Hours after a suspicious death, cops arrest man they say bragged about stabbing, torching

The same night and very near the same location where a Key Largo woman was found dead inside her smoldering home with wounds police call “suspicious,” another woman said her ex-boyfriend threatened to stab her and burn her house down.

The woman told police the incident happened in the parking lot of the bar where the deceased woman was last seen.

Eddy Lopez Jemot, 50, was arrested on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and burglary charges Monday. Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputies say that Saturday night he forcefully opened the driver’s side of his ex-girlfriend’s Blue Dodge van parked in front of the Key Largo Veterans of Foreign Wars post, a popular local bar.

The woman, whom FLKeysnews.com is not naming, told detectives that around 9:20 p.m., Jemot held a knife to her and said, “I am going to burn up your house so you know what it would be like to have nothing,” according to the arrest affidavit.

She also said Jemot threatened to “rip off her head.”

Deputy Becky Herrin, media relations officer for the Sheriff’s Office, would not comment when asked if detectives think the two cases may be related.

“Not going to talk more about the fire death at this time … sorry,” she said in an email.

The girlfriend told detectives she was able to push Jemot away from the van and drive off on U.S. 1 back to her house. Her children told her not to report the incident to the police for fear of reprisals from Jemot. But she decided to after not being able to sleep, fearing Jemot would inevitably come to her and her children’s home and harm them.

Detective Robert Dosh wrote in his report that Jemot’s girlfriend said her ex told her he “stabbed people before and burned houses down.” When Dosh asked what Jemot used to ignite the fires, she responded “gasoline.”

The ex-girlfriend described Jemot as “violent and short-tempered.”

The VFW where the incident took place was the last place Mary Bonneville, 70, was seen alive Saturday evening before firefighters found her dead around 9:40 p.m. inside her burning Ponce de Leon Boulevard home — located behind the VFW, where Bonneville was a regular, according to her friends. Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department firefighters discovered her body after putting out the flames.

Detectives say Bonneville had wounds to her body that appear not to have been caused by the fire, and they consider her death “suspicious.”

Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department Chief Don Bock said the cause of the blaze at Bonneville’s house is still under investigation by the state Fire Marshal.

This story was originally published October 24, 2017 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Hours after a suspicious death, cops arrest man they say bragged about stabbing, torching."