December 28, 2021 • 28 mins
In the bright-lights and pastel-colored city of Miami, FL Wendy Trapaga was in love with Michel Escoto. He was ten years her senior and Wendy fell hard for this poetic bad boy with a red motorcycle that she met while they both attended cosmotology school. Just six months into their relationship, she found herself marrying Michel, only this wedding would soon become a honeymoon of nightmares for Wendy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Crazy and Love is the true crime podcast that tells
love stories with a twist. They went on this whirlwind
honeymoon that was down to the Florida Keys, which is
so romantic sometimes the twist of a knife. The car
owner had determined that Wendy had been strangled and bludgeon
to death. Just because things start off with once upon
a Time doesn't mean everyone lives happily ever after. This
(00:27):
is Crazy and Love, a production of Katie Studios and
I Heart Radio. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime producer at
Katie's Studios, joined by fellow producers Stephanie Ledecker, Jeff Shane,
and Tim Hamilton's. We've all worked for years on various
crime podcasts and TV series, and as crime producers we
(00:51):
talk murder all the time. One thing we've noticed is
just how many of them stem from love. We're exploring
the case of the jealous X, the scheming husband, and
the deadly honeymoon. Anyone who knew Wendy Chapaga knew she
was a good person. Raised by a single mother, Wendy
was always helping others. In high school, she learned one
(01:15):
of the girls in her class couldn't afford to go
to prom, so Wendy made her address and did her
hair and makeup. Her interest in beauty translated to a career.
In two thousand two, Wendy had just turned twenty one
and decided to put herself through cosmetology school. That's where
she met thirty one year old Michael Askoto. A quick note,
(01:36):
Michael Askoto's name has been reported as both Michelle and
Michael in various outlets. We've chosen to go with Michael,
though Michael was ten years older than Wendy. They immediately
hit it off. Wendy was impressed by Michael's red motorcycle
and sensitive poet guy personality. Wendy's family could tell she
(02:00):
was quote totally in love and had a sparkle in
her eye. Wendy and Michael quickly moved in together. During
the next six months, the couple enjoyed the good life.
They were often seen about town on Michaels Ducatti with
Wendy on the back, hair flying in the ocean breeze.
(02:20):
The South Beach clubs became a regular go to scene
for the loving couple. Wendy even died Michael sire blonde
so he would look more like a rock star. After
an intense romance, the couple got married at Miami Beach
City Hall, followed by a honeymoon down the coast in
the Florida Keys. After three beautiful days, the pair couldn't
(02:40):
get enough of each other and decided to extend their
vacation with a final night in Miami at a Lover's
Only hotel. Here's Jef first and foremost. As producers were
victims advocates. Our goal is always to shine a light
on injustices and bring attention to stories that we feel
need to be heard. In our work, we've note that
many of these crimes stem from the same thing, love,
(03:03):
and that's why we decided to call together some of
the most egregious, shocking, and terrifying stories of relationships that
took deadly turns. Our hope is to not only raise
awareness about the victim and what happened to them, but
also help listeners learn to look out for some of
the warning signs in toxic situations that arise in their
own lives. Wendy seems so so happy Wendy's mother, though
they have some reservations. Apparently, according to reports, we now
(03:26):
know that that days before the wedding, she told her
family that she was pregnant, which could explain why the
rush down the aisle. That kind of does play into
their real love for each other and then wanting to
just embrace and be with each other longer. You know,
they're ten years apart, and many would say ages just
a number, but the ages of twenty one to thirty one,
(03:47):
that particular ten years is kind of a big gap.
They like to go out a lot, and they were
big players in the club scene, and so that to
me says that maybe he acted a little younger than
he was. One thing I would say is that we
had heard that he was entering the same school that
she was at. So he's thirty one re entering school,
(04:07):
So for that to be the case, he may have
been changing careers. It seemed like Michael attracted a lot
of ladies with this rock star vibe he was putting
off because when he and Wendy started dating, she began
to realize that he had a lot of female admirers
all around town. They were constantly bumping into woman he
had dated. Particularly one X kept coming up this woman,
(04:30):
Yolanda Sarrio, and Yolanda kind of conveniently would just pop
up out of nowhere when the couple was having dinner
or having drinks. She also started getting her haircut done
at LaBelle, the wbut School, where both Indy and Michael attended,
and you know, Michael brushed it off. So when you
try not to make a big deal of it, because
she wanted to stay in the present, not only would
these girls be popping up all the time, and specifically
(04:52):
this Yolanda. They did eventually say that Michael loved it.
He loved his exes popping up. He loved that Yolanda
kept appearing at dinner when he and Wendy were together,
or some other random x would just show up wherever
they were. Well, you know what, there's something to be said,
because that's always the delicate dance when you start dating
(05:14):
somebody and you know they have a past, and you
know they have old girlfriends or old boyfriends, so you
really have to trust yourself right that this person is
just someone from the past, it's just coincidence, or they're
just friends. But that's a real hard thing to do.
But I would also want to play it like I'm
cool with that because I'm not jealous, but really I am.
(05:37):
Or maybe she's literally just not jealous. There are some
women that are just genuinely not jealous, and you know,
would believe that, hey, look that's his ex for a reason,
they're not together, but when it's over, it's over. She
seemed to kind of handle it with stride and wasn't
super jealous, and you know, seemingly really trusted her now
soon to be husband. They went on this world and
(06:00):
honeymoon that was down to the Florida Keys, exotic drinks,
fabulous dinners on the beach. She was really romantic and
they had a hotel room. And then after they came
back to Miami after their whirlwind honeymoon, they decided to
extend their honeymoon a little longer and check into the
Miami Executive Hotel with its heart shaped jacuzz and mirrored ceiling.
(06:24):
The hotel was known to attract all kinds of different lovers.
On the final night of their honeymoon, Wendy called her
mother and said she and Michael were going to see
a movie and then go dancing at a club. Wendy's
mother urged her not to drink due to pregnancy, but
Wendy brushed off her concerns it would be the last
(06:44):
time they would ever speak. The next morning, at five am,
Wendy's mother got an unexpected call from Michael. He said
that he and Wendy had had an argument. He also
said that Wendy stormed off, saying she was going to
her mother's house, but Wendy never arrived. Around the same time,
(07:07):
in a different part of town, a body was found
slumped between two parked cars, wearing a blue sequin dress.
The woman had been brutally beaten. Strangely enough, the woman
was barefoot, but police noted that her feet were clean.
The woman was identified as Wendy Chapaga Here's Stephanie. This
(07:32):
was a gruesome and brutal murder. The carner had determined
that Wendy had been strangled and bludgeoned to death, and
that she was likely hit with a heavy object somewhere
between fifteen and twenty times. We now know that these
types of violent crimes typically aren't random. That sort of
(07:52):
gave the impression that this might have been personal, and
authority started looking deeper into the circle around her. Wendy
did not have any defensive wounds on her body, so
that lightly means she didn't put up a fight, which
could potentially indicate that maybe she had drugs in her
system or hopefully means that she was unconscious at the
time of the murder. It turns out when her toxicology
(08:15):
were working back that she had all these pills in
her system percocet, vicot in ambient like heavy sleeping pills.
So yeah, she was unconscious, she was on a plathora
of pills. But she wouldn't be taking all of those
pills voluntarily. She's pregnant and that type of a medication
could really do such damage to an unborn baby. Well,
(08:39):
that's what I thought too, And then did some more
digging in the autopsy. She was never pregnant. What Yeah,
not pregnant, meaning there was no evidence that she had
ever been pregnant, not that she lost the baby for example. Correct,
there was no signs that she had been pregnant recently
at all. So just curious, then that was a lie
she told It seemed that, yes, for whatever reason, she
(09:01):
lied to her family prior to the wedding. No. Some
reports have also made the suggestion that she may have
lied about being pregnant simply because she really wanted her
family to be on board with the wedding. Also shows
how much she really wanted her mother and her siblings
to be invested in her relationship with Michael and supportive.
(09:22):
And you know that goes to show right there that
if you have to tell a horrific lie to get
your friends and family to like the person you're getting
involved with, maybe you should take a second look at
it and think, is this really good person I want
to get involved with. We also know that Wendy was
very close to her family, very tight with her mother.
(09:42):
They spoke often, and so you know, if they had
any misgivings about her relationship, the red flag is pretty obvious.
Sometimes we have to listen to our loved ones. And
I mean, this isn't a thirty five year old woman
who has life experience. This is a girl, a young
girl who may have been manipulated into a situation and
(10:02):
now she's in over her head and doesn't know what
to do. So she's just gonna keep making the snowball
bigger and bigger and bigger until I guess eventually it implodes.
When the police went and spoke with Michael, he showed
no emotion to find out that his wife had been
found murdered. He was totally relaxed, didn't seem shocked at all,
(10:24):
which is odd. I'll never ever ever understand this. This
is your young, lovely wife who at some point you
loved deeply. If you had nothing to do with it,
wouldn't she be going insane trying to find out where
she is and if she's okay, and offering as much
help as to the police as possible. Police went and
(10:45):
talk to Wendy's family, and Wendy's sister recalled the baraka's
times she met Michael, she got a bad feeling, chills,
as she described it. But upon further investigation, Wendy's family
told the police that Wendy had confided in them that
they had purchased one million dollar life insurance policies just
a few weeks earlier. So Michael and Wendy had two
(11:08):
million dollar life insurance policies. She shows up dead, murdered,
and he has no reaction whatsoever, you know. Going back
to the insurance of it all, I did some research
and interestingly, of all Americans have some sort of life insurance,
which is a pretty high number, so that in and
(11:28):
of itself is not a red flaper say that Michael
was culpable in this murder. Wendy's family was sure that
Michael was involved in Wendy's murder. Unfortunately, the police didn't
have enough evidence to charge him with anything. However, his
behavior continued to point toward his guilt. Michael and his
(11:50):
ex girlfriend, Newlanda, reconnected. He moved into her apartment and
they became a couple again. Strapped for money and unable
to cash in on the life insurance policy, Michael filed
a suit against the insurance company. At the trial, Michael
was forced to testify, which turned out to be a
grave mistake. Prosecutors sat and listened to Michael's testimony and
(12:16):
her details of his story changed before their eyes. For instance,
he had earlier told police that extending the honeymoon was
Wendy's idea, but in two thousand two, Yolande told police
that Michael had asked her to make the hotel reservation
for him, indicating it wasn't Wendy's idea at all. On
the second day of the civil trial, Michael failed to
(12:38):
show up. Wendy's mother was granted the insurance money three
days after his no show in court. On August two
thousand five, Michael was arrested and charged with Wendy's murder.
The wheels of justice slowly turned and it took eight
years for the trial to begin, But when it did,
(12:59):
there was a major bomb show. Michael's on again, off
again girlfriend, Yolanda, flipped on her boyfriend and in exchange
for full immunity, agreed to testify for the prosecution. She
shared every gruesome detail of how Michael murdered his new bride.
(13:19):
Here's Stephanie. The fact that they had life insurance policies
taken out on each other in and of itself is
not a huge thing. However, the amount was massive, and
the real red flag is that just two months after
the murder, Michael tried to cash it in, and that's
the number one thing police look at. Also, keep in
(13:40):
mind they have really only just met, so here they
are having a rushed wedding, you know, a quick rendezvous.
They fell in love fast, they married even faster. At
what point do you have the time to really stop
and take out insurance policies on each other in this
very short timeline. We're going to take a quick break.
(14:04):
We'll be back in just a moment. When someone dies,
the first thing police look at is who stands to
gain from this death, And in this case, it was
(14:26):
whostoo to gain financially from this death, and that person
was Michael Ascoto, Wendy's husband. There's a sad irony that
this life insurance policy is the thing, you know, there
was probably Michael's motive, but also is the thing that
helped put him away. He clearly wasn't thinking straight, because
why would he take up this policy, this very obvious policy,
after such a short romance, then not cooperate with police
(14:47):
and then try to cash in so quickly after refusing
to help, Like did he really think he would get
away with that totally? One thing that was very unusual
about the crime scene and how her body was found
is that she was found without shoes and barefoot, and
that would suggest that she was carried to this dumpster
(15:08):
and likely just tossed in there like pure trash. And
you know asks the question who could do that? You
have to really dislike this person and have no care
for them whatsoever to just discard their body like a
rag doll. And Yolanda admitted to prosecutors that she helped
Michael crushing arcotics and sleeping pills into a powder form
(15:31):
so they could drug Wendy so that she would pass
out when Michael tries to kill her. But what's crazy
is Yolanda admits to police that she allowed Michael to
dunk her head into a bathtub to practice on how
to drown Wendy to death. So they were having murder rehearsals,
(15:52):
basically murder rehearsals. Yeah, so when you think about it,
she's just as party to the killing as Michael. Tim
that's astounding when you say it, because that also really
points obviously to the premeditation of it all. But is
it possible that Michael targeted Wendy from the jump? I mean, again,
(16:14):
we're in such a short period of time here, the
timeline is so brief. A lot has happened, obviously, and
if he's doing these rehearsals with Yolanda prior to the murder,
that would sort of imply to me at least that
perhaps Michael targeted Wendy from the start. Well, it's not
a bad assumption. And you know, when you think about
(16:35):
up to this point, they met, they married, the honeymoon,
and they're back and for them to get in short
life insurance policies, for her to tell her family she
was pregnant, for Yolanda and Michael to be able to
rehearse the murders, there was really no time for them
to fall in love. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems
like they picked her. She was like a mark, which
(16:58):
was a mark then for Yolanda and Michael. Which again,
obviously looking back at this and kind of looking for
the red flags in this relationship, the obvious one is
that Wendy's families had some second thoughts about whether or
not Michael was the man for her, and that maybe
Wendy should slow things down. Love can be very cloudy
(17:20):
also want to make us not see things as they are.
And you know, Wendy did have some tip off Landa
was popping up all the time, like you guys discussed,
and she was such a good sport about it and
wasn't inherently a jealous girl, so she kind of looked
the other way. The final night of the honeymoon that
we know, they were at this lover's only hotel, Michael's
(17:41):
plan hit a snag when Wendy wouldn't drink the taste
of the deadly cocktail that they previously made. She said
it tasted too weird, so Michael tried to again by
adding more booze to it, and this time Wendy drank it,
but he couldn't manage to drown her, so Yolanda said.
At this point, Michael showed up at her house with
Wendy in the car. She's all messed up on this,
(18:01):
on these pills and booze, and so Yolanda follows him
in her car to this warehouse parking lot, where Michael
pulls one dy out of the car. He then tells
Yolanda to drive around for twenty to twenty five minutes
and come back and get him, which she does again,
doesn't call the police, doesn't do anything to prevent this
from happening, But when she returns twenty five minutes later,
(18:22):
Michael is covered in blood and carrying a bloody tire iron,
and Wendy is nowhere to be found. So Yolanda drives
Michael down to the water, where he gets out of
the car throws the tire iron in. She then drives
him back to his apartment, takes his bloody clothes and
draws them in a dumpster for him. I mean if
we're to believe Yolanda, which I mean, I think she
has a reason to lie. She's getting immunity for her testimony,
(18:43):
so she's throwing Michael under the bus. I would assume
she's probably more involved even than she's sang, But that
to me says that they were at the very least
He was planning this prior to the wedding, so he
went on that honeymoon with her knowing full well that
in a matter of days she would be dead. At
the trial, Yolande Sirio admitted to prosecutors that she helped
(19:04):
plan the murder. Perhaps the most bizarre part of the
trial was that Michael represented himself. This meant he had
to cross examine the prosecution star witness, his ex girlfriend, Yolanda.
On the stand, the ex lovers got into words over
the nature of their relationship. Michael tried to paint Yolanda
(19:27):
as a bitter x who, perhaps in a fit of jealousy,
murdered Wendy herself. Here's a portion of the court recording.
I believed the evidence will show that are only an imbecile,
and an imbecile who's in love with money would kill
somebody four days after they were married to that person,
(19:49):
says the guy who's defending himself. There's the capital murder investigation.
Just the fact, yeah, just the fact that Michael defended
himself speaks so much to his character also and his
ego that he could be bigger and better than the law.
That he would outsmart everybody on trial is also a
real tell. Also, something that I thought was heart wrenching
(20:11):
is that Yolanda claimed that Michael told her that he
never ever loved Wendy and that the whole wedding was
in fact a sham. In fact, the day before the wedding,
he asked Yolanda if she would help him murder his
new bride, cash in and then run off into the sunset. Horrible.
(20:31):
I mean, it's so wild. The longer and the deeper
you get into this everything that's going on, let's stop
here for another quick break. Going back to him representing himself.
(20:58):
I wonder if that was a strata g on Michael's
part to be able to cross examineing Orlanda, knowing that
they had this deep rooted relationship and that she loved
him and was so devoted to him that maybe while
on trial he could break her or maybe she would
change her testimony or something, or she would recant her
original statement out of love for Michael. Didn't someone once
(21:22):
say that if you're your own lawyer, you have a
fool for a client. It just seems like representing himself
was a catastrophic idea from the start. But never have
I seen ex lovers on going at it like that
in a courtroom. I mean, that's unprecedented that the fact
that that was even allowed is shocking, and that had happened,
It's just surprising. We've looked at a lot of very
(21:43):
complex murder cases, but never have we seen something like
ex lovers going at it in the courtroom like this.
This to me seems truly unprecedented. I didn't know who
she was. I didn't I hated the whole situation. I
hated that you left, and did you wish you was there?
(22:04):
I wish you would go away. It's one thing to
be in love and wish that the person you're in
love with loved you back, But wanting somebody to just
disappear is a real leap. You know, how do you
go from loving somebody to agreeing to murder somebody you don't?
That's not normal, and if that's the situation, then I
(22:27):
would say seek counseling first for you progress in that relationship,
and also to trust your gut. Not that we're dolling
out relationship advice in any way, but you know, we've
all had those moments where our gut says something is
not right here, And now I'm just going to go
back to your London for one second. Why would you
want to be in a relationship with somebody you know
(22:49):
is organizing a murder of someone they just married. What
entices you to want to love that person and have
them come back to you? I would imagine money. They
were both looking at a million dollar payout. So Yolanda
is a single mom. She thought maybe she would get
her guy back and get some portion of this money.
Probably set her up pretty nicely. Maybe, yeah, how do
(23:13):
you live with yourself? Not justifying it, but I would
imagine that was probably her motive, right, They each had
one million dollar insurance policies like what makes them think
that they're special and they're not going to do the
same thing on each other? That is true? You leave
them like you find them. Yeah. During the trial, Michael
tried to paint Yolanda as this jealous X who potentially,
(23:34):
in a fit of rage, actually killed Wendy herself. And
so not only was he involving his ex girlfriend in
this murder plot, but then when Push came to shop,
he was willing to throw her under the bus and
actually say she did it. What unfolded while he was
representing himself is that Yolanda wasn't the only X in
his life who came to court to trash Michael. In fact,
(23:58):
Michael has a history of mooching off of girlfriends and
getting anything and everything he can from the girls he's dated.
He had one girl come on onto the stand and
say she was giving Hills a month as like a stipend.
One other girl said she bought him his flashy new motorcycle,
which is oddly enough, one of the reasons when he
fell in love with the hot guy on the motorcycle.
(24:20):
Another girl said that she bought him a car. So
it's like he's a moocher. And if anything you don't
want coming out in court is how you take advantage
of all the girls you date. It's a pattern. That's
what it creates. That's what the prosecution was trying to do.
Is say that Michael had a pattern of taking advantage
of the woman that he was romantically Malpilus pattern. So
another interesting fact is that Michael acted like he loved Wendy,
(24:43):
and it seemed like he may have been driven by
greed and the desire to cash in on their life
insurance policies. And when in fact, his ex and alleged
co conspirator on the stand recounted the moment he told
her the truth and he said, and I quote to
calm down, that it was all a plan, that he
didn't love her, He loved me. He said he was
(25:06):
going to marry her. Then they were going to go
have an insurance policy and she was going to die
end quote. So Yorlando's story was drastically different than Michael's.
If you remember back when Michael originally talked to the
police in October of two thousand and two, during a
marathon long, fourteen hour investigation, he told police that Wendy
(25:27):
asked to extend their honeymoon, so they checked into the motel.
What he said was, they had sex, slept a little,
she fell asleep in the jacuzzi, and they checked out
at four am and headed home. They then had an
argument on the way home, and when they got there,
he walked into the apartment, leaving Wendy in the car.
He said when he walked back out five minutes later,
both she and the car were gone. And as police
were having this interrogation with Michael, he got more and
(25:50):
more upset and began to shut down. He at one
point refused to polygraph and also wouldn't let police officers
take pictures of the bruises on his arms. Further where
he wouldn't even give a DNA sample. And you know,
maybe that's because he was trying to evade police, but
also he was in there for fourteen hours with no lawyer,
answering a lot of their questions. That's a really long interrogation.
(26:13):
He must have either been incredibly confident that he could
evade their suspicion or is just really stupid. I'm gonna
guess he's really stupid, because, as we all know, prosecutors
finally charged Michael after watching him testify at the insurance
trial in two thousand five. On April, the jury found
(26:36):
Michael guilty of first degree premeditated murder for killing Wendy Chapaga.
He was sentenced to the mandatory sentence of life in
prison without the possibility of parole. Michael sat Stone faced
as the verdict was read. Wendy's mother dropped to her
knees crying. While she couldn't bring Wendy back to life,
she was relieved that Michael would be locked up for
(26:58):
the rest of his life. Following the criminal trial, Yolanda
avoided any charges as part of a plea deal. Wendy's
family was disappointed and later sued her in a civil trial.
The Tropagra family won the lawsuit and were awarded forty
four million dollars and amount Yolanda would never be able
to pay. In Wendy's mother passed away. Her family says
(27:25):
it was from a broken heart. She was buried wearing
a pendant with Wendy's picture in it. If you're enjoying
Crazy in Love, listen to seasons one and two of
the piked in Massacre, another Katie Studios production, and follow
us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love
(27:46):
is produced by Stephanie Laie Decker, Beth Greenwald, Chris Graves,
Lisa d Giovine, Jeff Shane, Tim Hamilton's and me Courtney
Armstrong Editing and sound designed by Jeff Twa additional editing
by Davy Cooper Wasser. Crazy in Love is a production
of I heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(28:08):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Crazy and Love is the true crime podcast that tells
love stories with a twist. They went on this whirlwind
honeymoon that was down to the Florida Keys, which is
so romantic sometimes the twist of a knife. The car
owner had determined that Wendy had been strangled and bludgeon
to death. Just because things start off with once upon
a Time doesn't mean everyone lives happily ever after. This
(00:27):
is Crazy and Love, a production of Katie Studios and
I Heart Radio. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a crime producer at
Katie's Studios, joined by fellow producers Stephanie Ledecker, Jeff Shane,
and Tim Hamilton's. We've all worked for years on various
crime podcasts and TV series, and as crime producers we
(00:51):
talk murder all the time. One thing we've noticed is
just how many of them stem from love. We're exploring
the case of the jealous X, the scheming husband, and
the deadly honeymoon. Anyone who knew Wendy Chapaga knew she
was a good person. Raised by a single mother, Wendy
was always helping others. In high school, she learned one
(01:15):
of the girls in her class couldn't afford to go
to prom, so Wendy made her address and did her
hair and makeup. Her interest in beauty translated to a career.
In two thousand two, Wendy had just turned twenty one
and decided to put herself through cosmetology school. That's where
she met thirty one year old Michael Askoto. A quick note,
(01:36):
Michael Askoto's name has been reported as both Michelle and
Michael in various outlets. We've chosen to go with Michael,
though Michael was ten years older than Wendy. They immediately
hit it off. Wendy was impressed by Michael's red motorcycle
and sensitive poet guy personality. Wendy's family could tell she
(02:00):
was quote totally in love and had a sparkle in
her eye. Wendy and Michael quickly moved in together. During
the next six months, the couple enjoyed the good life.
They were often seen about town on Michaels Ducatti with
Wendy on the back, hair flying in the ocean breeze.
(02:20):
The South Beach clubs became a regular go to scene
for the loving couple. Wendy even died Michael sire blonde
so he would look more like a rock star. After
an intense romance, the couple got married at Miami Beach
City Hall, followed by a honeymoon down the coast in
the Florida Keys. After three beautiful days, the pair couldn't
(02:40):
get enough of each other and decided to extend their
vacation with a final night in Miami at a Lover's
Only hotel. Here's Jef first and foremost. As producers were
victims advocates. Our goal is always to shine a light
on injustices and bring attention to stories that we feel
need to be heard. In our work, we've note that
many of these crimes stem from the same thing, love,
(03:03):
and that's why we decided to call together some of
the most egregious, shocking, and terrifying stories of relationships that
took deadly turns. Our hope is to not only raise
awareness about the victim and what happened to them, but
also help listeners learn to look out for some of
the warning signs in toxic situations that arise in their
own lives. Wendy seems so so happy Wendy's mother, though
they have some reservations. Apparently, according to reports, we now
(03:26):
know that that days before the wedding, she told her
family that she was pregnant, which could explain why the
rush down the aisle. That kind of does play into
their real love for each other and then wanting to
just embrace and be with each other longer. You know,
they're ten years apart, and many would say ages just
a number, but the ages of twenty one to thirty one,
(03:47):
that particular ten years is kind of a big gap.
They like to go out a lot, and they were
big players in the club scene, and so that to
me says that maybe he acted a little younger than
he was. One thing I would say is that we
had heard that he was entering the same school that
she was at. So he's thirty one re entering school,
(04:07):
So for that to be the case, he may have
been changing careers. It seemed like Michael attracted a lot
of ladies with this rock star vibe he was putting
off because when he and Wendy started dating, she began
to realize that he had a lot of female admirers
all around town. They were constantly bumping into woman he
had dated. Particularly one X kept coming up this woman,
(04:30):
Yolanda Sarrio, and Yolanda kind of conveniently would just pop
up out of nowhere when the couple was having dinner
or having drinks. She also started getting her haircut done
at LaBelle, the wbut School, where both Indy and Michael attended,
and you know, Michael brushed it off. So when you
try not to make a big deal of it, because
she wanted to stay in the present, not only would
these girls be popping up all the time, and specifically
(04:52):
this Yolanda. They did eventually say that Michael loved it.
He loved his exes popping up. He loved that Yolanda
kept appearing at dinner when he and Wendy were together,
or some other random x would just show up wherever
they were. Well, you know what, there's something to be said,
because that's always the delicate dance when you start dating
(05:14):
somebody and you know they have a past, and you
know they have old girlfriends or old boyfriends, so you
really have to trust yourself right that this person is
just someone from the past, it's just coincidence, or they're
just friends. But that's a real hard thing to do.
But I would also want to play it like I'm
cool with that because I'm not jealous, but really I am.
(05:37):
Or maybe she's literally just not jealous. There are some
women that are just genuinely not jealous, and you know,
would believe that, hey, look that's his ex for a reason,
they're not together, but when it's over, it's over. She
seemed to kind of handle it with stride and wasn't
super jealous, and you know, seemingly really trusted her now
soon to be husband. They went on this world and
(06:00):
honeymoon that was down to the Florida Keys, exotic drinks,
fabulous dinners on the beach. She was really romantic and
they had a hotel room. And then after they came
back to Miami after their whirlwind honeymoon, they decided to
extend their honeymoon a little longer and check into the
Miami Executive Hotel with its heart shaped jacuzz and mirrored ceiling.
(06:24):
The hotel was known to attract all kinds of different lovers.
On the final night of their honeymoon, Wendy called her
mother and said she and Michael were going to see
a movie and then go dancing at a club. Wendy's
mother urged her not to drink due to pregnancy, but
Wendy brushed off her concerns it would be the last
(06:44):
time they would ever speak. The next morning, at five am,
Wendy's mother got an unexpected call from Michael. He said
that he and Wendy had had an argument. He also
said that Wendy stormed off, saying she was going to
her mother's house, but Wendy never arrived. Around the same time,
(07:07):
in a different part of town, a body was found
slumped between two parked cars, wearing a blue sequin dress.
The woman had been brutally beaten. Strangely enough, the woman
was barefoot, but police noted that her feet were clean.
The woman was identified as Wendy Chapaga Here's Stephanie. This
(07:32):
was a gruesome and brutal murder. The carner had determined
that Wendy had been strangled and bludgeoned to death, and
that she was likely hit with a heavy object somewhere
between fifteen and twenty times. We now know that these
types of violent crimes typically aren't random. That sort of
(07:52):
gave the impression that this might have been personal, and
authority started looking deeper into the circle around her. Wendy
did not have any defensive wounds on her body, so
that lightly means she didn't put up a fight, which
could potentially indicate that maybe she had drugs in her
system or hopefully means that she was unconscious at the
time of the murder. It turns out when her toxicology
(08:15):
were working back that she had all these pills in
her system percocet, vicot in ambient like heavy sleeping pills.
So yeah, she was unconscious, she was on a plathora
of pills. But she wouldn't be taking all of those
pills voluntarily. She's pregnant and that type of a medication
could really do such damage to an unborn baby. Well,
(08:39):
that's what I thought too, And then did some more
digging in the autopsy. She was never pregnant. What Yeah,
not pregnant, meaning there was no evidence that she had
ever been pregnant, not that she lost the baby for example. Correct,
there was no signs that she had been pregnant recently
at all. So just curious, then that was a lie
she told It seemed that, yes, for whatever reason, she
(09:01):
lied to her family prior to the wedding. No. Some
reports have also made the suggestion that she may have
lied about being pregnant simply because she really wanted her
family to be on board with the wedding. Also shows
how much she really wanted her mother and her siblings
to be invested in her relationship with Michael and supportive.
(09:22):
And you know that goes to show right there that
if you have to tell a horrific lie to get
your friends and family to like the person you're getting
involved with, maybe you should take a second look at
it and think, is this really good person I want
to get involved with. We also know that Wendy was
very close to her family, very tight with her mother.
(09:42):
They spoke often, and so you know, if they had
any misgivings about her relationship, the red flag is pretty obvious.
Sometimes we have to listen to our loved ones. And
I mean, this isn't a thirty five year old woman
who has life experience. This is a girl, a young
girl who may have been manipulated into a situation and
(10:02):
now she's in over her head and doesn't know what
to do. So she's just gonna keep making the snowball
bigger and bigger and bigger until I guess eventually it implodes.
When the police went and spoke with Michael, he showed
no emotion to find out that his wife had been
found murdered. He was totally relaxed, didn't seem shocked at all,
(10:24):
which is odd. I'll never ever ever understand this. This
is your young, lovely wife who at some point you
loved deeply. If you had nothing to do with it,
wouldn't she be going insane trying to find out where
she is and if she's okay, and offering as much
help as to the police as possible. Police went and
(10:45):
talk to Wendy's family, and Wendy's sister recalled the baraka's
times she met Michael, she got a bad feeling, chills,
as she described it. But upon further investigation, Wendy's family
told the police that Wendy had confided in them that
they had purchased one million dollar life insurance policies just
a few weeks earlier. So Michael and Wendy had two
(11:08):
million dollar life insurance policies. She shows up dead, murdered,
and he has no reaction whatsoever, you know. Going back
to the insurance of it all, I did some research
and interestingly, of all Americans have some sort of life insurance,
which is a pretty high number, so that in and
(11:28):
of itself is not a red flaper say that Michael
was culpable in this murder. Wendy's family was sure that
Michael was involved in Wendy's murder. Unfortunately, the police didn't
have enough evidence to charge him with anything. However, his
behavior continued to point toward his guilt. Michael and his
(11:50):
ex girlfriend, Newlanda, reconnected. He moved into her apartment and
they became a couple again. Strapped for money and unable
to cash in on the life insurance policy, Michael filed
a suit against the insurance company. At the trial, Michael
was forced to testify, which turned out to be a
grave mistake. Prosecutors sat and listened to Michael's testimony and
(12:16):
her details of his story changed before their eyes. For instance,
he had earlier told police that extending the honeymoon was
Wendy's idea, but in two thousand two, Yolande told police
that Michael had asked her to make the hotel reservation
for him, indicating it wasn't Wendy's idea at all. On
the second day of the civil trial, Michael failed to
(12:38):
show up. Wendy's mother was granted the insurance money three
days after his no show in court. On August two
thousand five, Michael was arrested and charged with Wendy's murder.
The wheels of justice slowly turned and it took eight
years for the trial to begin, But when it did,
(12:59):
there was a major bomb show. Michael's on again, off
again girlfriend, Yolanda, flipped on her boyfriend and in exchange
for full immunity, agreed to testify for the prosecution. She
shared every gruesome detail of how Michael murdered his new bride.
(13:19):
Here's Stephanie. The fact that they had life insurance policies
taken out on each other in and of itself is
not a huge thing. However, the amount was massive, and
the real red flag is that just two months after
the murder, Michael tried to cash it in, and that's
the number one thing police look at. Also, keep in
(13:40):
mind they have really only just met, so here they
are having a rushed wedding, you know, a quick rendezvous.
They fell in love fast, they married even faster. At
what point do you have the time to really stop
and take out insurance policies on each other in this
very short timeline. We're going to take a quick break.
(14:04):
We'll be back in just a moment. When someone dies,
the first thing police look at is who stands to
gain from this death, And in this case, it was
(14:26):
whostoo to gain financially from this death, and that person
was Michael Ascoto, Wendy's husband. There's a sad irony that
this life insurance policy is the thing, you know, there
was probably Michael's motive, but also is the thing that
helped put him away. He clearly wasn't thinking straight, because
why would he take up this policy, this very obvious policy,
after such a short romance, then not cooperate with police
(14:47):
and then try to cash in so quickly after refusing
to help, Like did he really think he would get
away with that totally? One thing that was very unusual
about the crime scene and how her body was found
is that she was found without shoes and barefoot, and
that would suggest that she was carried to this dumpster
(15:08):
and likely just tossed in there like pure trash. And
you know asks the question who could do that? You
have to really dislike this person and have no care
for them whatsoever to just discard their body like a
rag doll. And Yolanda admitted to prosecutors that she helped
Michael crushing arcotics and sleeping pills into a powder form
(15:31):
so they could drug Wendy so that she would pass
out when Michael tries to kill her. But what's crazy
is Yolanda admits to police that she allowed Michael to
dunk her head into a bathtub to practice on how
to drown Wendy to death. So they were having murder rehearsals,
(15:52):
basically murder rehearsals. Yeah, so when you think about it,
she's just as party to the killing as Michael. Tim
that's astounding when you say it, because that also really
points obviously to the premeditation of it all. But is
it possible that Michael targeted Wendy from the jump? I mean, again,
(16:14):
we're in such a short period of time here, the
timeline is so brief. A lot has happened, obviously, and
if he's doing these rehearsals with Yolanda prior to the murder,
that would sort of imply to me at least that
perhaps Michael targeted Wendy from the start. Well, it's not
a bad assumption. And you know, when you think about
(16:35):
up to this point, they met, they married, the honeymoon,
and they're back and for them to get in short
life insurance policies, for her to tell her family she
was pregnant, for Yolanda and Michael to be able to
rehearse the murders, there was really no time for them
to fall in love. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems
like they picked her. She was like a mark, which
(16:58):
was a mark then for Yolanda and Michael. Which again,
obviously looking back at this and kind of looking for
the red flags in this relationship, the obvious one is
that Wendy's families had some second thoughts about whether or
not Michael was the man for her, and that maybe
Wendy should slow things down. Love can be very cloudy
(17:20):
also want to make us not see things as they are.
And you know, Wendy did have some tip off Landa
was popping up all the time, like you guys discussed,
and she was such a good sport about it and
wasn't inherently a jealous girl, so she kind of looked
the other way. The final night of the honeymoon that
we know, they were at this lover's only hotel, Michael's
(17:41):
plan hit a snag when Wendy wouldn't drink the taste
of the deadly cocktail that they previously made. She said
it tasted too weird, so Michael tried to again by
adding more booze to it, and this time Wendy drank it,
but he couldn't manage to drown her, so Yolanda said.
At this point, Michael showed up at her house with
Wendy in the car. She's all messed up on this,
(18:01):
on these pills and booze, and so Yolanda follows him
in her car to this warehouse parking lot, where Michael
pulls one dy out of the car. He then tells
Yolanda to drive around for twenty to twenty five minutes
and come back and get him, which she does again,
doesn't call the police, doesn't do anything to prevent this
from happening, But when she returns twenty five minutes later,
(18:22):
Michael is covered in blood and carrying a bloody tire iron,
and Wendy is nowhere to be found. So Yolanda drives
Michael down to the water, where he gets out of
the car throws the tire iron in. She then drives
him back to his apartment, takes his bloody clothes and
draws them in a dumpster for him. I mean if
we're to believe Yolanda, which I mean, I think she
has a reason to lie. She's getting immunity for her testimony,
(18:43):
so she's throwing Michael under the bus. I would assume
she's probably more involved even than she's sang, But that
to me says that they were at the very least
He was planning this prior to the wedding, so he
went on that honeymoon with her knowing full well that
in a matter of days she would be dead. At
the trial, Yolande Sirio admitted to prosecutors that she helped
(19:04):
plan the murder. Perhaps the most bizarre part of the
trial was that Michael represented himself. This meant he had
to cross examine the prosecution star witness, his ex girlfriend, Yolanda.
On the stand, the ex lovers got into words over
the nature of their relationship. Michael tried to paint Yolanda
(19:27):
as a bitter x who, perhaps in a fit of jealousy,
murdered Wendy herself. Here's a portion of the court recording.
I believed the evidence will show that are only an imbecile,
and an imbecile who's in love with money would kill
somebody four days after they were married to that person,
(19:49):
says the guy who's defending himself. There's the capital murder investigation.
Just the fact, yeah, just the fact that Michael defended
himself speaks so much to his character also and his
ego that he could be bigger and better than the law.
That he would outsmart everybody on trial is also a
real tell. Also, something that I thought was heart wrenching
(20:11):
is that Yolanda claimed that Michael told her that he
never ever loved Wendy and that the whole wedding was
in fact a sham. In fact, the day before the wedding,
he asked Yolanda if she would help him murder his
new bride, cash in and then run off into the sunset. Horrible.
(20:31):
I mean, it's so wild. The longer and the deeper
you get into this everything that's going on, let's stop
here for another quick break. Going back to him representing himself.
(20:58):
I wonder if that was a strata g on Michael's
part to be able to cross examineing Orlanda, knowing that
they had this deep rooted relationship and that she loved
him and was so devoted to him that maybe while
on trial he could break her or maybe she would
change her testimony or something, or she would recant her
original statement out of love for Michael. Didn't someone once
(21:22):
say that if you're your own lawyer, you have a
fool for a client. It just seems like representing himself
was a catastrophic idea from the start. But never have
I seen ex lovers on going at it like that
in a courtroom. I mean, that's unprecedented that the fact
that that was even allowed is shocking, and that had happened,
It's just surprising. We've looked at a lot of very
(21:43):
complex murder cases, but never have we seen something like
ex lovers going at it in the courtroom like this.
This to me seems truly unprecedented. I didn't know who
she was. I didn't I hated the whole situation. I
hated that you left, and did you wish you was there?
(22:04):
I wish you would go away. It's one thing to
be in love and wish that the person you're in
love with loved you back, But wanting somebody to just
disappear is a real leap. You know, how do you
go from loving somebody to agreeing to murder somebody you don't?
That's not normal, and if that's the situation, then I
(22:27):
would say seek counseling first for you progress in that relationship,
and also to trust your gut. Not that we're dolling
out relationship advice in any way, but you know, we've
all had those moments where our gut says something is
not right here, And now I'm just going to go
back to your London for one second. Why would you
want to be in a relationship with somebody you know
(22:49):
is organizing a murder of someone they just married. What
entices you to want to love that person and have
them come back to you? I would imagine money. They
were both looking at a million dollar payout. So Yolanda
is a single mom. She thought maybe she would get
her guy back and get some portion of this money.
Probably set her up pretty nicely. Maybe, yeah, how do
(23:13):
you live with yourself? Not justifying it, but I would
imagine that was probably her motive, right, They each had
one million dollar insurance policies like what makes them think
that they're special and they're not going to do the
same thing on each other? That is true? You leave
them like you find them. Yeah. During the trial, Michael
tried to paint Yolanda as this jealous X who potentially,
(23:34):
in a fit of rage, actually killed Wendy herself. And
so not only was he involving his ex girlfriend in
this murder plot, but then when Push came to shop,
he was willing to throw her under the bus and
actually say she did it. What unfolded while he was
representing himself is that Yolanda wasn't the only X in
his life who came to court to trash Michael. In fact,
(23:58):
Michael has a history of mooching off of girlfriends and
getting anything and everything he can from the girls he's dated.
He had one girl come on onto the stand and
say she was giving Hills a month as like a stipend.
One other girl said she bought him his flashy new motorcycle,
which is oddly enough, one of the reasons when he
fell in love with the hot guy on the motorcycle.
(24:20):
Another girl said that she bought him a car. So
it's like he's a moocher. And if anything you don't
want coming out in court is how you take advantage
of all the girls you date. It's a pattern. That's
what it creates. That's what the prosecution was trying to do.
Is say that Michael had a pattern of taking advantage
of the woman that he was romantically Malpilus pattern. So
another interesting fact is that Michael acted like he loved Wendy,
(24:43):
and it seemed like he may have been driven by
greed and the desire to cash in on their life
insurance policies. And when in fact, his ex and alleged
co conspirator on the stand recounted the moment he told
her the truth and he said, and I quote to
calm down, that it was all a plan, that he
didn't love her, He loved me. He said he was
(25:06):
going to marry her. Then they were going to go
have an insurance policy and she was going to die
end quote. So Yorlando's story was drastically different than Michael's.
If you remember back when Michael originally talked to the
police in October of two thousand and two, during a
marathon long, fourteen hour investigation, he told police that Wendy
(25:27):
asked to extend their honeymoon, so they checked into the motel.
What he said was, they had sex, slept a little,
she fell asleep in the jacuzzi, and they checked out
at four am and headed home. They then had an
argument on the way home, and when they got there,
he walked into the apartment, leaving Wendy in the car.
He said when he walked back out five minutes later,
both she and the car were gone. And as police
were having this interrogation with Michael, he got more and
(25:50):
more upset and began to shut down. He at one
point refused to polygraph and also wouldn't let police officers
take pictures of the bruises on his arms. Further where
he wouldn't even give a DNA sample. And you know,
maybe that's because he was trying to evade police, but
also he was in there for fourteen hours with no lawyer,
answering a lot of their questions. That's a really long interrogation.
(26:13):
He must have either been incredibly confident that he could
evade their suspicion or is just really stupid. I'm gonna
guess he's really stupid, because, as we all know, prosecutors
finally charged Michael after watching him testify at the insurance
trial in two thousand five. On April, the jury found
(26:36):
Michael guilty of first degree premeditated murder for killing Wendy Chapaga.
He was sentenced to the mandatory sentence of life in
prison without the possibility of parole. Michael sat Stone faced
as the verdict was read. Wendy's mother dropped to her
knees crying. While she couldn't bring Wendy back to life,
she was relieved that Michael would be locked up for
(26:58):
the rest of his life. Following the criminal trial, Yolanda
avoided any charges as part of a plea deal. Wendy's
family was disappointed and later sued her in a civil trial.
The Tropagra family won the lawsuit and were awarded forty
four million dollars and amount Yolanda would never be able
to pay. In Wendy's mother passed away. Her family says
(27:25):
it was from a broken heart. She was buried wearing
a pendant with Wendy's picture in it. If you're enjoying
Crazy in Love, listen to seasons one and two of
the piked in Massacre, another Katie Studios production, and follow
us on Instagram at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love
(27:46):
is produced by Stephanie Laie Decker, Beth Greenwald, Chris Graves,
Lisa d Giovine, Jeff Shane, Tim Hamilton's and me Courtney
Armstrong Editing and sound designed by Jeff Twa additional editing
by Davy Cooper Wasser. Crazy in Love is a production
of I heart Radio and Katie Studios. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(28:08):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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