A Puerto Rican jury on Friday night found former professional boxer Félix Verdejo Sánchez guilty of kidnapping resulting in the death of a pregnant woman who disappeared on April 29, 2021, shortly after her family said she was supposed to meet the former Olympic boxer to share that she was expecting his child, according to court filings.
The family of Keishla Rodríguez, 27, reported her missing after she did not show up to work. Two days later, authorities recovered her body in a lagoon in San Juan.
A jury of three women and nine men took part in the 30-year-old boxer’s nearly one-month trial held at the U.S. District Court of Puerto Rico. Verdejo was also found guilty of the death of an unborn child. The jury, which deliberated for three days, could not reach a unanimous verdict for a charge of carjacking that resulted in the death of a person and another charge of possession of a weapon during a violent crime.
Gabriela Cintrón, one of Verdejo’s lawyers, declined to comment when reached by The Washington Post on Friday evening.
The prosecution lauded Verdejo’s conviction.
“We stand firmly with the family of Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz and all those in the community who sought justice for this senseless, cruel, and heinous act of premeditated and cold-blooded violence against Keishla and her unborn child,” U.S. Attorney Stephen Muldrow said in a news release.
Verdejo’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 3, according to court filings. He faced a maximum sentence of life in prison for the four felonies he was originally charged with.
The Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día reported from inside the courtroom that Verdejo remained expressionless as the jury’s verdict was read, while Rodríguez’s family hugged and cried.
“May he live the rest of his life thinking about what he did to my daughter,” Rodríguez’s father, Tony Rodríguez, told Telemundo Puerto Rico outside the courthouse.
The defense presented nine witnesses including some of Verdejo’s former partners, his ex-coach and sister, who described him as a nonviolent and “excellent” person, Telemundo Puerto Rico reported.
Verdejo, who had denied wrongdoing, was arrested by the FBI and charged on May 2, 2021. Authorities said the boxer punched Rodríguez, who was nearly two months pregnant, drugged her and then threw her off a bridge. An autopsy revealed Rodríguez died of drowning after being injected with fentanyl and xylazine, a drug used to sedate animals, a forensic pathologist testified in court.
Rodríguez’s case sparked protests in Puerto Rico and an avalanche of social media posts denouncing violence against women, which remained so rampant on the island that in January 2021, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi (D) declared a state of emergency over the issue. In 2021, 53 women and girls were killed because of their gender, according to the Observatory of Gender Equality of Puerto Rico. The year prior, the organization recorded 60 such deaths.
Verdejo, who shared a house with another woman, had kept in touch with Rodríguez since they met in middle school, her parents told El Nuevo Día. She worked at a pet grooming business and owned two cats and two dogs, according to her mother, Keila Ortiz Rivera. She loved animals and whenever she was not at work, she could usually be found rescuing and leaving food for stray animals.
In one of the most vivid moments of the trial, Luis Antonio Cádiz Martínez, whom Verdejo was accused of hiring to help in the crime, took the stand to recount how the duo planned the crime, El Nuevo Día reported. Martínez last year pleaded guilty to carjacking resulting in the death of a person and an unborn child. His sentencing is scheduled for August.
Cádiz Martínez testified that on the night of April 28, 2021, they planned to use pieces of wire to restrain Rodríguez, El Nuevo Día reported. He said he also found a cement block nearby that they would use to weigh the body down in the water.
The next day, Cádiz Martínez told the court, the former boxer picked him up early in the morning before driving to Rodríguez’s home. Rodríguez, who arrived at the meeting point in her Kia Forte, got inside Verdejo’s car and showed him her positive pregnancy test, Cádiz Martínez said in court.
Cádiz Martínez said he grabbed her by the hair before Verdejo punched her in the jaw. Then, Cádiz Martínez added, Verdejo drugged the woman using a syringe. Later, both men drove to the Teodoro Moscoso Bridge in separate cars, according to court records.
Both men tied Rodríguez’s limbs to the block of cement and threw her body over the bridge, according to court documents.
Verdejo, who turned pro in 2012, held a record of 27 wins and two losses with 17 knockouts, ESPN reported. Verdejo also represented Puerto Rico in the 2012 Olympics.
