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20 years

Suspect arrested in double murder had been implicated in multiple homicides since 1993

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Florentino Elizondo Ríos is no stranger to the law. (Photo courtesy of the Fuerza Publica)

Florentino Elizondo Ríos is no stranger to the law. (Photo courtesy of the Fuerza Publica)

October 20th, 2014 (InsideCostaRica.com) Police managed to corner and arrest the primary suspect in a double murder of two teenagers yesterday morning in the mountains of Paraíso de Sixaola, after tracking the suspect through the remote mountainside as he spent several days on the run.

 

Florentino Elizondo Ríos, 40, is the primary suspect in the murder of two teenagers, who investigators believe were killed because they discovered a remote marijuana plantation.  Two other suspects in the murders had already been taken into custody on Thursday night.

 

Elizondo is no stranger to the law.  In 1993, Elizondo shot and killed his boss at a hotel where he worked as a guard and caretaker.  The killing occurred after the victim discovered that Elizondo had taken the hotel’s boat – the only means of transportation to and from the hotel – for more than eight hours without permission.

 

Elizondo was arrested and charged with murder, but was released after someone posted his ¢25,000 bail.  Elizondo then fled the area and managed to avoid arrest for nearly five years before being arrested on July 8th, 1998, in Sixaola.

 

Judges sentenced Elizondo to 20 years in prison for the killing on October 1st, 1998.  He was freed from prison on August 28th, 2011 after serving 13 years.

 

Since his release, Elizondo has been linked to several other killings.

 

According to the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ), Elizondo and another suspect are suspected of sticking up a bus on July 26th, 2013, and killing the bus’s driver with two gunshots.  A passenger on the bus positively identified Elizondo, according to the OIJ.

 

Elizondo is also suspected in the stabbing death of a farmer in Pococí.  The motive in that crime is suspected to be robbery.  Elizondo had been working as a caretaker on an adjacent farm and fled the area after the killing.

 

According to authorities, Elizondo could also be linked to the disappearance of two other farmers in the area.

 

 

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  • prdatki

    Hi is the poster boy,of why the country needs the Death penalty.The death Penalty should cover corruption in Government and the Church.

  • NorthendFool

    The constitution needs a drastic overhaul considering it has been in place for hundreds of years and always failing the people. Yet no lawmaker will do this, this accept it and just go on with the stupidity.

  • Jayberto

    Northendfool.. at least you got your name right….CR’s Constitution dates from the revolution era, 1948 if memory serves. You obviously know nothing about this country and your mindless comment demonstrates this very well. As does your ‘proficiency’ with language.

    • TJ

      And yet the Constitution protects the pensions of all retired politicians and public officials who have stolen, defrauded or embezzled from the country. Don’t get me started on the part where it says “the man is the head of the household. period” Its antiquated beyond belief.

  • Maximiliano Herrera

    What a motherfucker ! Jail him and throw the key ! This monster should never be freed again !

  • Ken Morris

    I’m not sure that this case provides much of an indictment of the CR criminal justice system, since frankly the system appears to have done everything right.

    After the first murder, which on the surface appears to have been provoked by a squabble and wasn’t a cold-blooded killing, the cops caught the guy and the court set what seems to have been a high enough bail (about $5000 in today’s dollars) to force him to stand trial. How was the court supposed to know that the suspect had rich friends and was going to jump bail?

    Then, when he was finally caught, Elizondo was sentenced to 20 years and served 13. Frankly, this seems plenty of punishment for most murderers under the circumsatnces, since not many repeat the crime and even hardened criminals typically mellow with age. How were the authorities suppose to know that this guy was the exception and bound to continue killing?

    That Elizondo did continue killing, and more ruthlessly, is evident from the story. However, he was also apprehended in what appears to have been little over a year after his second documented murder. For a guy like him, who seems good at covering his tracks and hiding out, his fairly fast apprehension suggests some good police work.

    I don’t know what people expect from a criminal justice system, but even the best system can’t do much more against hardened thugs like Elizondo than CR’s did. If there is blame to be bestowed, it would seem to be best directed at an inadequate pre-trial investigation that failed to discover that Elizondo could make bail and then disappear, as well as later with the CR equivalent of the parole board, which failed to realize after 13 years in prison that he was not a fellow who should be let out. But pre-trial investigations and parole boards cost money.

    No doubt having executed Elizondo on the spot in 1993 would have saved the lives of subsequent innocent victims, but I fail to see how anyone could have foreseen this in 1993. And if the state starts executing everyone who gets in a squabble that results in the death of one of the parties, I fail to see how the system could be considered just.

    I think we just have to realize that no criminal justice system can be prepared for these rare but truly rotten thugs, and admit that under the circumstances CR’s did as good a job as we can expect from it.

    • SDPUS

      I have a problem knowing that bail was set at $5,000 for murdering a person. I know a person who was growing 25 marijuana plants in 2011. No evidence of sales, he was a consumer. OIJ faked his blood test results, where it came back negative for marijuana. Then the blood sample disappeared, and they could never match to see if it was indeed his blood. The Judge said because he did not have marijuana in his blood system, that he must have grown the marijuana for sale. This person was a gringo, who is an absolutely upstanding individual (Professor in USA). Had absolutely no criminal record in Costa Rica or in the USA (or anywhere else). He had his bail set at $250,000, because they deemed him a flight risk. Something is really wrong with that scenario!!!

      • Ken Morris

        Yeah, bail is a tough issue, but in theory it is supposed to be set at a level high enough to guarantee that the suspect will either remain in jail awaiting trial or not jump bail if it is posted. It therefore makes unfortunate legal sense to set bails higher for affluent foreigners, who can jump bail easier, than for low-income Ticos.

        In this case, the fellow was working as a security guard, and thus probably only earning around $300 a month, maybe $500 tops, in currency- and inflation-adjusted dollars. A $5000 bail was thus a year’s income for the fellow, or roughly equivalent to a $50,000 bail for the average gringo. Since the pre-trial investigation apparently failed to show that the guy could raise the bail or skip out on it (the weakness of the system at that point), the judge surely reasoned that the bail was high enough in his case.

        As for a $250,000 for a US pot smoker, I agree that it’s too high. But I don’t like the alternative of preventative detention with no bail and do understand that foreigners are a greater flight risk. Actually, any bail for a pot smoker seems to high, since I wish they weren’t arrested in the first place, but that’s another issue.

        • SDPUS

          I certainly understand your reasoning, except for basing bail on a persons income. Even a poor person can reach out to a wealthier friend. $5,000 is just too low of a number for someone who allegedly committed murder. I can’t think of any crime that would pose a greater probability of a person potentially fleeing, be it national or foreign born. The person I am describing also was going to pay the $250K, but after the courts found that out…they denied his bail anyways. And they kept him in preventeva for 6 months and even extended it another 6 months (1 year total), and they never even did anything more to further investigate the case. It was a total case of corruption, where they were extorting him all throughout the process. Even his own lawyers were part of it. He and his family lost their place in Costa Rica, as well as their long time residence in the states. He used around a dozen different lawyers, and all were playing games. The USA Embassy was familiar with him because of his works here even before any of this went down.This happened in 2011, and he just filed denuncias against 17 differrent government workers (private lawyers, public lawyers, investigators, prosecutors and judges) who falsified evidence and the entire process from beginning to end. A sad story. I hope he receives some vindication. Even the local media has ignored his requests to take this story public. In 4 years he has ammassed irrefutable evidence, but it is against some pretty powerful people, and Costa Rica continues to try and sweep it under the rug.

          • Ken Morris

            I might be beating a dead horse here, but the justification for bail is to insure that the suspect doesn’t flee. The serious of the crime for which the suspect is accused is only tangentially relevant, since presumably the more serious the crime the heavier the sentence and therefore the greater the incentive to flee. However, in the main it is a common mistake and miscarriage of justice to base the bail on the seriousness of the crime. It should be based on the defendant’s ability to pay. Otherwise, the poor always go directly to jail and stay there while the rich don’t, regardless of the offense.

            Don’t know about your pot guy. It sounds like he was extorted. No doubt this happens too, and isn’t right, but it is another thing. In the case of the murderer, the bail was probably appropriate, with the exception that no one knew the guy had friends with money, which there’s no reason for anyone to have known, since on the surface he was just a slug working as a security guard.

          • SDPUS

            Yes, I think we agree to disagree on the bail point. The amount bail is set at very much has to do with the seriousness of the crime. Bail must be proportional to the crime. You don’t stick someone in prison for stealing a pack of gum, and then have an irregular amount of bail placed on that person. There is a big difference between a crime that is non-violent and hurts no one but the “criminal” himself. Murder does not just affect the person who was killed. The most dangerous thing about pot, is getting caught with it. When a “wealthier” man is in a poor country, extorsion is a common variable that should be taken into account by judges. Otherwise they are not acting as a true check and balance to the system.

          • SDPUS

            The laws stipulate that the court is supposed to take the following factors into consideration when making bail:

            The nature and circumstances of the offense; weight of the evidence against the defendant; defendant’s family ties, length of residence in the community, employment history, financial resources, and mental condition; defendant’s past and present conduct (previous convictions and failures to appear); probability of public danger should the defendant be released; whether the defendant’s source of funds are linked to criminal activity; whether the defendant is already on release in another criminal proceeding, or on probation or parole; street value of any drugs involved in the criminal charge (the higher the street value, the higher the bail); probability of the defendant intimidating and endangering victims; and existence of probable cause to believe that the defendant committed a new crime while on pretrial release.

          • SDPUS

            And the marijuana case I just spoke of is an indictment of the Costa Rican Crimal Justice System: Institutional Corruption

          • SDPUS

            AND THE MEDIA HAS AN OBLIGATION TO PROPERLY INVESTIGATE THIS, OR ELSE THEY ARE JUST AS MUCH OF THE PROBLEM. THE MEDIA IS A PART OF THE SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES.

          • Ken Morris

            Even though we apparently agree to disagree that bail should be set according to the seriousness of the crime (I concede that the seriousness of the crime is a factor only insofar as it increases the flight risk), at least from the standpoint of the “probability of public danger should the defendant be released” (as you cite from the law), murder is one of the least serious of crimes.

            Most murders are crimes of passion (a squabble between an employee and boss is typical) and murderers are very unlikely to repeat the crime. True, the crime is serious for the victim and loved ones, but as a rule it’s not particularly serious from the standpoint of “public danger.” The fact that murder is treated harshly by criminal justice systems has actually long puzzled criminologists, since the harsh treatment doesn’t protect the public very much. Bang for the public buck, it’s better off treating thieves harshly, since those guys will continue stealing. Yet murder is invariably treated harshly. The motive seems to be vengeance, not public safety.

            Like murder, there are many other puzzlingly illogical aspects of criminal laws, marijuana being one of them. You might know better than I, but I think it’s illegal mainly because lawmakers didn’t like the people who initially used it–jazz musicians, blacks, revolutionary types, etc. This is not an uncommon motivation for laws. Polygamy was outlawed in the US not because people had much problem with it but because they wanted to suppress the early Mormons who practiced it.

            Trying to make rational sense out of a lot of this may be futile. The law you cite about bail makes rational sense to me, but I seriously doubt that it is applied consistently. The crimes that push people’s buttons usually I think have to be explained by factors outside of a rational criminal justice system.

    • Larry Worsham

      What’s not being discussed here is the fact that Costa Rica can only mandate sentences to a maximum of 30 years and even those qualify for early release. I can’t fault them for not having the death penalty and although I’m not adverse to this punishment I don’t think that option should be in the hands of any country with an already corrupt justice/political system.

      Any first degree murder conviction should mandate life in prison without the possibility of parol.

      • SDPUS

        I believe they can sentence people up to 50 years in Costa Rica.

  • turbooperator

    My family is guardedly happy that the cold blooded killer of my brother-in-law (the bus driver) has been apprehended. All our sentiments run with Sr. Herrera.

  • Andrew

    Probably be out on the street by this weekend….

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