[message alert dings]
[news theme music playing]
Search efforts continue today
for the missing UF student, Christian Aguilar.
[Stephanie]
explaining that Christian Aguilar,
a young student at the University of Florida
had gone missing.
I heard that the girlfriend
of Christian Aguilar, Erika Friman,
goes out to the University of Florida police department
with Pedro Bravo, a friend.
[Stephanie]
because they all went to the same school in Miami.
So, they're in the very same group of friends.
[foreboding music playing]
[detective grunts, sighs]
[Stephanie]
because Pedro's going through a lot,
and says that Christian's someone that he can count on,
talk about his feelings,
and Pedro starts bickering with Christian.
[Stephanie]
interrogations as well
with law enforcement,
and police start realizing how interconnected
Pedro, Erika, and Christian are.
And that she dated Pedro in high school.
[Randy]
and told him that she didn't want to have
a long distance relationship.
She decided to come to Gainesville,
um, she said that she enrolled at Santa Fe Community College.
At some point, Erika said
that she just happened to run into Pedro.
Didn't tell her, didn't say anything to Christian,
just showed up.
[Stephanie]
opened up a lease at Spyglass apartments,
and, uh, enrolled
at Santa Fe College.
And decides to forego his scholarship in Miami,
for the sake of following Erika, being close to Erika.
Pedro must feel so strongly about Erika,
and I don't know what to call it.
Love, more of a... [sighs]
a fixation, an obsession.
Pedro, Erika, and Christian,
are in a love triangle.
Pedro, very much still in love with Erika,
and of course, Christian,
you know, having that current relationship
with Erika as well,
and Erika being just in the middle of it all.
We're trying to understand the circumstances
behind why we think Christian's missing.
So, we get permission from Pedro to search his cell phone.
By using the information that's on Pedro's phone,
and the information that we got from his cell phone carrier,
I was able to actually start retracing his steps.
You know, starting to really contradict
what he's telling us.
It's very clear, based on the location data
that we got from the cell carrier,
uh, and from Pedro's cell phone
that he was at this Walmart.
It was almost good enough to put him in the parking lot.
I used the data to trace...
Pedro actually, eventually, going back to his house,
but just not the route that he said,
just not the story that he gave us, and...
interestingly, he goes home, he's there for a little bit,
and then he leaves his house again.
And he makes his way out to another major road,
in Gainesville, Archer Road,
and then his cell tower data
stops, it cuts off.
And so, all of his location tracking
from the carrier, stops.
Up until the next morning,
when he returned to his apartment.
Uh, the story that he's given Randy,
is that his phone dies
in the phone extraction.
And I'm looking at this file by file,
and I stumble upon this battery log
the battery log is showing
not only was his phone not dead,
I can see that he's charging it.
And I also find an app usage log.
And what was really interesting for us,
is that on the evening
that Christian was last seen and then disappears,
Pedro's phone shows
about a 48-minute usage of his flashlight app.
[Brian]
to protect light, from it's... essentially, its flash,
that's associated with the camera.
I was able to take that app usage
and couple it with the battery log.
By correlating the battery drain on the phone,
which, during that 24-hour period,
there was never another time
where the battery drained that significantly, other than,
roughly, between 11 p.m. and midnight, right?
So that's when we see the battery
being drained significantly.
And that battery drain time
matches up with the app usage time.
[Randy]
on for 45 minutes?
It's unusual.
[foreboding music playing]
[Randy]
saying that...
[clears throat] ...a body was discovered
in Levy County, at a hunting camp.
The person was wearing the same clothing of Christian.
[Stephanie]
in this rural area of Levy County.
If you want to go and hide a secret,
that wooded area in that place
is probably the perfect spot.
[Randy]
Out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there's nothing.
No light, no nothing at all.
It's in pitch-dark.
So, we believe that the reason that flashlight app
was on for 45 minutes,
was he was using that to, uh...
get rid of, uh, Christian's body.
[Brian]
police find an almost empty Gatorade bottle
that contained Gatorade, acetaminophen,
and diphenhydramine or Benadryl.
In the backseat floor of Pedro Bravo's car,
there are floor mats.
And on the floor mats, it's clear
that he has freshly applied large quantities of paint.
[Randy]
under a blacklight, in the floor rest,
that there was blood on the carpet
in the rear of the vehicle.
We were able to pull Walmart video from the parking lot,
uh, from where we...
At the same timeframe where the two phones were...
bouncing off the same tower in the parking lot.
And we were able to see Pedro Bravo's vehicle
pull into the parking lot,
sit for a period of time.
Uh, and then he pulled up
to the next row of parking places.
You can't see in the cars. Too long a distance
from the surveillance video,
but you can... you can make out the vehicle.
They both sit there for a long period of time.
Probably 60 to 90 minutes.
Pedro Bravo admitted to another inmate,
who we called during the trial,
is that after Christian Aguilar
kind of fell asleep or became very drowsy
from that, uh, cocktail of the poison he had given him,
that he, Pedro Bravo,
got into the backseat of the car,
took a tow strap,
essentially, the strap that one would
strap something down in a pickup truck.
Put it over the seat...
put it around Christian's neck,
braced Pedro Bravo's knees
against the back of Christian Aguilar's seat,
and leaned back as hard as he could,
cutting off his circulation in his airway, in his throat,
and murdered him in that parking lot.
[foreboding music playing]
[judge] You took his past, everything he had been,
you took his present, everything he was,
and you took his future,
everything that he would have been.
[Brian]
of every crime which he was charged,
including, uh, first-degree murder, kidnapping.
He was sentenced to multiple life sentences
consecutive to each other.
[Carlos]
that was the worst day in court.
That day, nobody won.
I didn't take Christian home that day.
And Pedro's family,
they didn't take Pedro Bravo home either.
Okay? Two families were destroyed.
'Cause I cannot say that
Pedro's family,
they are monsters or that they are bad people.
What their son did is wrong.
I hope he never did it.
Unfortunately, he did.
But he destroyed two families with that actions.