Anhang widow nabb
ed in Spain in 2005 contract hit
By CB Online Staff
Federal authorities have finally caught up with Aurea Vázquez Ríjos, who fled from Puerto Rico to Italy five years ago to avoid prosecution in the 2005 murder-for-hire slaying of her husband, wealthy entrepreneur Adam Anhang, in Old San Juan.
Vázquez was arrested by Spanish police at an airport in Madrid as she was getting off a flight from Italy.
FBI spokesman Moises Quiñones said the U.S. Department of Justice is starting extradition proceedings, adding it could take as long as nine months to get her back to Puerto Rico to face the charges.
Vázquez, who remarried in Italy and gave birth to twins, had been beyond the reach of federal authorities because the Italian government doesn’t extradite suspects in potential death penalty cases.
Vázquez is charged with plotting to have Alex “Alex El Loco” Pabón Colón kill Anhang for a $3 million payoff. She denied the charges but refused to cooperate with investigators and fled Puerto Rico for Italy, where she lived in Florence and more recently Venice.
The victim, a wealthy Canadian Internet entrepreneur who married Vázquez after moving to Puerto Rico to work in real estate development, was beaten, stabbed and left for dead along a street in Old San Juan on Sept. 23, 2005. Vázquez suffered minor injuries in the attack, which occurred as the couple headed toward a parking garage after discussing the terms of their pending divorce at a local eatery that Anhang had purchased for his wife.
Abe Anhang, the victim’s father, on Sunday said authorities told him that Vázquez’s sister and her former husband have also been charged and arrested in Puerto Rico in connection with his son’s killing.
“We’re hopeful that after such a long time that justice will be done,” Abe Anhang said by telephone from his home in Winnipeg. “It’s been almost five years since she’s been a fugitive in Italy.”
After Anhang’s murder, Vázquez refused to cooperate with investigators and filed a civil suit against her late husband’s family, seeking $1 million in damages and millions more from his estate. A judge in Puerto Rico dismissed her suit.
La Perla resident Jonathon Román was first arrested by local police and prosecuted by Puerto Rico authorities. He was convicted for the killing in local court despite widespread word on the street that Pabón Colón was the real killer.
As Román sat behind bars serving a life sentence, federal authorities continued to pursue the Pabón Colón angle, finally nabbing him on a street in Hato Rey in 2008.
Former FBI Special Agent in Charge Luis Fraticelli later told CARIBBEAN BUSINESS the arrest of Pabón Colón on federal charges, and the subsequent clearing and release of the innocent Román in local court, was the most satisfying case of his career.
Pabón Colón pleaded guilty, saying that Vázquez offered him $3 million and money to buy a gun as they plotted Anhang’s death at her Pink Skirt restaurant. That payoff was apparently intended to come from the widow’s share of an estimated fortune worth $24 million.
Anhang’s parent successfully fought to keep their former daughter-in-law from inheriting anything.
In 2011, a federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the widow seeking a share of the estate of her murdered husband. Vázquez had originally filed suit in San Juan Superior Court against her deceased husband’s parents, Abraham and Barbara Anhang, seeking a share of his apparently sizable estate, at one time estimated at more than $24 million. The civil case was moved to the U.S. District Court for Puerto Rico.
Vázquez is facing charges of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
According to the June 2008 indictment, Vázquez offered Pabón $3 million to murder her husband and, on the fatal night, lured her husband to an agreed-upon spot in Old San Juan, where Pabón killed him. The indictment said two other unidentified people were involved in the plot.
Anhang, a native of Winnipeg, was a pioneer in the online gambling industry who turned his attention to real-estate development after moving to Puerto Rico, where he met and married Vázquez, a Río Piedras native.
Anhang had developed beachfront condominiums and hotels in Puerto Rico and also was CEO of an online gambling software company based in Costa Rica. He had moved to Puerto Rico a year before the attack.
The FBI said the extradition process from Spain could take between six and nine months. The U.S. agency said the arrest of the Puerto Rican fugitive was the result of a joint effort between the FBI’s legal attaches, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico, Spanish police, Interpol and U.S. Department of Justice.
The Associated Press contributed to this r
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