For four years, police and prosecutors have said that Jesus Rodriguez killed his wife, burned her body and mixed her ashes with gravel, preventing investigators from ever recovering anything.

They have relied on a winding trail of circumstantial evidence they say leads straight to Rodriguez. And they're seeking the death penalty.

Now comes a new bizarre twist in the long-running murder case: The defense has introduced a witness who claims he saw the murder victim, Isabel Rodriguez, six months after her husband was arrested and charged with the crime.

The witness is a mail clerk who has signed a statement attesting to having seen Rodriguez at a local post office, Attorney G.P. Della Fera said Wednesday.

ATTORNEY DOUBTFUL Assistant State Attorney Abbe Rifkin said she will investigate, but is "skeptical" of the new witness' claims. And for good reason: The witness first told his story in 2002 to Rodriguez's sister who then relayed it to her brother's attorney.

The sister has already been involved in the case: she paid $750 to bond a man out of jail who later told investigators Rodriguez told him to check out his farm in West Miami-Dade to see what police might be doing there, Rifkin said.

"Between the defense and his family members, the fact that they've had a hand in procuring any witness makes me a little skeptical, " Rifkin said.

"If Isabel Rodriguez is alive, I will do the sprint over to the jail to make sure Mr. Rodriguez is released, " she said. "In good faith, I still believe Isabel Rodriguez is not alive."

Rifkin also wonders if the postal clerk might be confusing Rodriguez's wife with his girlfriend, who, coincidentally, is also named Isabel.

"They look very similar. . . . They're very beautiful women, " she said. "And his girlfriend was known to many people as his wife."

Della Fera said a defense investigator showed the postal clerk pictures of both women and he picked out Rodriguez's wife, not his girlfriend.

"The issue will come down to how well did this man know Mr. Rodriguez's wife, " he said.

Rifkin said it was odd the defense had suddenly listed the postal clerk, even though he first told Rodriguez's sister he had seen Isabel back in the fall of 2002.

Della Fera, who only recently took over the case from Andy Rier, said he just learned of the new witness. Rier declined to comment citing attorney-client privilege.

Isabel Rodriguez was first reported missing in November 2001. Investigators immediately focused on her husband - the couple was in the middle of a divorce when she disappeared and she had called police before saying he threatened to kill her. Rodriguez was arrested in April 2002.

ALLEGED MURDER PLOT Investigators believe Rodriguez killed his wife at or near their farm, burned her body there after telling all his employees to go home, then used a bulldozer to mix her ashes with gravel so police wouldn't be able to recover any evidence.

Rodriguez maintains that his wife is alive and has gone back to her native Honduras.

Prosecutors and Rodriguez's attorneys have twice picked juries in the case. Both trials ended in mistrials, but the second one went on for six months - interrupted by three hurricanes in 2005 - before a judge was forced to end it.

The case is now scheduled to go to trial in January before Circuit Judge Stanford Blake.