First, he went to the library, where he conducted research on poisons, and he didn’t leave until he found one which would not only kill without leaving any trace, but which was so quick and effective that the victim would not suffer. Mr. Campos took a bus across town, to a neighborhood where he was not known, and purchased a bag of that same poison.
Then, Mr. Campos told me in a perfectly calm and detached manner, all he had to do was wait for the perfect opportunity. Not wanting to get caught, he knew he had to be patient and wait for the perfect time to carry out his plan. It was as if God was helping him, he said, when his wife announced that she was going away for a few days, to visit her sister in New Jersey. As soon as her taxi pulled out of their driveway, he set out to purchase a juicy steak at Publix.
Mr. Campos told me he returned home with a five-pound sirloin steak, red, plump, and marbled with just the right amount of fat. As he wanted to make sure that the dog would come over to eat the meat, Mr. Campos decided to light the barbeque in his backyard and let the smell of the meat on the grill waft over to his neighbor’s house. He lit the barbeque and, while the charcoals were getting nice and hot, stuffed a handful of the poison inside the steak. Then he placed the steak on the sizzling grill and waited for the dog to jump the fence.
Less than one minute later, he saw the dog stick his head over the fence. Mr. Campos, pleased that his plan was working so well, decided that it was time for nature to take its course and went inside the house. He sat in his favorite chair in the living room and turned on the television.
From the research he had conducted on the Internet, he knew that the poison would act almost instantaneously, but even so, he decided he would wait thirty minutes before going outside to check on the dog. It was a working-class neighborhood, and Mr. Campos knew there would not be anyone about at that time of the morning, so he was not worried that any of the other neighbors would see him dragging the dog around to the back of his yard to properly dispose of the body.
Imagine his surprise, Mr. Campos told me, upon discovering not a dead dog next to the barbeque, but its owner. The neighbor, dressed in his usual workout clothes, was lying next to the gym bag he always carried. The dog kept circling around his master’s body, whimpering softly.
The only explanation that Mr. Campos — in his near panicked state — could come up with was that the neighbor had arrived home unexpectedly, and had smelled the steak cooking on the Campos’s grill. The entire neighborhood knew of Mr. Campos’s predilection for barbequing — it was possible to smell from miles away the secret recipe he used to marinate the meat — so the fact that there had been something cooking on the grill was not unusual.
Seeing that there wasn’t anyone around, the neighbor must have decided to steal the meat, which looked and smelled so very appetizing. He must not have been able to wait until he had gotten home to taste it, and bit into the meat right then and there.
Seeing his neighbor lying in his yard had almost brought on a stroke. Mr. Campos told me that as repulsive as it was, he bent over the neighbor and touched him, to see if he could find a pulse. As he leaned over, he saw red juice coming out of the neighbor’s mouth, confirming his initial theory about how he had ended up there, lying dead next to the grill.
In spite of his shock at having killed the neighbor, Mr. Campos could not help being angry at him — the bastard had been stealing his steak!
Mr. Campos insisted that there was no way he was going to go to jail, especially as it had been a complete accident. Mr. Campos was no lawyer, but he knew that Florida had the death penalty, and he was determined to avoid that fate. After having successfully fled the giant prison that Castro had made of his beloved Cuba, he was not about to die in an American jail.
Mr. Campos told me that on that day he had been lucky that he had time on his hands — his wife was out of town, and for the next few hours there wouldn’t be many people walking around the neighborhood — so he could think clearly about how to properly dispose of the body. After deliberating for awhile, he decided that he would follow the plan he had thought of initially, had it been the dog who had died: He would chop up the body and bury it in the backyard. He headed to the garage where he had set up his workshop, got out his electric saw, the powerful one he had bought after Hurricane Andrew hit Miami and he’d had to cut up the trees littering his property.
First, he had to enlarge the hole he had dug earlier in the back part of the yard so it could accommodate a larger body. He had dug the hole as far away from the street — and prying eyes — as possible, to give himself time to bury the dog. Even though it meant more work for him — he now had to drag a heavier body — he was grateful he’d had the foresight to choose that spot. Even so, he was surprised to find out how much the man’s body weighed.
After placing the neighbor in the center of the hole, Mr. Campos got ready to cut it up. The first step was to put on his safety glasses — he certainly didn’t want to hurt himself during the sawing process — and then he plugged the cord into the outside wall with an extension cord. His preparations complete, Mr. Campos began the task of slicing up his neighbor. He told me that throughout the process, the dog had just lay silently by the wall, watching the proceedings. I tried to block out a mental image of Royal, and how he would react if someone were to cut me up. Somehow — old, sick, and senile as he was — I don’t think he would just sit quietly by and watch.
Mr. Campos told me that when he first began to cut up the body, he was a bit taken aback at how much effort it required. He figured that it had been so difficult because he’d had to slice through mostly bone and muscle. The neighbor had once told Mrs. Campos that he was not only a physical trainer, but a champion bodybuilder as well — and those types had no body fat at all.
I have to confess that it was difficult holding onto my composure as I listened to my client describe his actions on that horrific afternoon, especially when he spoke about the neighbor’s dog. Private investigators are never supposed to show emotion, as that can result in the interviewee clamming up. Even though the client may have committed unspeakable acts, no one wants to be openly judged, especially by someone who is supposed to be helping him or her. If a client were to suspect that I thought he or she was disgusting, they would hold back information, and might even lie to show themselves in the best light possible.
Mr. Campos, clearly, had no such hesitations: He was giving me all the gruesome details of what he had done, speaking in a plain and straightforward manner, without any attempt to make himself look good. In his eyes, he had done what he had done to protect his sanity and his property: He had come up with a viable plan to kill the dog that had caused so many problems. The fact that his carefully thought out plan had gone awry was simply too bad.
“So then, Lily — I can call you that, or would you prefer that I address you as Miss Ramos?” Suddenly, and without notice, Mr. Campos broke off from his narration, frightening me. I would have much rather kept the interview on an impersonal note.
“Lily is fine, Mr. Campos,” I replied. “So, after you cut up the neighbor’s body, then what did you do?”
He took a deep breath before answering. “As I told you, when I was cutting him up, I saw how very, very hard his body was — all muscle, no fat — and I was afraid that if I buried it that way, the gases that get into bodies after a few days would cause the body to stink, and then blow up. You see, Lily, the dog was easier to get rid of — smaller and all that.” He shook his head slowly, almost regretfully. “Now I had to think of a way of getting rid of a human body without leaving evidence.”