Ex-MMA fighter Alexis Vila gets 15 years for arranging Miami kidnapping, torture murder
Miami’s Alexis Vila Perdomo, a former Cuban wrestling champ and Olympic medalist, went to prison but turned his life around and became a rising mixed martial-arts fighter nicknamed The Exorcist.
But Vila is going back to prison — this time for 15 years.
A Miami-Dade judge on Tuesday sentenced Vila, 48, for helping arrange a kidnapping and gruesome torture murder that prosecutors say was done at the behest of wealthy South Florida supermarket magnate Manuel Marin.
“He got fame and fortune as a young person. He was famous in the 3-0-5. People knew who he was,” Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Gail Levine told the judge during Vila’s sentencing hearing. “Now, he sits here as who he is — someone who assisted in a murder.”
Vila won’t be going to prison alone.
His associate, Roberto Isaac, 63, the muscle who carried out the murder of Camilo Salazar in June 2011, got two life sentences. “I deserve what’s coming to me,” Isaac told the court.
Circuit Judge Miguel de la O wasted no time imposing the sentence for second-degree murder, conspiracy and kidnapping. The judge called him a “cold-blooded mercenary.”
“You did this solely for money,” de la O said.
The sentence came one month after jurors quickly convicted Isaac and Vila in a sensational murder trial replete with story lines of greed, lust and revenge.
The victim was Camilo Salazar, a businessman and interior decorator from Coconut Grove and father of two. The motive for the murder, prosecutors say, was that he was having a long-running affair with Marin’s wife, Jenny Marin.
Prosecutors say the affair enraged Manuel Marin, a former executive with the Presidente Supermarket chain who owned several locations. An avid fight fan, Marin recruited Vila, whom he had helped defect from from Cuba.
At trial, jurors heard that Vila turned to Isaac, an ex-con with a long criminal history who also hung around local MMA circles.
Another ex-pro MMA fighter, Ariel Gandulla, also testified that he was duped into helping Isaac whisk Salazar off a Miami street. Gandulla implicated Vila — who was in Las Vegas training for a fight during the kidnapping — as being instrumental in arranging “the job” for Marin by phone.
The men held Salazar hostage for hours as they waited to deliver him to Marin in a warehouse district in Broward County.
Gandulla also identified Marin as the man who took the hostage into his SUV, before driving off with Isaac to kill their victim.
Salazar’s body was discovered in an isolated West Miami-Dade field. He had been beaten viciously, possibly with a golf club, his throat slit, his genitals torched.
Prosecutors relied on detailed phone records that placed Isaac and Marin at the murder scene, and Vila exchanging calls from Las Vegas, where he was training for a fight.
Marin goes to trial next year. The sentences for Vila and Isaac were not unexpected — each got the max allowed by law.
But Tuesday’s sentencing hearing still unfolded with some twists.
Both defense lawyers, Michael Walsh and Ted Mastos, blamed the dead man for causing his own demise by cheating with another man’s wife.
“He had no problem being a home wrecker. He was destroying a family,” Walsh said of Salazar.
Levine, the prosecutor, was so incensed that she turned her back to the defense lawyers as they spoke.
Defense lawyers in the case also revealed that Isaac is willing to fall on his sword and testify that Vila knew nothing about the murder plan.
In an affidavit filed to the court, Isaac admitted to talking part in the kidnapping, although he claimed he thought Marin wanted to collect money from Salazar. “At no time did Alexis ever know what I was planning to do for Marin,” Isaac wrote in his affidavit.
Vila’s defense attorney, Ted Mastos, asked for a new trial.
“At considerable peril to himself, this man has had the courage to step up and say, ‘Alexis, had nothing to do with this,’” Mastos said.
Judge de la O declined to grant a new trial. Prosecutor Levine said Isaac’s affidavit means nothing. “Alexis Vila knew the entire time what he did,” she said.
