Former Presidente Supermarket executive gets life for heinous murder of ex-wife’s lover

A former Presidente Supermarket executive convicted in March of kidnapping, torturing and killing his ex-wife’s lover will remain in prison for the rest of his life.

With the widow of murder victim Camilo Salazar and his family and friends listening intently from courtroom benches, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Miguel de la O on Monday afternoon read off a series of sentences for 69-year-old Manuel Marin’s three convictions that give him no chance at freedom.

For manslaughter with a weapon, 30 years. An additional 50 years for conspiracy to kidnap. And life in prison for kidnapping.

Before the sentencing, a montage of Salazar was shown on a video screen and his family members were able to address the court. With Marin seated at the defense table, handcuffed in a orange prison garb, Salazar’s widow Daisy Holcomb talked about her husband being taken away too soon, according to reporting from WPLG Channel 10.

“We didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” she said.

“No punishment I impose can make this right,” the judge told Holcomb and others.

Reached Tuesday, Marin’s attorney Jose Quinon said his client intends on appealing the case. But he’s, at least temporarily, been assigned an assistant public defender because he lacks the resources to pay for what is certain to be costly legal fees.

Marin, who fled South Florida after the crime, was found guilty of the heinous crime more than a decade after the body of his wife’s lover was found in a west Miami-Dade field tortured, disfigured and burned. Salazar had a lengthy 11-year affair with Marin’s wife-at-the-time Jenny Marin. Prosecutors had initially been seeking a second-degree murder charge.

Prosecutors contend — and the jury agreed — that though witnesses couldn’t place Marin at the murder scene, he was bent on revenge and was the mastermind of a plot carried out by a pair of Mixed Martial Arts fighters and a Latin Kings gang member. They say star witness Ariel “The Panther” Gandulla, and gang member Roberto Isaac kidnapped Salazar and that Marin met them in the west Dade field where he was killed. Gandulla, they say, left before the murder and later learned what happened.

Prosecutors, who used cellphone tower tracking to put Marin near the murder scene, also contend that a Marin-friend and Cuban Olympic wrestler named Alexis Vila Perdomo organized the events by cellphone from Las Vegas. After the murder, they say Marin quickly left the country and later became a fugitive.

After turning himself in to the FBI in Spain, Marin had spent the past five years in prison. Before he turned himself in, Jenny Marin testified, she met him at a rented home in Cuba with two of his children. Gandulla accepted a three-year prison sentence in exchange for his testimony. Issacs and Vila Perdomo were found guilty for taking part in the crime at earlier trials.