Police name homeless man as prime suspect in death of two Hialeah women
Police believe a homeless man, known as “El Bizco” because of a lazy left eye, killed his ex-girlfriend in a fit of rage, then killed another woman living next door because she may have witnessed the crime.
They can’t place Adrian Leyva, 43, at the crime scene, and he hasn’t been seen since the day before the double murder shook the neighborhood. But police believe they’ve gathered enough information to charge him.
“They were both violently killed,” Hialeah Police Lt. Carl Zogby said Thursday. “We believe we have no doubt it was this guy. Not a smoking gun. We don’t have him at the scene when the crime occurred. But we have enough statements and witnesses elsewhere.”
On Monday, after receiving a call from worried family members, police raced to a home at 982 E. 23rd St. and found the bodies of Tina Stephanie Gutierrez, 32, and Martha Gomez Perdomo, 81. They were found in separate efficiencies at the same address.
Zogby said police are working under the assumption that Perdomo wandered into the crime scene and was killed because she witnessed Gutierrez’s murder.
A family member had broken into the home and initially discovered the bodies. Police said Gutierrez and Leyva were involved in a relationship that had gone sour.
“Apparently they were in a relationship that was dissolving,” Zogby said. “There may have been jealousy on his part.”
Neighbors of the murdered women told Miami Herald news partner CBS4 that panicked family members called police after making several phone calls that weren’t answered, then entered the home and discovered the bodies.
“She called her, she called her, nothing. Knocked on the door, nothing. The air conditioner was still on. The lights were on. That’s when she asked my neighbor for a hammer and screwdriver to open the door, and when she does there laid her mom,” neighbor Maria Barquin told CBS4.
By Thursday police had labeled Leyva — who was arrested by Miami-Dade police and imprisoned in 2002 on a false imprisonment charge — as “the prime suspect.”
Though he hasn’t been seen since before the murders, police said he’s mostly homeless and can usually be spotted around the eastern part of Hialeah or in Allapattah sleeping in car repair shops where he finds work. He is also known to spend time in cafeterias in those neighborhoods. Police are withholding details of the murder that only Leyva would know.
Just under six-feet tall, weighing about 230 pounds with sandy dark short hair, Leyva has an outstanding feature that makes him recogizable: A partially closed left eye, for which he was nicknamed “El Bizco,” or lazy eye.
Anyone with information or might know Leyva’s whereabouts should call Hialeah police at 305-687-2525, or Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.
This story was originally published August 11, 2015 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Police name homeless man as prime suspect in death of two Hialeah women."