NUDE MAN FOUND WITH CUTOFF HEAD .. SUSPECT ACCUSED OF FRIEND’S MURDER by Edna Buchanan

SEx Note:

I read the paper a lot when I was a kid and this murder always stuck out in my mind. And it was written by the great Edna Buchanan, a crime beat reporter who should have a book of all her crime reports put together. Some of them are pretty hilarious.


She did put out a book in the late 80’s-early 90’s called THE CORPSE HAD A FAMILIAR FACE, which was a auto-biography/true crime book on the shit she’s seen in Miami.


She wrote this one, and I’ve always wanted to use it someday in a screenplay.



NUDE MAN FOUND WITH CUTOFF HEAD .. SUSPECT ACCUSED OF FRIEND’S MURDER

Miami Herald, The (FL) - March 3, 1985

Author: EDNA BUCHANAN Herald Staff Writer


A naked man carrying the severed head of a woman was found leaning against a Metrorail support at dawn Saturday in a quiet southwest Miami neighborhood.
The man twice hurled the woman’s head at the young police officer who approached him.

"I killed her. She’s the devil !" the man shouted.

"There is no end to the bizarreness of this world," veteran Miami Homicide Sgt. Mike Gonzalez said later.

"This is something not likely to happen to any policeman again in 100 years."

Dina Tormos, 18, had been stabbed "many" times with a large hunting type knife, which also was used to cut off her head, police said.

The rest of the murdered woman’s body was found in the
suspect’s apartment, several blocks from where he was arrested at Southwest 33rd Avenue and 29th Terrace, just off U.S. 1.

The suspect, Alberto Mesa, 23, was charged with first- degree murder. Hysterical and distraught, he was taken to the prison ward at Jackson Memorial Hospital and sedated.

Police said Mesa, of 2798 SW 33rd Ave., had no apparent history of mental illness or prior problems with police. Relatives did tell Homicide Detective Earl Washington and Sgt. Gonzalez that Mesa had "recently expressed an unusual interest in religion." They did not specify the religion.

Shocked family members said they last saw Mesa at 2 a.m. Nothing appeared wrong, they said.

A roommate of the dead woman told police she last saw the victim on Friday. Nothing appeared wrong, she said. Tormos, she said, had been dating Mesa for about six months.

The woman, found clad only in a T-shirt and bikini panties, was killed and her body left in a hallway inside the otherwise orderly apartment, police said.

The couple "may have been having a conflict over his interest in religion," Gonzalez said.

Carrying the severed head by the hair, in his right hand, Mesa walked to the home of a brother, at 3375 SW 29th Ter., and said he had killed someone. His relatives did not see the head, but called police because, they said, he was acting strangely.

It was 6:30 a.m. Officer Derek Aycarte, 22, arrived in his patrol car, to investigate a possible assault. He saw Mesa and what he was carrying.

Mesa shouted at the officer and hurled the head. Officer Aycarte jumped out of the way. "This is an extraordinary thing for any young officer to encounter," Gonzalez said. "He tried to calm the man, who was naked, bloody and violent. He stayed calm."

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