A Florida man who challenged police to find a body in his home in Boynton Beach was arrested Saturday when his wife’s remains were found in his backyard.
The victim, Mary Stella Gomez-Mullet, was reported missing on February 20 when a friend called to tell police she had last spoken to her by phone two days earlier. The friend later revealed that she heard Gomez-Mullet shout, “No, no, no Roberto!” and called her friend’s name before the call was disconnected, according to a police report obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the local news station WPTV. When she tries to call back, the phone goes straight to the voicemail.
The same day, police received a report of a bloody handbag that was less than a mile from Colon’s home. Family members later confirmed that the items, including a crucifix fastened to a white rosary necklace, belonged to Gomez-Mullet. According to the police report, “all family members and friends were determined that something must have happened to Gomez.”
Gomez-Mullet, 45, and Colon, 66, were married in Delray Beach courthouse in January, according to WPTV. Colon described the marriage to detectives as a kind of pro quo arrangement in which Gomez-Mullet received U.S. citizenship in exchange for caring for Colon’s mother, who has dementia.
Apparently, however, the arrangement began to crumble. Colon accused Gomez-Mullet of cheating his mother out of thousands of dollars and told police they were arguing about it when she arrived at his home on February 18. (Her friend later told police that Gomez-Mullet was going to Colon’s house to drop off the items he claimed she had stolen and cut contact with him.) Colon claims he left the house to go to a doctor’s appointment to go, and when he returned, Gomez-Mullet was gone.
When detectives arrived at Colon’s apartment on February 24 for a follow-up interview, they found, according to the police report, that most of his text messages and call history had been deleted. They also noticed several red marks on his front door, which looked like blood on the floor, walls, window and even the ceiling of his workshop. Colon claims the blood splatter in his workshop had to come from his dog; it was later confirmed that it was human.
Two days later, when detectives arrived to search his apartment, Colon was combative and challenged them to ‘find the body, find the body’. According to the police report, he described his workshop as an ‘abattoir’, or a place where animals are slaughtered, and his wife as a ‘shit bitch’. When the detectives left, he smiled and said to them, “At least you did not find any body with me.”
But detectives were back on March 5 to arrest Colon – not for the murder of his wife, but for possession of marijuana found during his previous search of his apartment. Two days earlier, a source had informed police that she had heard Colon and Gomez-Mullet arguing weeks before, and that Colon had threatened to strangle her to death and bury him in his backyard.
Sure enough, when detectives swept across Colon’s apartment again, they found human remains in the backyard, which were positively identified on Friday as those of Gomez-Mullet.
Colon was transported to the Boynton Beach Police Department for processing, but not before detectives heard him say to a friend, ‘There’s one thing they can not do; they can not put his name, Humpty Dumpty, back together. ‘
Colon was booked into Palm Beach County Main Prison on Friday on a charge of first-degree murder. An attorney for Colon could not be immediately identified.