Minutes after being left alone in the apartment and, after making sure that her captor would not return for a long time, Gloria did her best to remove the gag and the ropes that tied her to the bed. The prostitute had been kidnapped, raped, and tortured by her last client, and in a last-ditch attempt to survive, she had played dead. That move worked out for him.
Gloria hit the wall and the furniture with such force that the noises alerted the neighbors and the police came. When the agents broke down the door, the woman breathed a sigh of relief. They had just prevented the seventh murder at the hands of Rory Conde, the feared Miami strangler, a devout and apparently normal construction worker who took out the frustration of his divorce on whores.
Rory Enrique Conde was born on June 14, 1965 in the Colombian city of Barranquilla, although he was raised for much of his childhood in Miami after the death of his mother from tetanus when he was six years old. From that moment on, our protagonist's life was cut short emotionally.
In the first place, because Rory suffered sexual abuse by two maternal uncles, which left her with serious consequences of depression, post-traumatic stress and a lack of self-esteem; and, secondly, because his father mistreated him physically and psychologically when she moved to Miami with him and his new wife. His parent beat him up and verbally harassed him.
At barely twelve years old, Rory faced this situation by dropping out of school and his foray into crime. His first crimes were petty theft, although at fifteen he was already engaged in the criminal world, mainly robbery. At the age of 21, the young man married Clara Bodden, fifteen, with whom he had two children.
It was a golden age for him: he worked as a construction worker, was a faithful devotee and was beginning to build in Miami, in the southernmost section of Highway 41, a life away from crime. However, that area, full of cheap motels, porn shops, prostitutes and strip bars, was a radical change in his behavior.
Rory began to be absent from the family home, going out at night unannounced and frequenting the sexual services of prostitutes. The change in his habits also led to a change in his behavior, increasingly violent and aggressive towards his wife. Then came the threats, beatings and mistreatment.
Until one day Clara decided to put an end to it: she abandoned her husband and denounced him for gender violence. Rory was sentenced with a restraining order and prohibited from approaching his wife and his children, which triggered such frustration in him that he began a bloody hunt for prostitutes against whom to make up for his disappointment. He was 29 years old.
On September 17, 1994, Rory killed his first victim, Lazaro Comesana, a transsexual prostitute whom he beat and strangled to death after realizing she had a penis. Apparently, the worker took his life because he felt cheated. But also, according to the case summary, he knelt "over Comesana's body for ten minutes while he blamed him for the loss of his wife and children."
Immediately afterwards, he made the sign of the cross, left the body in a middle-class suburb, and vowed never to require the sexual services of whores again. She never fulfilled it. The next three months she murdered five more victims, all of them women.
The modus operandi in each crime, always meticulously planned to avoid being caught, was the same in each case: he would drive to the Tamiami Trail area, pay for the services of the sex worker, and then torture, rape and strangled. Once they were dead, he practiced anal necrophilia with the corpses and, when finished, he crossed himself and disposed of them in some secluded place. From residential areas to garbage dumps.
For him, that massacre became a kind of game, as can be seen from what happened to his third victim, Charity Nava. The woman appeared naked and with a message written on her back with a smiley face, which made reference to a local television presenter: “Third! I Will always call Dwight Chan 10… [Look] If you can catch me” (The third! I will call Dwight Chan, look if you can catch me).
From now on, the authorities were convinced that they were facing a dangerous serial killer, whom they called The Miami Strangler or The Tamiami Trail Strangler (after the area where he carried out his crimes). However, behind the scenes, Rory never aroused in those close to him any suspicion about his true fantasies. Until June 19, 1995.
That morning, Rory left his apartment to testify in court: he was accused of shoplifting. None of the neighbors imagined that in her bedroom he had left Gloria Maestre, another sex worker he was holding against her will, tied up, gagged and dying.
Thanks to the strange noises he made to call for help, the police went to the building to check. Once inside the building they came across the gruesome scene: they had just saved the girl from certain death. She would have been the seventh victim of Rory Conde, the serial killer they were desperately looking for.
After his arrest and custody, the strangler was charged with illegal retention, assault and rape. But as soon as they took DNA samples from him and compared them to the semen found on the other six victims, he was charged with six first-degree murders.
On March 7, 2000, Miami court judge Jerald Bagley sentenced the defendant to death for the first-degree murder of his last victim, murdered on January 12, 1995 after offering him $50 for his services. According to the autopsy, the body had thirty internal fractures in the neck, among other bruises throughout the body.
"The violent and cruel way in which Rhonda Dunn was murdered deserves a unique and exemplary punishment," the magistrate read while the serial killer remained silent. A year later, Conde was also sentenced to five consecutive life terms without parole for the other five first-degree murders.
For now, the Miami strangler remains on death row at Florida State Prison awaiting execution.
