A man identified as, Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Arellano, tied a concrete block around his wife’s neck, before throwing her off a bridge. Elizabeth Pule was murdered by her husband after announcing to Rodolfo that she wanted a divorce.
Elizabeth, a medical assistant, had been living with her parents for just a week after the divorce and when she went out with colleagues after work on 15 April 2016, only for her to go missing after returning home.
Elizabeth’s mum, Juanita, reported her daughter missing. She’d found Elizabeth’s car abandoned outside, with the key still in the ignition and her handbag and mobile on the passenger seat. It was an obvious case of kidnap.
During their enquiries, officers went to Rodolfo’s home and were surprised he didn’t seem worried about his estranged wife’s disappearance.
He said he’d last seen Elizabeth two days earlier and had no idea where she might be.
Though, few hours earlier, a fisherman had reported hearing screams at around 3am, then witnessed someone falling from the Interstate 820 bridge into Lake Worth.
Elizabeth’s body was later recovered from the water, tied around her neck was a rope, which was attached to a 119-pound (8½ stone) block of concrete.
Dectectives would later trace the concrete to her estranged husband, Rodolfo, he was consequently arrested and charged with her kidnap and murder.
Elizabeth’s sister, Johanna Pule, gave an emotional statement.
She recalled having to buy a turtleneck for her deceased sister to wear, to cover the brutal rope marks around her neck, then standing next to Elizabeth’s coffin with Rodolfo before it was discovered he’d killed her.
“You knew what you did, yet you stood in front of her body crying with me,” she said to him in court.
“You told me the day of her burial that you wished it was you in there and how you wanted to just lay there with her.
That when you married her, you knew it would be till death do you part, but didn’t know that it would happen so soon. You’re a coward.”
Rodolfo was officially sentenced to serve life behind bars without the chance of parole, though he offered no explanation or apology for his actions.
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