Life sentence for businessman accused of murdering wife’s lover in Florida

Cuban-born businessman Manuel Marín, who was linked to the Presidente Supermarkets chain, has been sentenced Monday to life imprisonment for the 2011 murder case in Miami, Florida, of a man who was romantically involved with his then-wife, according to local media.

A Miami-Dade County court judge, Miguel M. de la O, on Monday sentenced Marin, 69, to life in prison on the kidnapping charge, along with 30 years for involuntary manslaughter and 15 years for conspiracy to commit kidnapping, NBC6 television in Miami indicated.

Last March, the jury in charge of the case found Marin not guilty of the second-degree murder charge, but guilty of involuntary manslaughter, criminal conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping.

Marin, known in Miami for having been linked to the Florida Hispanic supermarket chain Presidente Supermarkets, was accused of orchestrating the murder of Camilo Salazar, a 43-year-old interior designer at the time who was romantically involved with his then-wife, Jennifer Marin.

The jury’s decision came after a detective testified that Marin’s phone was near the crime scene in 2011 when Salazar’s body was found.

Detectives involved in the trial accused Roberto Isaac, Alexis Vila Perdomo and Ariel Gandulla of kidnapping Salazar in the Coconut Grove area of Miami to torture and kill him before using gasoline to burn a portion of his body near the Everglades, a wetland area in south Florida.

The businessman, who fled the country shortly after Salazar’s body was found, was arrested in August 2018 in Spain and extradited to the U.S. to appear before a Florida court in October of that year.

The victim’s body was found outside Miami with signs of having been brutally beaten and subsequently burned.

The victim’s family members and widow personally followed during the trial the testimony of Emma Lew, a former Miami-Dade medical examiner, who said Salazar was tied up and beaten with an object hard enough to fracture his jaw and skull.

Sentenced in December 2019 in this case were former Cuban Olympic medalist in the Atlanta Olympics (1996) Alexis Vila Perdomo, and trainer Roberto Isaac, to 15 years in prison and life imprisonment, respectively.

The prosecution maintained that Marin hired Perdomo, Isaac and also former Cuban mixed martial arts fighter Ariel Gandulla to commit the murder.

Gandulla was sentenced in 2019 to three years in prison after pleading guilty to kidnapping in the case.

Marín’s son, Yaddiel Marín, was arrested in 2018 in Miami-Dade County on charges of financially assisting his father while his progenitor remained on the run.

Miami-Dade prosecutors noted during the 2019 trial that the crime involved issues of “money, infidelity, rage, conspiracy and homicide.”