By Joiner Martínez
03 Nov 2023, 20:58 PM EDT
Félix Verdejo, a former Puerto Rican boxer, received a sentence of two life sentences after being found guilty of the gruesome murder of his 27-year-old pregnant lover.
Judge Pedro Delgado was in charge of handing down the sentence, in the Federal Court of Hato Rey, after listening to the prosecution, the defense and an emotional expression from the family of the victim, who would have turned 30 in three days.
Delgado said that Verdejo: “He ended the lives of two people. He did it in a horrendous way… The level of cruelty only added to the tragedy that led to these unfortunate events. Those lives, as well as those of the family, have been changed forever. There is no way to go back on this.”
And he noted: “Rodríguez Ortiz’s relatives are living with pain, they are surrounded by pain. “They are emotionally drained.”
“It is a very difficult situation for them, if not impossible to overcome. Taking all this into account in the court’s ruling, Mr. Félix Verdejo is sent to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (federal) for the rest of his life for charge 2 and for the rest of charge 4, to be fulfilled in a manner consecutively,” the judge ruled.
Two consecutive life sentences means you serve one after the other. Although no convict can fulfill both, since the first ends when he dies in prison, the ruling is in accordance with the prosecutor’s request to reflect the atrocity contained in the accusations.
Murder of Keishla Rodríguez
The feminicide of the 27-year-old girl heightened outrage at the time about femicides in Puerto Rico due to the way in which Rodríguez was beaten, drugged and thrown into a lagoon tied by her hands and feet from a busy bridge, according to the complaint filed by the FBI.
The boxer, who had another partner, had known the victim since he was a teenager and had maintained an intermittent relationship with her for nearly a decade, relatives said.
Days before her death, the young woman had informed him that she was expecting his child and the morning she disappeared they had agreed to meet so she could show him the results of the blood test, they added.
Of the charges presented against Verdejo, two were classified by law for the possible application of the death penalty: that of kidnapping that ends in death and that of theft of a vehicle that ends in a death. But that probable penalty was not requested.
Keep reading:
Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Puerto Rico will not seek a second trial against Félix Verdejo in the murder case of Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz
Lawyers for former boxer Félix Verdejo request the acquittal of their client for the charges in which a federal jury in Puerto Rico found him guilty
Félix Verdejo case: unanimous decision of the federal jury in Puerto Rico gives a “knockout” to his sports career