FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – With their mother dead and their father in jail, Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Spencer Multack gave temporary custody of the children to a paternal aunt Saturday at the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami.
A day before Father's Day, the children didn't know their father was accused of killing their mother. Relatives last saw Maribel Torres, 33, on Thanksgiving. Her sister, Mabel Montesino, said she was most concerned about her autistic 7-year-old nephew.
"My sister had already paid for her daughter's 10th birthday," Montesino said in tears about the abrupt disappearance. "My sister had already bought Christmas gifts."
The children's paternal grandfather reported their mother's disappearance to the Miami-Dade Police Department on April 23. He told officers that he was suspicious when his daughter's husband told him that she was pregnant and had left him for another man. Detectives said it turned out to be a lie.
Police said Maribel Torres was last seen at her Miami Lakes home in the 17300 block of Northwest 62nd Court. According to an arrest affidavit, Jimmy Torres, 36, told a friend that Maribel Torres didn't run away, but she didn't make it out alive from the home.
Jimmy Torres said they were arguing when he grabbed a metal rod and hit her on the head with it, causing her to collapse to the ground, the unidentified confidant told detectives, according to the police report.
The confidant also knew where Jimmy Torres had claimed to dispose of her body. Detectives found human remains Thursday inside a box in a canal along the 1500 block of Old Griffin Road in Dania Beach.
Jimmy Torres told the confidant that he put his wife's body in a box and dumped it in the canal, the report said.
The Broward County medical examiner was working to identify the woman's remains, but the finding was enough for detectives to arrest Jimmy Torres on a charge of second-degree murder with a weapon.
Multack issued a stay away order, preventing Jimmy Torres from being near his children.
Losing their father was the second tragedy that had befallen the Torres' children. The third tragedy: Now the couples' families were quarreling for custody. On Saturday afternoon, Multack decided to grant custody to Jimmy Torres' sister, but warned her during the emergency hearing that the custody was temporary. There will be another custody hearing on the matter Tuesday.
