Jealous boyfriend strangled love rival with shoestring and dumped naked body after he slept with his girlfriend
Cuckolded boyfriend murders girlfriend's lover and dumps naked body
A CHEATED lover afflicted with a horrific facial defect has been jailed for life for the shoelace strangling murder of a love rival.
A shocked court was told Jose Torres was so enraged when he discovered his girlfriend had been having sex with another man, he persuaded her to help entrap and kill him.
Torres, who has been jailed for life plus five years, admitted he used a shoelace to strangle James Watrous until he was dead.
He and lover Jennifer Smedley, who was jailed for five years for manslaughter, took Watrous out in a car to a Denny’s restaurant in Florida.
During the trip, he was butchered in cold blood with the lace wrapped around his throat.
The pair then drove up and down a main highway looking for a suitable place to ditch the body.
That place soon turned out to be woodland near Casselberry.
News 6 reports Torres confessed to the crime.
He told detectives he used a shoestring to strangle the victim in a jealous rage, after learning Smedley, who was his live-in girlfriend, was sleeping with Watrous.
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The dead man’s daughters were in court to give their impact statements with one of them actually forgiving the pair.
But the other was not so charitable.
"It just sickens me that my dad cared so much for her.
He would have done anything for this woman and here she sits stone faced, acting like she doesn't care," Watrous' daughter, Anna Ward, said in court fighting back tears.
Detectives said the couple drove to Tampa and back, looking for a place to dump his body. Torres lead investigators to the body in a wooded area in Casselberry.
Ms Ward added: "I just hope one day you will learn what you took from this world. You took my dad."
Another daughter, Jessica Watrous said: "I lost my best friend that I talked to everyday and he is no longer with us because of your choices.
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