The bathroom in Room 3. (Source: OIJ)
Gruesome discovery
I asked them to open the door, and Lester opened it with a master key. I walked inside, braced for a disturbing scene but unprepared for the tragedy that awaited.
To the right was the bathroom, where the trash can had been knocked over and the toilet paper inside scattered all over the floor. To the left was a closet, and on the floor inside that was a shivering little brown dachshund.
The whole room came into view, and I froze in place. There was a woman’s body on the bed covered by a blood-stained white sheet. I could see only the hair of her head and one foot protruding from the sheet. The body was absolutely still.
There were large bloodstains on the mattress, and there were bloody sheets scattered around the tile floor, which was also smeared in red.
I backed out of the room, horrified and sickened, and closed the door. I asked someone to call 911, but Raquel already had.
Teodoro Herrera, shown in a widely distributed publicity photo from his days as an exotic dancer.
An odd question?
Diego told police that when he returned with Dr. Cedeño’s vodka drink at poolside, Teo wrapped up his chat with her, excused himself and went on his way.
All my staff knew that it was strictly forbidden to pursue personal relationships with guests, much less try to “hook up” with them. None of my staff was allowed to go into a guest’s room unless it was for cleaning, maintenance or another valid reason.
Teo was on even thinner ice, as he was no longer an employee, and wasn’t supposed to be anywhere outside Building 3 in the first place. If I had known he was by the pool having a friendly chat with a new guest, I would have been furious.
Diego said Luisa asked a bit of an odd question after Teo walked away: What does that guy do at the hotel, and is he gay or straight?
Diego apparently told Luisa what he knew about Teo’s current status at the hotel. As for his sexual orientation, Diego said he didn’t know, as he didn’t concern himself with other people’s personal lives.
Given what happened later, much has been made of Luisa’s question about Teo’s sexuality. Was she asking out of pure curiosity, just wanting to gossip with the bartender? Or did she have some personal interest in whether Teo was attracted to women? Maybe women like her?
Teodoro Herrera playing DJ during the pool party. (Source: Danilo Obando)
Pool party
The little pool party lasted from roughly 10 to midnight, but Danilo recalls that Teodoro was not constantly present during this time, especially after 11:30. Teo might have gone back to his room to use the bathroom, or maybe he went off to snort some cocaine in private, or who knows? But eventually Danilo and Luis Carlos shut down the music and went back inside.
Luis, seeing the dirty dishes from the chicken dinner in the kitchen, offered to wash them. Danilo told him not to worry, the maid was coming in the morning, she could wash them. But Luis Carlos washed them anyway.
Then Luis took the longish walk back up to his room, Room 7, one floor above María Luisa in Room 3 and three doors down from the two women in Room 10. But when he arrived at his room, he discovered that the power was out, so he went back outside to investigate. He recalls in a police interview that the time was about 1 a.m.
Teodoro, meanwhile, was having a busy night. Danilo remembers him coming back to the apartment about midnight in something of a hurry, wanting to pick up his phone, which he had left behind to provide music. Danilo had already shut down the music and saved Teo’s phone for him. Danilo handed over the phone and Teo went away.
Danilo recalls that Teo seemed a bit rushed, like there was some urgency for him to recover his phone quickly and then leave. Like he had important plans to be somewhere else at midnight on a Sunday?
A still from a security staff video shows Teodoro Herrera descending some stairs with two beers in hand, barefoot and shirtless, around 2 a.m. on Monday, July 20, 2020. (Source: OIJ)
Stolen beers in the night
La Mansion Inn was built on a ridge so steep that practically no two places were on the same level, so there were a lot of stairs. My apartment was at the very bottom of the complex, to the far west. To climb to the main levels of the hotel, we had to walk up several staircases, some of them tight spirals that my new knees and I found challenging.
But climb them we did, all the way to the where the swimming pool was, and also Rooms 1 through 6.
We were looking for Cristopher, but lo and behold, here comes Teodoro himself, barefoot and shirtless and holding an open can of beer in his hand. He walked out of a hallway at a place that was just three doors down from Room 3. Danilo sent a message to Cristopher saying we had found Teo, and the timestamp on this message was 2:17 a.m.
I grabbed the beer out of Teo’s hand, threw it over a fence and said, “Hijo de puta, ¿qué estás haciendo?” That means “Son of a bitch, what are you doing?”
He tried to say he wasn’t doing anything, but I was furious, shouting back at him, and he stopped talking and looked down at the ground. I told him he needed to go to bed immediately — and tomorrow he could find a new place to live.
Teo headed back to his room, with Danilo and I right behind him, and Cristopher brought up the rear.
My apartment and Teo’s room were in the same direction for most of the way. We walked with Teo until our paths parted, where he had to go one way and we had to go another. We didn’t see a need to walk him to his door like he was a child.
We returned to the welcome silence of our home, went to bed, and fell fast asleep through what was left of the night.
But in my worst nightmare, I couldn’t have imagined what awaited tomorrow.