The following day, Stefaniak’s family launched an all-out search, blanketing social media with missing person fliers, as her brother flew to San Jose to meet with investigators. Panicked, she contacted Stefaniak’s relatives in Tampa. But even before she got to the airport, something seemed off – why hadn’t she heard from her friend all day? Her worst fears were confirmed when a gate agent told her that Stefaniak hadn’t boarded the plane. Jaime had planned to pick up Stefaniak after her flight and take her out for a birthday dinner, she told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Carla is the person that wakes up and opens her eyes and looks at her phone and literally looks at Instagram and WhatsApp,” Laura Jaime, her close friend and former roommate, said in an interview the Tampa Bay Times. 28 – her birthday – her friends and family started to worry. When Stefaniak failed to respond to text messages or post on social media on Nov. “I’m going to miss this place,” she wrote. 25, showed her sprawled next to an aquamarine-colored infinity pool. Her last post, tagged from Quepos, Costa Rica, on Nov. She loved to travel, enthusiastically documenting trips to Cuba, Mexico, Iceland and Switzerland on Instagram. Life is better when you laugh □ #tbt #happyĪ post shared by Carla Margarita on at 10:22am PDTĪ native of Venezuela who immigrated to the United States in 2000, Stefaniak spent 12 years living in Tampa before moving to the Miami area, where she worked at an insurance agency, according to the Miami Herald. Late Tuesday night, Stefaniak’s father was allowed to enter the morgue and view the body, the announcement posted to the “Finding Carla” Facebook page said. The man, Bismarck Espinosa Martinez, 32, had been staying in the apartment next door to hers. Walter Espinoza, director of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department, told reporters that police had also found stains resembling blood inside Stefaniak’s rental, and had arrested a security guard at the property who had given contradictory statements about her disappearance. The slain woman, whose body had been partially covered with plastic bags, appeared to have died of a blunt force wound to the head. It was the last time that her family would hear from her.Ĭosta Rican authorities announced on Tuesday that police dogs had discovered a body buried 200 feet toward the back of the property where Stefaniak had been staying, in a hilly and wooded suburb of San Jose. “It’s pretty sketchy here,” Stefaniak had written, saying that it was raining heavily and the power had gone out. that night, Burton got a text message from her sister-in-law, she said. 27, then returned their rental car and taken an Uber to a gated villa that she had found on Airbnb. Stefaniak had gone to Costa Rica for her 36th birthday, which was on November 28, the day authorities believe she was killed.ĭays after she disappeared, authorities found a partially decomposed body about 300 yards from the apartment complex where Stefaniak was staying in a province just outside the capital of San Jose, said Espinoza, the Costa Rican government spokesman.Burton told CBS News that Stefaniak had dropped her off at the airport on Nov. “This type of person, when they come to our country and stay in an irregular condition, makes it more difficult for us to track them and makes it more difficult for us to know where they’ve been and their movements because they are not traceable,” he said at a news conference. “The Villa Le Mas has been removed from the platform.”ĬNN reached out to Villa le Mas for comment but has not heard back.Īfter the suspect’s arrest, Walter Espinoza, a spokesman with Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department, said Espinosa Martinez had an “irregular migration condition.” We have also been in contact with Costa Rican and American law enforcement authorities, and we are standing by to support their investigation, as justice must be served quickly,” Airbnb said. “We reached out to provide support to them during this unimaginably difficult time. Family identifies body found in Costa Rica as missing US womanĪirbnb said in a statement that it was heartbroken for Stefaniak’s family.
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