemen, Harlan Coben.

[applause]

- He's the greatest thriller writer.

- Aw, come on.

- Coben's written over 30 "New York Times" bestsellers.

- With over a dozen hit TV shows and movies.

[dramatic music]

- Just when you think you have it all figured out,

think again.

I'm Harlan Coben.

Before I start writing a novel or TV series,

I know the beginning, and I know the ending--

that final twist.

That helps me-- knowing the ending.

And if you know where your story ends up,

you can plant more clues, red herrings, misdirects.

But tonight's case is almost too much--

a burnt body in the Florida Everglades,

MMA fighters, a supermarket magnate,

an Olympic medal winner,

and no way to know how it will all end.

On a warm June night,

two men with seemingly no connection

vanished into thin air,

and that's where our mystery begins.

- June 1st of 2011,

Camilo Salazar had been reported missing.

- My brother and I came to Miami when we were kids.

We were born in Colombia.

[indistinct shouting]

My parents just wanted a better life for us.

My brother and I have always been close.

Camilo had a beautiful family,

his own interior-design business.

Everything seemed perfect.

But what happened...

it just took everybody by shock.

- Did you ask them to help you look for something?

- Yes. - What?

- [voice breaking] My husband.

- Shortly after Camilo had been reported missing,

a second individual was also reported missing.

- But no one knows those two missing men are connected.

- Manuel Marin was originally from Cuba.

He defected here to the United States

and then built a multimillion-dollar business.

- Manuel Marin was a philanthropist.

He was revered.

- I left him a couple messages,

and he didn't return any of them, so I was worried.

- This case stands out.

It has glitz. It has glamour.

It has sex.

It has MMA wrestlers, the American Dream.

And then in one night...

[sirens wailing]

It all went away.

- Two different men

and two separate police departments

working what they didn't know to be the exact same case.

- A crime happened here.

The past isn't what it seemed.

The story told turns out to be deception,

and just when you're sure you have the answer...

- 911--what is the address of your emergency?

Hello? Anyone there?

There's one final twist.

[distant sirens wailing]

- On June 1, 2011,

my partners and I are working

a interdiction detail, which is a narcotics detail,

right next to the Everglades, just west of Miami.

It's a perfect location where you can dump evidence,

weapons, dump a body.

It's a area that's prime for that.

We're trying to locate suspicious vehicles

that could have loads of narcotics

when a frantic call comes over the radio.

[indistinct chatter over police radio]

One of our partners had just found a burning body.

[siren wailing]

I immediately turned my mind into an emergency mode.

I remember driving on a dirt road into the woods.

I looked up in the sky,

and I saw a big plume of black smoke.

All the brush was in flames.

You could feel the heat.

And as we approached the scene,

we saw a body with his hands tied behind his back,

completely naked.

[sirens wailing]

[tense music]

- His neck had a pretty clean cut.

You could see his windpipe.

At that time, someone made a remark

that that was like a Colombian necktie.

- I'm from Colombia,

so I'm familiar with a Colombian necktie.

It's when somebody's throat is cut,

and through that cut, they actually take the tongue out

and hang it in the front of their body

so it looks like a tie.

That was one of the things that they used as organized crime,

kind of like saying, hey, listen,

this is what's gonna happen to you if you cross us.

- Due to the brutality

of the injuries the victim sustained,

we thought that it could be a drug hit

or possibly organized crime.

- We go to the Miami-Dade County

Medical Examiner's Office

in order to observe the autopsy of the victim.

When we get there, there is a detective

from the city of Miami who has a missing-persons flyer

with a picture of a white male.

When you took a look at the picture

compared to the victim,

it appeared to be the same person.

- My brother, Camilo, and his wife, Daisy,

had been living in Coconut Grove.

It's a really beautiful part of Miami.

Camilo and Daisy were very social people,

always surrounded by friends.

They were both entrepreneurs, working hard.

They had a baby girl,

and they would kind of tag-team with the baby.

On June 1st, my brother was at home with the baby,

and Daisy had gone into work.

She had a PR company.

Some point in the morning,

Camilo brings the baby to Daisy

so that Daisy could feed the baby,

and he leaves.

This was like any other morning for them.

But that evening Daisy calls me,

and she asks me if I've heard from my brother.

That's when everything started.

- Camilo was supposed to return 45 minutes later.

However, he never returned,

and calls to his cell phone went unanswered.

- At this point, I'm worried.

Now I have to tell my parents what's going on.

- My brother--you can always reach him on the phone.

And even if you couldn't, he'd call you right back.

There was something wrong.

- On the other side of Miami,

within a few days after the body's found,

a woman named Jenny Marin...

Goes to the Lighthouse Point Police Department

and reports her husband missing--

Manuel Marin.

Manuel Marin is a very, very wealthy man.

Rich people don't often go missing.

- When we first respond to a crime scene,

we often do not know who the victim is.

In this particular case,

with the extent of the burning of the body,

including the fingertips,

we had to find another way to identify the victim.

So our forensic odontologist X-rayed the teeth in the body

and then compared his findings with dental records

of a missing person.

[indistinct chatter over police radio]

- We were all at Camilo and Daisy's house.

I remember the detectives came in.

All of a sudden, I just heard screaming--

like, loud wailing and screaming--

and I knew right then and there

the body that was found close to the Everglades

was my brother.

I said, oh, my God.

I'm sorry.

[sniffles]

[solemn music]

[dramatic music]

- It just seemed...

so extreme.

I didn't know what to think.

Maybe he was involved in, like, a drug thing.

What is going on here?

Does my brother have any enemies?

My brother was not a violent person.

I thought I knew everything about him.

What could he possibly be involved in?

[suspenseful music]

- In fiction, we know pretty much right away

that if two men disappear in the same week,

there's got to be a connection.

But real detectives in real life

don't get the benefit of that sort of foresight.

That June, Miami had two missing men,

two police departments, and two files.

One man had turned up brutally murdered in the Everglades.

As for the other,

so far, no crime scene, no solid leads,

no second body.

- The family have located Camilo's Chevrolet Trailblazer

near Daisy's work.

Everything looked as normal as when he would have driven it.

[camera shutter clicking]

We processed the vehicle for fingerprints, any DNA.

There was a latent print that was able to be lifted.

There's over 3 million people in Miami-Dade County,

and everyone gets fingerprinted

at some particular point in their life.

You would think that you'd have a pretty good success rate.

- But after an analysis,

there were no hits on the fingerprint.

It was certainly disappointing,

but the investigation continues.

- Then the police look into Camilo's background.

What's his prior record?

Is he part of a criminal gang?

They're trying to think of somebody

that would have some kind of grudge against him,

because this looks retaliatory.

But they find Camilo's clean.

- At this point in the investigation,

we're, in essence, back to square one.

- They had nothing.

But the family did have a story.

- My brother had been involved in some real-estate deals

for investment purposes,

and I know there was a land deal around 2006.

- Camilo was involved in a real-estate deal

with an individual in North Carolina.

Camilo stood to profit $100,000.

[camera shutter clicks]

However, there was a condition.

Camilo's credit was gonna be used

to secure loans at the banks

by this individual.

- And his partners wanted Camilo

basically to be the patsy.

Use your credit so that we can make this deal go through.

- That's bank fraud-- clearly illegal.

[sirens wailing]

You're talking FBI investigations.

You're talking possible jail time.

On May 4th, the FBI came to speak to Camilo

about this particular case,

and Camilo agreed to testify.

A month later, Camilo is dead.

- Days after Camilo was murdered,

Jenny Marin had gone to the Lighthouse Police Department

to report her husband missing.

Police had located

Manuel Marin's blue Mercedes SUV.

[camera shutter clicking]

There is blood in the vehicle.

- We sent it off for testing, but we didn't get a match.

- Manuel Marin is a affluent businessman

who fled from Cuba to the United States.

He owned the Presidente supermarket chain

here in South Florida.

- People in the Miami area knew Manny Marin.

He and his wife, Jenny, gave back to the community.

- Lighthouse Point is a beautiful,

affluent community.

The majority of homes are waterfront.

And you will find boats in their backyards.

- Manuel Marin lived a nice lifestyle--

nice cars, a nice home,

owned a yacht, and was very successful.

- Manuel Marin even sponsored other Cuban immigrants...

- With Alexis Vila of Cuba facing off...

- Particularly young Cuban wrestlers,

where he set them up with a gym

and jobs at his supermarket.

- I got a lot of his documents out of his house.

I've never seen a guy's checkbook look so meticulous.

Like, the guy was put together.

- When the FBI

fully investigated the land deal,

they found that Camilo was just one of many people

who these investors were trying to use.

There was never any threats.

It was truly a white-collar crime.

It's not the type of crime

that would be commensurate with this type of violence.

[siren wailing]

- We ruled out the land deal as a motive for this murder.

We didn't have anything concrete.

We didn't have physical evidence

directly linking us to the individuals responsible.

- I confess to being drawn to the case

where promising clues lead to dead ends,

where every major suspect gets ruled out,

where the trail goes cold.

The files get boxed up and stored away,

quietly collecting dust in the shadows for days,

weeks, months, and even years.

And then a small thing comes along,

and, suddenly, our mystery comes roaring back to life.

- By 2015, the investigation had somewhat stalled.

We certainly had not given up,

but we were running out of leads,

which can be frustrating.

- So many years had gone by.

It was really hard for my family,

hard for my parents.

- Any good investigator will take their case file

and go back through it from the very beginning,

just to see if anything has been missed.

- In August of 2015, I'm sitting at my desk one night,

and I'm going through the case file,

and I realize that we still have a latent print

from Camilo Salazar's Chevrolet Trailblazer

that hasn't been identified yet.

- Over time, more fingerprints are added to the system.

Detective Villano decides to run it again.

I remember receiving a phone call

from Detective Villano saying,

hey, you are not gonna believe this.

We got a hit.

[crowd cheering]

- The fingerprint came back as Ariel Gandulla.

- Ariel Gandulla-- he's a mixed martial artist.

Competed here in the United States.

Gandulla is also known as "The Panther."

- In fiction, it's often a small clue

that turns everything around.

That happens in real life too.

In the case of Camilo Salazar, four years after that white SUV

was first dusted by Forensics,

the fingerprint that originally went nowhere

finally gets a surprise hit.

It belongs to Ariel Gandulla, a mixed martial arts fighter,

which is worth sitting with for a moment

because we finally have a possible connection

to our other missing man--

Manuel Marin, the supermarket magnate.

Marin was a big MMA fan

who spent a lot of time ringside.

So that's where we go.

[crowd cheering]

- Nice shot in return from Ariel Gandulla.

- Ariel Gandulla is originally from Cuba.

He moved to the South Florida area

and was a mixed martial arts fighter.

- I knew Ariel--

I don't know-- 12, 14, 15 years.

It's a 0.2% of the whole world that's in combat sports.

So we were very close and chasing the same dream.

He was, like, a legit gentleman

to my family and friends and everybody around us.

But it's like this, man.

Every person could have, you know, like, a coin--

two faces.

[suspenseful music]

- In 2011, Ariel Gandulla has no criminal record.

But after Camilo's murder,

Gandulla gets involved in a marijuana deal in Tampa,

and he gets arrested.

His fingerprints are formally taken

and stay dormant in the system

until there's a match.

That fingerprint on the outside of the car

in Camilo Salazar's case

belonged to Ariel Gandulla.

But a fingerprint on the outside of the car

doesn't tell us the motive for the murder.

Prosecutors don't like circumstantial cases.

- The next steps that we take in the investigation is,

we look at Gandulla's phone records

throughout the day of June 1st,

the day Camilo Salazar was murdered.

- When we got the cell phone information,

the pieces started coming together for this case.

On the day of the murder,

shortly after 10:00,

Gandulla's phone pinged off of a tower

close to Camilo Salazar's residence in Coconut Grove.

We also see this earlier in the morning.

Gandulla was in frequent contact

with a gentleman called Roberto Isaac.

- Roberto Isaac had a long rap sheet.

He had a drug-related criminal enterprise,

and he's not afraid of violence.

- The deeper we dive into Roberto Isaac's background,

we learned that he was possibly

a Latin King gang member--

a very prominent criminal street gang

in South Florida.

And Isaac was a trainer

and/or promoter for MMA events.

Ariel Gandulla met Roberto Isaac

in a gym while training.

- On the day of the murder, Isaac's phone, at 10:02,

also pinged off of the same tower as Gandulla

near Camilo's Coconut Grove residence.

Based on the records,

they were watching Camilo Salazar's house.

When Camilo left, they followed him

to his wife's business.

- This is when Camilo Salazar drops his daughter off

at his wife's work.

- Connecting to the same cell phone tower

is Roberto Isaac and Ariel Gandulla

at the same time,

right next to Camilo's wife's Daisy's office.

We strongly believe

that once Camilo left Daisy's office,

he was then abducted by Roberto Isaac

and Ariel Gandulla.

- Later on, Isaac and Gandulla's cell phones

started pinging off of a tower near Isaac's residence

in the city of Miami, further north,

between 12:20 p.m. and 3:04 p.m.

And we believe that they were holding Camilo Salazar

at that location.

The records show that Gandulla was calling

another cell phone number.

That number was Alexis Vila.

- Alexis Vila is a bronze-medal Olympic wrestler

who was brought to the United States

by Manuel Marin.

- Now those two missing men...

Are connected.

[siren wailing]

- MMA, the Everglades, an old fingerprint,

even an Olympic medalist.

The best mysteries don't just grow.

They slowly reveal themselves.

You think you have a grip on it.

You pull one thread expecting it to close the case,

end of story, mystery solved.

Instead, the mystery unravels into something

completely unexpected.

[dramatic music]

- I got involved with Alexis Vila

after my dad and him served time.

From the moment Vila got out, he took me under his wing.

[indistinct shouting]

The reason I went so far in my career

is because Alexis Vila.

And the first time I met Manuel Marin

was at a martial arts event in South Florida.

Cuban guy.

This guy helped out Vila a lot

and took care of him at a time when nobody else would.

- Alexis Vila won the Olympic bronze medal

for Cuba in 1996,

but he won the gold medal meeting Manuel Marin.

He realized that was his ticket to ride.

- We find out that Alexis Vila and Ariel Gandulla

are friends from the mixed martial arts world.

- Same gym, you know?

- Alexis Vila met Roberto Isaac in an immigration camp

after they had both served federal time.

Alexis allowed him to work his corner during fights.

[commentators shouting]

- The three people we identified had a connection,

and it was the world of mixed martial arts.

- Manuel Marin paid for the gym, bought the seats,

brought a wrestler out of Cuba.

Men with nothing standing next to a man with everything--

did they see a patron, or did they see a target?

- Ariel Gandulla flees

to Vancouver, Canada,

where we track him down and bring him in for an interview.

We interviewed Ariel Gandulla for two days about Camilo.

Do you recognize that photograph?

- We knew he was lying initially.

His answers were not matching our evidence,

specifically the cell phone records

connecting him to Camilo on June 1st.

We showed you some phone records

that shows that you and Roberto

had been in contact with one another.

You remember that?

- The strategy was talking about the value of human life,

and Gandulla understood that...

because when he had come from Cuba

on a boat that he made with a neighbor,

his wife and his two children...

drowned in front of him.

[person screaming]

So he understood the loss of children and a loved one.

- We finally told Ariel Gandulla

that we had his fingerprint on Camilo's Chevy Trailblazer.

That broke Ariel Gandulla.

And it was at that point that the truth came out.

He explained in detail

everything that happened on June 1st,

the day that Camilo was murdered.

- Gandulla thought he was just there to collect a debt.

Roberto Isaac and Alexis Vila

called him and said, you're gonna make some money.

All you have to do is look strong.

He said, all right, I'll do it,

as long as I don't have to touch anybody.

- Gandulla told us that Roberto Isaac

portrayed himself as a police officer

to Camilo.

He had a radio on his hip.

And they flex-tied Camilo

and put him in the back of their truck.

From the abduction site,

Roberto Isaac and Ariel Gandulla

go to Roberto Isaac's residence.

They take Camilo Salazar inside.

Ariel Gandulla starts calling Alexis Vila.

These calls are going unanswered

because Alexis Vila is training in Las Vegas.

At that moment at Roberto's house,

you never got in contact with Alexis?

Does Roberto come back outside?

- By himself?

- Do you notice anything different

about Camilo this time?

[tires squealing]

- Ariel Gandulla was starting to feel,

this is a little excessive

for just collecting a debt from somebody.

- Gandulla--he had been duped.

It snowballed into something that he couldn't control.

- Roberto started driving.

Did he tell you where you were going?

- Roberto Isaac's cell phone

pings off a cell tower in the area

of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

- And then all of a sudden, this is when another telephone

starts to ping in the area.

Not too long after that,

a blue Mercedes SUV arrives on the scene.

- So, on June 1st, when you arrive at the location

where the blue SUV is, you see this person,

and you don't know who he is.

Is that correct?

- Ariel Gandulla said that Camilo was very calm

while he was kidnapped and in their custody.

It was only after Camilo saw the man

exit the blue Mercedes SUV

that he tried to get out of the truck,

tried to break himself free from the flex-cuffs,

started going crazy, screaming.

- Camilo looks up and yells out,

that's the guy whose wife I'm having an affair with.

- Who do you recognize that photograph as?

- Too many novels revolve around a crime of passion...

a crime of the heart.

As the saying goes, the heart wants what the heart wants.

The heart can lift you up like nothing else,

or it can drop you down into the blackest of holes.

[insects chirping]

- Upon observing the scene when we responded

the day of the murder, it was very brutal.

- The areas that were most severely burned

were the pelvis and the upper thighs,

including the genitals.

The burning of the genitals may have been a target

for, perhaps, sexual reasons.

[camera shutter clicks]

[suspenseful music]

- The investigators learned that Jenny Marin and Camilo

first met in the early 2000s in Miami.

She was dating a friend of Camilo's.

They broke up.

And she remained friends with Camilo,

and that became friends with benefits.

This particular affair

does break up Camilo's first marriage.

Sometime later Jenny pretty much cuts off

all ties with Camilo.

When Jenny and Manny meet,

Jenny is well aware that Manny is married,

and she gives him an edict--

you have to get divorced for me to continue to date you.

And he does.

Manny leaves his first wife so he can be with Jenny.

Once she marries Manny

and after she's had two children with him,

she's pretty bored.

She scrolls on Facebook,

and she comes upon an old friend--

Camilo Salazar, who is now married to Daisy.

They decide they'll meet, and the spark's still there,

so they proceed to begin their affair again.

- Jenny Marin--she indicated to us that they would meet

at different hotels in Miami.

She said that she had got a burner phone

in order to communicate with Camilo Salazar,

that on May 27th of 2011

was the last time she had spent time with Camilo.

They had gone to the Sun Towers Hotel.

She looked out towards the beach area,

and she saw an individual

who she believed was taking pictures

towards her specific hotel room,

which she found strange.

- In my experience, the love triangle--

99% of the time, somebody's getting murdered.

- Over the Memorial Day weekend,

Jenny, her husband, Manuel, their children

travel to Bimini,

50 miles east of Miami.

- On the boat, they were arguing a lot.

- Manuel Marin had confronted her

about her relationship with Camilo Salazar,

told her, you need to quit what you're doing,

or you're gonna cause a disgrace to this family.

They were supposed to return on May 31st,

but because of some inclement weather,

they stayed until the following day, June 1st.

- Alexis Vila is starting to receive

a great number of calls from Ariel Gandulla,

but they're going unanswered

because Alexis Vila is training in Las Vegas.

At the same time,

Roberto Isaac is trying to reach Manuel Marin,

and Manuel Marin is nowhere to be found.

- Manny's in Bimini,

and there's no cell communication there.

- We're sorry. Your call cannot be completed--

- Roberto Isaac and Ariel Gandulla

don't know that he had been delayed by one day

from his trip to Bimini.

So now they've abducted Camilo,

and they don't have anyone telling them what to do.

[indistinct chatter]

- Manuel Marin arrives dockside to his residence

between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m.

- He beat feet out of Lighthouse Point

faster than anybody ever saw him move.

- At 3:32 p.m., Isaac's phone pings off a tower

near the Fort Lauderdale Airport,

and Marin's cell phone pings off the same tower.

That indicates to me they met up.

- Gandulla sees Manuel Marin open up

the rear hatch to his SUV.

What do you see inside the cargo area?

- Gandulla sees that it's lined in plastic.

And he realizes this had absolutely nothing

to do with collecting a debt.

- He knows that the guy in the back seat

is going to get murdered.

He wants nothing to do with that.

- Gandulla's phone records show him heading south

to his residence.

Marin and Isaac's phones show them leaving that airport,

going down 75 to the turnpike.

At 5:02 p.m., SunPass records

show that Marin's car is leaving the turnpike,

getting on Okeechobee,

and heading westbound to the crime scene.

We found the body at 6:30 p.m...

[sirens wailing]

About an hour later.

- Then we learned that Manuel Marin

boarded a flight to Paris, France.

He did purchase a roundtrip ticket

and was supposed to return to the United States.

However, no records indicated that he ever returned.

[airplane engine roaring]

- An unused return ticket--

was that a plan or a panic?

A man who buys a roundtrip ticket

has either told himself he's coming back,

or he wants everybody else to believe that he is.

[suspenseful music]

- In 2018, that's when I took over the case.

I felt very strongly that what cell site information they had

and that little bit of a fingerprint

sounded like a viable case

that I felt I could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Four months after I received the case,

I filed the charges.

Vila is arrested. Isaac is arrested.

But we know Manny Marin is the reason

and the mastermind why this crime occurred.

He's on the run,

and getting him is gonna be a problem.

But I had a plan.

[indistinct chatter]

I believed that Manny's son was assisting him

by giving him a money stream or some kind of help

to keep him wherever he was.

- Knowing these rights, are you now willing to answer

my questions without having a lawyer present?

- Manuel Marin didn't want his son

to go down for any crimes.

All of a sudden, Manuel Marin shows up

at the U.S. embassy in Madrid, Spain, and surrenders.

- Do you understand any English if I speak to you?

- Obviously, you've been transported here from Spain.

- I got a call from Gail Levine,

and she just said, we got him.

I didn't know whether to cry or scream or what.

It was, like, an overwhelming feeling.

I mean, it's, like, seven years looking for someone,

and then, finally, you have them.

- You're being charged with murder.

We have a search warrant... - Uh-huh.

- For us to obtain your DNA

and your fingerprints.

[camera shutter clicks]

I'll never forget Manuel Marin sitting in the interview room.

I looked at a guy who was a stature

of what this country can give you.

But then I see, like, a deflated guy.

I looked at him, and I thought how defeated he was.

- Camilo is so burned and so beaten

that he's nearly unidentifiable.

- The prosecution decided to make a deal

with Ariel Gandulla,

wherein he would testify against the three others.

- At all times on June 1st,

Alexis Vila is in Las Vegas.

But Vila knew something bad was gonna happen

to Camilo that day.

Vila enlisted the help of another old friend--

someone he knew had no fear and wanted money.

That was Roberto Isaac.

- Roberto Isaac and Alexis Vila--

both of them were found guilty of all of their charges.

Without a doubt, we believe that Manuel Marin

and Roberto Isaac

murdered Camilo and set him on fire.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes, very much.

Yes.

- Yes.

- Yes.

- After more than a week of testimony

in a murder-for-hire trial,

Manuel Marin has been found guilty

for manslaughter, criminal conspiracy,

and kidnapping.

- We worked this case for years.

There were people in different countries.

It was a lot of moving parts.

It's a phenomenal feeling. It really is.

I don't know how to say it any other way

besides that you're very proud.

- The convictions gave me some closure.

But it's like a piece of you is gone.

I know for my parents, it has devastated them.

I can't believe it.

- My parents left Colombia to come here

to give us a better life

away from violence, away from something horrific,

and yet it happened here.

I think Manuel is where he needs to be.

I wonder if every day he thinks

about why he is where he is.

It was just completely senseless.

And my brother, sadly,

had to pay the ultimate price for it.

- There's a moment in every story

when the pieces finally come together,

when the separate threads converge in one place,

in one dark location, on one violent night.

Because the final twist wasn't about ambition.

It wasn't about business. It wasn't even about money.

It was about a man who couldn't live with betrayal.

Camilo Salazar wasn't the only victim that night.

Murder never stays contained.

It echoes, reverberates, and destroys those around it.

And that's what we can't forget.

I'm Harlan Coben.

Good night.

[dramatic music]

[intriguing music]