Roberto Wagner Fernandes

The case was stalled until 2018, when an unrelated murder case involving a Cuban national was prosecuted in his home country, setting a precedent that could allow detectives to resume the case. In 2020, with help from the Brazilian Federal Police, authorities exhumed Fernandes' grave and conducted tests to determine whether they were really his. The break came on August 31, 2021, when the Sheriff of Broward County, Gregory Tony, announced in a press conference that Fernandes has been officially identified as the killer of the three women in Miami, and that he indeed had perished in the plane crash. Since his identification, authorities in both the United States and Brazil have started investigating Fernandes' past, as they consider it likely that he had killed more than what he has currently been connected to.

In 2011, fingerprints from Fernandes were matched to all three crime scenes, prompting investigators to travel to Brazil in hopes to talk to him. However, they were then informed that he had died in an aviation accident back in 2005. The American investigators had some reservations, as they speculated he might have faked his own death, but at the time, they were unable to obtain permission to exhume his remains.

On December 13, 2005, Fernandes was flying a Cessna 310 en route to Argentina, when he lost control and crashed in Misiones Department, Paraguay. He died instantly, and his remains were then buried in his native city.

Shortly after Good's body was recovered, Fernandes was identified as a suspect in her murder. Before he could be arrested, however, he fled back to Brazil, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. Over the next five years, Fernandes was named as a suspect in other violent crimes against prostitutes in his native country, including a 2003 rape, but was never arrested.

On June 24, 2000, two motorists from Boca Raton were travelling along the Flamingo Road near Cooper City when they came across a suitcase by the roadside. Once they opened it, they found the nude body of a woman inside it. The body was sent for autopsy, and two days later, the coroner identified her as 35-year-old Kim Dietz-Livesey, a prostitute with a record for alcohol and drug abuse who had been arrested on June 7 for prostitution. Her death came as a shock to her friends from Alcoholics Anonymous and a biker enthusiast group. In an effort to generate leads on the case, police sought assistance from the public, but nothing substantial came of it and the case went cold.

On August 9, 2000, passers-by found a duffel bag discarded by the road near Dania Beach. In it, they found the body of prostitute Sia Demas, who had been strangled to death. On August 30, 2001, the body of another prostitute rife with stab wounds, Jessica Good, was found floating in the Biscayne Bay. According to her boyfriend, she had gone to meet a "light-skinned Hispanic man", but never came back.

On the early morning of November 18, 1996, neighbors of a residential building in Londrina, Brazil were disturbed by a domestic dispute coming from one of the apartments, which ended after at least six shots were fired. After notifying the police that the man had fled in his car together with his 5-year-old daughter, officers soon managed to arrest him. The accused was Roberto Wagner Fernandes, a 31-year-old licensed pilot, who had shot his wife, 27-year-old teacher Danyelle Amaral Bouças Fernandes, with a Taurus TCP 738. She was driven to the hospital, but died of her injuries shortly afterwards.

Following the verdict, it was alleged that Bouças' family members were so enraged by the outcome that they hired a hitman to kill Fernandes. Supposedly fearing for his life and wanting to leave the past behind, Fernandes fled to the United States, where he settled in Miami, Florida. In the period between 1996 and 1999, he worked as a bus driver for a touring company and as a flight attendant at the Miami International Airport. During this time, he continued to use prostitution services regularly.

Roberto Wagner Fernandes (April 26, 1965 – December 13, 2005) was a Brazilian serial killer and rapist who was posthumously linked to the murders of three prostitutes in Miami, Florida from 2000 to 2001. Fernandes, who had been acquitted of murder in the 1996 shooting of his wife, died in a plane crash in Paraguay before he could be arrested for his crimes, and since his identification, investigators in both the United States and Brazil have said that he might have been responsible for other murders.