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Mar 27, 2008 8:01 am US/Eastern
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Suspect Indicted In Murder Of Plantation Attorney
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A Broward County grand jury indicted Tony Villegas for the early-March murder of Plantation attorney Melissa Lewis.
Prosecutors allege that Villegas murdered Lewis, who was his estranged wife's best friend, and then dumped her body in a Plantation canal.
Villegas' attorney has said his client was framed but Plantation police say they have plenty of evidence that links him to the crime.
Melissa Lewis disappeared the night of March 5th after returning from a trip to a nearby Publix Supermarket. Police allege that Villegas strangled her inside her garage after she arrived home, and then dumped her body into the canal near Pine Island Road and State Road 84. Police found pepper spray inside Lewis' garage and that's a big part of the evidence against him.
Police say they have records that track Lewis' cell phone to Villegas' apartment in North Miami-Dade and evidence that he allegedly did a computer search on how to remove pepper spray. Villegas's attorney explained that the pepper spray Google search was simply a favor for an unnamed friend who called his client and asked him how to get pepper spray off of hands.
Lewis and Villegas' estranged wife, Debra Villegas, both worked at the law firm of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler in Fort Lauderdale.
Villegas was going through a divorce with the suspect. While police have said that Lewis was not involved in the divorce proceedings, she was helping Debra Villegas get information about writing a will because Debra wanted to be sure her children would be taken care off in case Tony Villegas decided to hurt her and went to jail.
In a December 20th e-mail soliciting information pertaining to wills, Lewis referred to Tony Villegas as "nuts". Some of the text said, "How hard is it to do a will? My friend Debra is going through a divorce. Her ex-husband is nuts. To be on the safe side, she wants to be sure she designates who gets her children if he hurts her and goes to jail. Seems extreme, but you have no idea what is going on and restraining orders are worthless."
He is being held at the Broward County main jail.
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