KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Osceola County deputies began searching for a woman who was abducted and killed after three people were accused of mistaking her as the target of an alleged murder-for-hire plot just hours after she didn’t come home from work last week, records show.
A missing person report details the timeline of events while deputies searched for Janice Marie Zengotita-Torres, 42, whose body was found last week in Ormond Beach.
According to investigators, Ishnar Lopez-Ramos, 35, allegedly hired Glorianmarie Quinones-Montes, 22, and Alexis Ramos-Rivera, 22, to kill a woman in a relationship with a man Lopez-Ramos loved.
The trio mistook Zengotita-Torres as their intended target and killed her, according to officials with the Sheriff’s Office.
Zengotita-Torres’ husband first called the Sheriff’s Office Jan. 8 at 6:45 a.m. to report her missing, the report says.
She worked at a Ross on John Young Parkway in Kissimmee, which a surveillance video showed her leaving around 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 7.
Sometime after that, Quinones-Montes and Ramos-Rivera abducted Zengotita-Torres, according to Osceola County Sheriff Russ Gibson.
The pair allegedly mistook Zengotita-Torres for the target, but even after realizing she was the wrong person, they bound her and suffocated her with garbage bags, Gibson said.
According to an arrest affidavit, Quinones-Montes and Ramos-Rivera battered Zengotita-Torres in a vehicle outside her home before going to a Chase bank to withdraw money from the victim's account.
They then took her to to an apartment complex on Millenia Waters Drive, where they bound and gagged her in her vehicle, the affidavit said.
Her body was found in Ormond Beach Jan. 8 in the morning.
All three suspects gave full confessions and face charges of premeditated first-degree murder, Gibson said.
"I get emotional because it just touches me so deeply that one of our citizens was killed in such a manner over a mistaken identification, and in the end it appears to be a lovers' triangle," he said. "Wow."
The three suspects lived in an apartment at Century Millenia apartments after moving to Central Florida in December, arrest records show.
The property management company for Century Millenia sent out a vague notice to residents at the complex after law enforcement officers served a search warrant on the trio's apartment Friday.
"It has been reported to management that an incident involving crime occurred off property, however, but as the result of a resident being involved in the incident, and our property being searched today, we feel that it is our duty to inform you of the incident," the notice said.
Zengotita-Torres moved to Osceola County from Puerto Rico with her 14-year-old-son, husband and father about a year ago, investigators said.
The three people charged in her death all came to Central Florida from Puerto Rico in late December, deputies said.
As she was being led from the Sheriff's Office to a cruiser that would take her to jail, Quinones-Montes cried and denied she was involved.
"I didn't do anything," she said.
Each faced a judge Saturday morning, who denied bail to all three after finding probable cause.
Cox Media Group
