Jealous teenager murdered best friend and dumped body in shallow grave in love triangle row over ex-girlfriend

The victim: Christian Aguilar was an 18-year-old student when he was killed and buried in a remote forest. He was the boyfriend of Erika Friman, who he studied with at a college in Florida

Two hunters were out looking for sweet-smelling jasmine vines in a pine forest. Instead of the scent of flowers, a putrid stench led them to a small clearing. There they saw a smooth, round bone sticking up from the earth. They recoiled in horror as they realised it was a human skull.
It was the remains of missing 18-year-old Christian Aguilar, who’d been dumped in a shallow grave in Levy County, Florida.

The student had been murdered because his killer, Pedro Bravo was infatuated with Christian’s girlfriend. It was a love triangle that had ended very badly.
Pedro, then 18, and Christian had gone to Doral Academy together, a high school in Miami. That’s where Pedro met Erika Friman, the beautiful girl he fell madly in love with and they dated for three years.
Pedro had been Erika’s first boyfriend and he wanted to be her last, but his feelings were much stronger than hers. When Erika ended things, she admitted she felt relief, while Pedro’s world came crashing down.
Erika and Christian moved away to study at the same college. Pedro was left behind, but his obsession with Erika was as strong as ever. He changed his education plans and followed her. But when he arrived, Pedro discovered his ex-girlfriend had moved on and was dating his friend Christian.

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The girlfriend: Beautiful Erika Friman split up with her first love, Pedro Bravo, and started a relationship with his pal Christian

Suicidal

Pedro was devastated and made sure everyone knew it. He talked about being depressed and suicidal, and wrote in his journals about winning Erika back.
Christian knew Pedro was angry and did his best to avoid him. He turned down several invitations to see him – but eventually he gave in. Erika was crushed that her ex was suffering and Christian wanted to smooth things over. It was a fatal mistake.
On September 20, 2012, Pedro drove Christian in his SUV to get something to eat, and they stopped in a shop to buy a Kanye West CD. Then Pedro parked up in Walmart’s car park. Later, Pedro claimed they’d argued and he’d beaten his friend up, but left him alive. In fact, he’d drugged Christian’s bottled drink before strangling him to death. It’s estimated it would have taken him just 13 minutes to kill his friend.
With Christian dead, he needed to get rid of the body. He used his iPhone to activate Siri – the voice activated personal assistant – and asked how to ‘hide’ a body. It replied ‘swamps, reservoirs and dumps’. Pedro drove an hour to the remote forest in Levy County, dug a swallow grave and dumped his love rival’s body.

Chilling: Bravo asked Siri where to bury his roommate's body

The next day, he reported his victim missing. Straight away he aroused suspicion with his changing story. At first he admitted they’d argued then later said it was physical. Christian’s family were frantic at his disappearance, and so was Erika. Then, 22 days later, hunters found his partly buried body, bound with duct tape after smelling ‘something dead’. When Christian’s blood was found in Pedro’s car, and his backpack stuffed in his wardrobe, Pedro was charged with murder.
In August 2014, the trial began at Alachua County Criminal Justice Centre in Florida. Pedro denied kidnapping and murdering his friend.
Experts claimed they could trace Christian and Pedro’s phones to Walmart at the time of the murder – and then just Pedro’s as it moved in the direction of the dump site.

CCTV: Pedro was caught on camera buying a shovel with cash, which the prosecution claimed he used to bury Christian

Jealousy

The prosecution said the murder had been driven by jealousy. They discovered internet searches made by Pedro that included how to drug someone and dispose of a body, and CCTV showed him purchasing a shovel, duct tape and intoxicating over-the-counter drugs.
His journals explained how he’d changed his plans to follow Erika from Miami, and they also mentioned his anger at Christian.
Pedro insisted he’d left Christian alive on the ground. He denied getting into the back seat of the car and throttling him with a belt from behind.
Erika testified that Christian was the ‘love of her life’, and said she hadn’t told Pedro about dating him because she knew it would upset her ex.
‘I lied to him because he was at a very sensitive point in his life,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to throw him over the edge and say, “By the way, I’m dating a mutual friend of ours”.’ But Pedro found out and it had triggered the fatal chain of events.

The murderer: Pedro Bravo, then 18, couldn’t come to terms with Erika ending their relationship. Distraught, he tracked her down to her new college, only to find she was now dating his old friend, Christian. Overwhelmed by jealous rage, Pedro was set on the road to murder

 After two weeks, the jury found Pedro guilty of first-degree murder.
‘This is your day of reckoning,’ said Judge James Colaw to Pedro, now 20. ‘You took everything from Christian Aguilar. You took his past. You took his future. You took it all from him when you took his life.’
Christian’s dad Carlos told the court, ‘I cannot tell you the quantity of pain that we have been going through.’
Pedro was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole. He was given an additional 46 years for other charges, including false imprisonment, poisoning, two counts of lying to the police and an improper transportation of human remains. Pedro still insisted he was innocent.
‘It doesn’t matter what anyone says,’he calmly insisted. ‘I know in my heart what I did. I did not kill my friend.’
Jealousy and obsession triggered a feud that ended one young man’s life.