WARNING: This story contains details that might be disturbing to some.
The heartbroken widow of a 41-year-old mother-of-three from Toronto and a dialysis nurse at a west-end hospital spoke directly to the two men found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder and sexual assault in August before the duo were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Speaking slowly with his eldest daughter by his side from a witness box at Toronto’s Superior Court of Justice, Gerald Aquintey asked Yostin Murillo and David Beak why they killed his wife in such a brutal manner during a break-in at the family’s East York home in May 2018.
“Why? Why? Why did you do such a thing? Why couldn’t you just leave when you found out someone was home. Why did you have to brutally kill her, why Mr. Beak? Why Mr. Murillo?”
Aquintey returned home from work in the early morning hours of May 26 to find his wife, Rhoderie Estrada, whom he called “the architect” of the family, dead in the couple’s bedroom.
Estrada’s body was partially naked, her face unrecognizable and bloodied and a crowbar lay at the foot of the bed. The couple’s three young children were asleep in bedrooms down the hall.
The couple’s eldest daughter, Jazmine Aquintey, who was just 14 years old at the time, choked back tears as she recalled the night of her mother’s murder.
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“I remember the police bursting in and me yelling at the top of the lungs that we were upstairs,” she said.
Jazmine said it was only later when she spoke to her father hours later and asked, “Where’s mommy?” that he told her, “Mommy’s gone.”
Jazmine told the court she repeatedly thinks about someone breaking in before going to bed, explaining she’s been diagnosed with depression, PTSD and anxiety, having ended up in the emergency room more than five times since. She also had a lingering question as to why her mother was killed.
“Why, despite there being a double lock on the back door, the people went in anyway?”
In another moving victim impact statement, written by Solita Crispin, the patient care manager for the renal program at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, the effect of Estrada’s murder on her colleagues was addressed.
“As health-care workers, we encounter patients’ suffering, death and grief in our practice. The nature of Rhoderie’s death, however, remains too incomprehensible and unacceptable,” she wrote, describing her colleague, the team leader of the dialysis unit, as a compassionate and caring person.
Murillo and Beak were then given an opportunity to speak. Murillo made a brief apology for the suffering he has caused, but Beak said nothing before Justice Ian MacDonnell gave the reasons for his sentence.
MacDonnell ordered a judicial stay on the sexual assault conviction, explaining that based on the jury’s findings, Estrada was murdered while the defendants committed a sexual assault which constitutes first-degree murder.
He then spoke about the circumstances in which Estrada was murdered, calling it “deeply disturbing.”
“Estrada was attacked by two strangers in the middle of the night in the family home she had every reason to think was secure while her three young daughters slept,” MacDonnell said.
He called the brutality she was subjected to horrific and echoed what the Crown attorney had said during the trial.
“What happened to Ms. Estrada is the stuff of nightmares,” MacDonnell said.
“The defendants’ conduct has devastated a multitude of lives and much of that devastation may never be repaired.”
He said Estrada herself was a victim as was her husband, her children, her parents, her friends and her colleagues, not to mention the community as a whole.
“It undermines community perception of the family home as a place of safety and security,” MacDonnell said.
“Both defendants attempted to attribute the bludgeoning (of Ms. Estrada) to sudden panic while they sneaked around bedrooms looking for things to steal. They tried to characterize it as an afterthought on the part of Mr. Beak. The jury’s verdict was a clear and unequivocal rejection of those attempts.”
He said the jury’s verdict after five days of deliberations proved they were satisfied that “once the defendants saw Ms. Estrada in her nightgown, the break-in took a dark turn,” saying it was clear that both defendants actively participated in the killing.
“When she resisted the sexual assault, both bludgeoned her on her face and on her head with a crowbar, breaking all of her facial bones,” MacDonnell said, calling the violence of the attack “nothing short of shocking.”
Murillo and Beak, who were both arrested shortly after the murder, will get credit of one day for every day served in pre-trial custody.
After time served, they will both be eligible for parole in just under 22 years. They will also have to submit their DNA to the national databank.
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