BONUS: Wading in the Water (Buried in the Backyard)

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Hi, Snap listeners.

We are bringing you a special bonus episode today from Oxygen's hit series Buried in the Backyard.

You can also watch full episodes live or on demand on the free oxygen app or on Peacock by clicking the link in our description.

Enjoy.

A high-powered lawyer tries to balance her family and her career.

She loved those girls.

She wanted great things for them and worried about them like if they were her own children.

After making partner, her goal and the next step was to be a judge.

But when she disappears,

she's usually the first one in the office every day.

They started thinking, you know, something's wrong here.

This is not good.

Lucy would never not show up.

The possibilities are frightening.

Was it a home invasion robbery or even possibly a carjacking?

We are looking for people that may have heard screams, gunshots, a cry for help.

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Principal law partner was subject of a significant criminal Ponzi scheme investigation.

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An evil person didn't get his way.

Plantation Florida is built on Everglade wetlands drained by developers to create what they called the city of the future.

The region's watery past is ever-present in the series of managed canals that snake through the community's lush backyards.

Plantation is an upper-scale middle-class area.

The houses are larger.

They actually have, you know, maybe a half an acre of land.

South Florida as a whole is built on swampland.

And so it is not at all uncommon to have your backyard abuts a canal.

These canals are part of our everyday life.

They're everywhere.

Early one Friday morning, a maintenance worker is checking the pump station on a canal that runs through the backyards of several homes.

He went out to do his morning review and site maintenance to make sure that the water is flowing through the grates and going out towards the Everglades.

That's when the worker notices something obstructing one of the grades.

Normally, it's just weeds, trash, things of that nature that will clog up the grating system.

He noticed that it was something unusual and went to inspect it.

He at first thought it was a mannequin.

He had found mannequins floating there before that the clothing stores nearby had discarded in the canals as trash.

As he tried to clear the area,

he realized that this is not a mannequin.

This was, in fact, a human body.

The worker immediately shuts down the pump and calls 911.

When I arrive at the canal, I'm brought down to a landing, which was the best location to visually observe the body in the water.

It was a white female.

She had brown hair.

She was wearing a, it was like a flowery colored blouse, dress pants, slacks.

She had no shoes on.

In plantation, you don't have a huge crime rate and when something happens of this nature, it's almost always a big deal because it's an extremely unusual discovery for that area.

Obviously, it is the number one burning question: who is this person

buried in this backyard canal?

South Florida's beautiful beaches attract sun worshipers from around the world.

But that's not why Melissa Lewis came here.

After earning her law degree, she saw an opportunity in the Sunshine State's rapidly growing legal profession.

Missy liked to help people,

so she went into employment law.

Missy was working at Rostein Rosenfeld Adler with Deborah, her best friend.

Melissa was a very high-energy, motivated person.

If she set her

mind towards something, she accomplished the goal.

39-year-old Melissa charts an ambitious course at Rothstein, Rosenfeld, and Adler, and her efforts are rewarded.

She was the first woman.

to make a partnership, which was kind of a big deal.

It was life-changing for her.

she was very proud of that

and after making partner her goal and the next step was to be a judge

she was just a very giving fun loving person

missy was an advocate for victims of domestic violence she would donate things for women in distress

I was going through my divorce.

I hadn't left my ex-husband for many years because I was worried of what he might do to me and the children.

And Melissa was there for me.

My children loved her

because I didn't have sisters.

She was like an aunt to them.

She had Deborah, and she had our family, her dogs, her career.

She had the life.

She was loving it.

In her professional life, Melissa is all business, known for being punctual and prepared.

So when she doesn't arrive for a morning meeting on March 6, 2008,

her coworkers immediately become concerned.

I got to work and Melissa's assistant comes to me.

She's like, Do you know where Melissa is?

I said, She's not here.

She's like, No.

She's usually the first one in the office every day.

I'm calling her and texting her, and and

she didn't answer.

I started thinking, well, something's wrong here.

So I called her sister.

Lissy would never not show up to something that she's expected to

be there.

You just get that unsettling feeling,

this is not good.

So then I called one of the police officers that I knew in Plantation and I said, hey, could you do me a favor?

You know, Melissa seems to be kind of missing.

Can you drive by her house?

Make sure she's okay.

Unable to shake their feelings of dread, Deborah and Carrie meet the officer at Melissa's house.

We walk in and just you know looking around, calling her name.

Melissa's dogs were there and they were really hyper and

Carrie's like you know she would never leave the dogs like this.

Obviously you start looking closer and at every little thing at that point.

And then when we got to the garage,

her car's not in the garage.

And there was yellow stuff kind of sprayed all over the garage door, on the inside of the garage, all over the garage door.

And the officer was like okay nobody touch anything

and i'm gonna look i said what what is this and the officer told me that's pepper spray

it was all over the garage

and then i looked down literally right under my feet i look down

and it's a button off of her suit

I just looked at the officer and I just

it's like confirmation something's gone really really wrong

We're looking for people that may have heard screams, gunshots, cry for help.

Maybe she's still alive.

Time is of the essence.

The last time that we spoke to her, she was going into public.

Maybe she was abducted in the parking lot.

When Florida Attorney Melissa Lewis is a no-show for an important meeting, police officers find her home empty and discover evidence of an attack.

They immediately call detectives to the scene.

When I first arrived at Melissa Lewis' house, there were groceries in the garage that had not been unpacked and had been recently purchased.

The dog door to the residence had what looked like pepper spray on it.

Melissa's close friend, Deborah, said that Melissa did have pepper spray on her normally, carried it in her purse.

We started coming up with different theories on what could have happened.

Could somebody have followed her in to commit a home burglary, a home invasion robbery, or even possibly a carjacking?

Maybe she's in the car, maybe she's still alive.

Time is of the essence.

Luckily for us, it was a newer model Cadillac.

It was equipped with an OnStar system.

We were able to have OnStar provide us with a GPS location for the vehicle.

They located it within walking distance to Melissa Lewis's home.

Parked on the other side of the community that Melissa Lewis lived in.

The car is there.

But not Melissa.

We opened up the rear hatch of the vehicle.

Inside of there, we found her shoes.

We found her suit jacket.

And the button that we had seen earlier on her garage floor looked like it came from this jacket.

There's substances on the jacket.

If you're sprayed with pepper spray, you may spit, cough, sneeze.

That type of fluid was on her jacket.

So just in case there's DNA, great care is taken to preserve all of those things.

They transport the car to Broward Sheriff's Office crime lab.

Hoping to track Melissa's movements, investigators immediately request her cell phone records, knowing it will take some time.

In the meantime, they turn to her sister, Carrie.

She tells detectives that she spoke to Melissa by phone the previous evening.

She went to Publix almost every night on the way home from work.

That was the last time that we spoke to her.

She was going into Publix.

We obtained surveillance video from inside of Publix.

They were able to see the suit that she was wearing, what kind of purse she was wearing.

It was a designer purse.

Because Melissa was known to wear nice jewelry and carry designer handbags and things of that nature, it was a natural theory for police to suspect that this was a robbery gone bad.

But the video doesn't show anything suspicious inside the supermarket, and there are no surveillance cameras outside the store.

Investigators check to see if one of Melissa's neighbors might have seen something unusual.

A patrol officer canvassed the area.

We were looking for people that may have heard screams, gunshots, a cry for help.

Unfortunately, after canvassing that afternoon, nobody saw any suspicious vehicles, saw any suspicious people nearby.

Investigators are still leaning towards a robbery.

But there's one thing that doesn't fit.

Usually in those carjacking robbery scenarios, the body's not missing.

In my experience, people aren't put in the back of a stolen vehicle, then driven away somewhere.

So her disappearance was really unusual.

It's now the morning after Melissa is reported missing.

An engineer is clearing pumping machinery in a backyard canal in Plantation when he spots what appears to be a mannequin buried in the debris.

But as he gets closer, he realizes it is a woman's body.

It was a little after 7 a.m.

I was driving in the work that day.

I heard a report over the police radio that a body had been discovered.

Based on a brief description over the radio, I thought

the body that they had discovered could be of Melissa Lewis.

When she was brought out of the water,

there were very minor indications of trauma at that time, nothing obvious, no stab wounds, gunshot wounds, things of that nature.

And because of the good condition of the body,

we were able to make that identification ourselves based on recent photographs, driver's license picture, clothing being worn,

that it was Melissa Lewis.

Melissa's body is sent to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy as investigators begin the sad task of notifying her family and friends.

Got a call from one of the detectives, and that's when everything changed,

and all the hope was gone.

It was just, it was unbelievable.

I just slowly started fading down to the floor.

I didn't have a sister growing up, and

just all women are supposed to have that friend in their life, you know?

And just all of a sudden, it's just gone.

I was just devastated.

I know I did a lot of crying

and

basically just focused on, you know, stayed with my family, focused on my kids.

They were everything to her.

My kids were just like her own.

They were devastated.

Devastated.

The autopsy results come in, and the findings are chilling.

There was obvious trauma to her neck area.

The medical examiner determined that the cause of death was manual strangulation.

At that point, we knew that this case was a homicide.

A death like the one that Melissa Lewis suffered would be one of the most horrific ways a person can die.

Manual strangulation, it's a drawn-out way to kill someone.

It's not something that happens instantaneously.

It takes minutes for someone to die.

It's a very personal way to kill somebody.

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After the body of missing attorney Melissa Lewis is found floating in a backyard canal in Plantation, Florida, police have determined she was likely strangled the same evening she was last seen.

So at this point, her death is classified as a murder case, a homicide, which really ramps up the level of investigation.

The canal is four miles from Melissa's home.

Investigators begin an intensive search of the area.

Our theory was that she was transported there and in her own vehicle.

and then dumped by somebody into the canal.

So we were looking for access areas.

There was a dirt road behind a small strip mall

where a car could drive up into that area.

It was pretty concealed from the main road.

Someone could have easily, at night, opened up the hatch of the vehicle and either kicked them down, pushed them down into the canal.

But the search of the dirt road and access ramp proves fruitless.

At first, I was leaning towards the carjacking robbery scenario, but the crime took place in the garage of her house where pepper spray had been used.

Her body was found miles away, and then her car was found near her house.

In my career, this was highly unusual for a carjacking.

The best clue at the moment is the nature of the killing.

Melissa Lewis was strangled.

And because strangulation is so intimate, the investigators conclude it's very likely this crime was not random, but personal.

So they begin to dig into Melissa's personal life, looking for someone with motive to harm her.

We talk to her best friend, who we identified as Deborah Viegas, a co-worker of hers,

and her sister, who's also very close with her.

And we asked them everything going on in Melissa's life.

They wanted to know everything, anybody that she came in contact with, anybody who might be upset with her.

They repeatedly told us no.

No relationship issues,

no

issues at work with clients, things of that nature.

I think I was grasping at straws at that point.

I remembered, Missy was an advocate for

domestic violence because of Deborah.

And I remembered my sister telling me that Deborah's husband, Tony,

had threatened to set Deborah on fire in front of her children

and that he had slashed her tires.

So I called him, this man's abusive.

So then they wanted all the information about my ex-husband and they asked us, you know, would he be upset about anything?

And I said, well, he's very upset about everything.

I told them that we were pulling through a divorce and gave them the details of our situation as well so they could see that it really didn't relate to her.

He would, you know, call and leave threats and, but I just kept moving forward.

You know, don't antagonize him.

Don't argue with him.

Stay positive and move forward.

And I told them, if I were the one murdered, you know, he would be your guy, but he has no reason to be upset with Melissa.

He didn't even know her very well.

Based on Deborah's description, the detectives don't consider her ex-husband to be high on the list of suspects.

They decide to search elsewhere in Melissa's life for someone who might have motive to attack her.

During an interview of Carrie, she mentioned her ex-husband, Anthony Godinez,

as someone that has a

criminal history.

Anthony is father of my two oldest children.

And we were married for 11 years.

He was a drug addict and had been in prison for armed robbery.

He wouldn't have killed her, I don't think.

But he had also been involved in an armed robbery.

So, you know,

you just never know.

So I did throw it out there.

I told the police, Melissa, helped me fill out the divorce papers.

And then she told me that he came to her house.

And, you know, it startled her a little bit.

We believe she was strangled by someone who personally knew her on the floor of her garage.

And Anthony Godinez, he's a felon.

He had committed an armed robbery years earlier.

He spent some significant time in prison.

So at that point, Mr.

Goudinez is a significant suspect in this case.

We define him.

If Melissa was going to expose this criminal episode at the law firm, that sent off alarm bells.

The crime lab contacted us.

We have an exact match DNA collected from Melissa Lewis's jacket.

Florida detectives have identified their first solid suspect in the murder of Melissa Lewis, her former brother-in-law, Anthony Godinez.

We learned Anthony Godinez was a felon.

He had been arrested years earlier for an armed robbery.

He was released in prison about three years prior to this date.

I told him,

really in my heart, I knew that he didn't have anything to do with it.

Detectives stake out Anthony's home four and a half miles from Melissa's, hoping to corner him and speak with him.

We conducted a surveillance at Mr.

Goudinis' residence,

where we found that he wasn't physically able.

Investigators learned Anthony had recently been diagnosed with MS, and based on what they were able to piece together up to that point,

he would not have been able to carry out that type of abduction.

We spoke with him

and he had a reasonable alibi on the night that she went missing.

With their initial suspect now cleared, investigators dig back into the evidence.

Melissa was a successful attorney, and the detectives consider whether her work might have played a role in her violent death.

Scott Rothstein, the founding partner of the law firm she worked for, was interviewed.

Scott Rothstein was very close to Melissa Lewis.

She had interned in the past for him.

He had a close relationship with her and knew her very well.

Scott Rothstein was

a very well-connected lawyer.

When this happened, his firm put up a $250,000 reward for information.

She was a very well-thought-of-attorne in Broward County.

Maybe there were cases where someone would have an axe to grind her.

But there are no promising suspects in Melissa's caseload.

Then, after a frustrating three-day wait, detectives finally received Melissa's phone records.

The data showed when she left work.

We could show her traveling from downtown Fort Lauderdale on the evening of March 5th.

Arriving in the vicinity of the Publix grocery store at about 7.

Arriving home a little bit after 8 p.m.

that night.

At that point, the signal is stationary at Melissa's house for almost an hour.

Police believe it is during this time period that Melissa is murdered.

But oddly, after that, her cell phone is on the move.

The phone travels at about 9 p.m.

that night from the cell tower in Melissa's neighborhood out to the area where we now know where she was dumped in the canal.

And then it travels back towards her home, back to her home cell tower.

And then it travels down

through Broward County, through Interstate 595.

along Interstate 75 into

Dade County,

northern Miami area, where it finally settles at one cell tower between 10 and 11 that night in the city of Hyalia.

The phone stays in that location until 6 a.m.

the next morning.

Then it hits the road again.

The early morning hours of March 6th, 2008, the phone travels in a very direct straight line up towards Palm Beach County,

and then it disappears.

Detectives believe that whoever attacked Melissa kept her phone.

Since the phone spent the night in Hialeah, they conclude so did the killer.

Unfortunately, it wasn't precise GPS lat-and-long coordinates being provided, but it was with a cell tower.

It could be one to three miles in either direction of the tower, which is a lot of area to search.

The cell tower data isn't specific enough to pinpoint their suspect.

But because she was strangled, investigators believe Melissa knew her attacker.

And now they know that person likely has a connection to Hialeah.

The best way to get additional information was to talk to Deborah and Carrie again.

So we brought them both back in, and we told them what the data showed.

Melissa's best friend and co-worker, Deborah, is staggered by the information.

It was just horrible

because it was thin when I realized that

she's gone because of me.

My divorce was very, very ugly over the course of the first year.

Tony was very angry, and he's just not a very stable person.

He broke into my truck a couple of times and put water in my gas tank, left dead animals on my front porch.

Just bizarre things.

When police ask Melissa's best friend, Deborah Viegas, about a suspect with a connection to Hialeah,

she's stunned to realize who it might be.

Deborah said he had recently moved in with a friend and Hyalia

within the area of the cell tower where Melissa's phone was pinging the night of Melissa's murder.

Deborah initially told police her ex-husband had no reason to harm Melissa,

but now she's not sure that's true.

Melissa was my dearest friend and somebody to make me happy and to laugh with.

Her support was just helping me move forward in a positive way.

She then went on to tell us her husband is a conductor on a train,

Florida East Coast Railways, that run from downtown Fort Lauderdale up into Pompano.

The track of the cell phone is mirroring where Tony Viegas would be, where he lives and where he works.

Police now subpoena Tony Viegas' phone records.

On the night that Melissa Lewis was killed, wherever Melissa Lewis's phone was, so was Tony Viegas' phone.

The phone evidence connecting Tony to Melissa is the lead law enforcement has been waiting for.

But it's not concrete proof he killed her.

Hoping to find that proof, detectives obtain a search warrant for the apartment Tony shares with a roommate.

We were looking for obvious items of evidence such as pepper spray, Melissa's cell phone, or any other items that could link him to the murder.

But we didn't find anything unusual.

His roommate said that on the night that Melissa Lewis went missing, Tony Viegas came home late that night and had asked if he knew of a way to wash it off or get rid of pepper spray that was on your body.

That sent off alarm bells.

Our theory was that he wanted to hurt Deborah in the deepest way possible.

It was his ultimate way to hurt Deborah.

I'm going to kill and take away your best friend, your support person.

Even more alarms go off a few days later when police receive DNA test results for the small stain on Melissa's jacket that was recovered from her car.

The evidence DNA collected from Melissa Lewis's jacket.

That DNA belonged to Tony Viegas.

A week after her death, a judge issues an arrest warrant for Tony Viegas.

On the same day, Melissa is laid to rest.

Missy's funeral was surreal.

The reporters outside, and I remember

Scott Rustine

speaking at her funeral and

the firm, they paid for the funeral.

Everything.

It was so hard because to look at the family of her

knowing that she's gone because of me, because Tony knew that it would torture me because I would have to live with this pain and sadness the rest of my life.

It was just,

it's just overwhelming.

While Melissa is being buried, police are zeroing in on Tony Villagas.

Later that day, they find him hiding in his mother's house.

Investigators and other special response units were down outside of the home,

and Tony peacefully surrendered.

And they found her murderer.

That was a huge relief.

Tony Villegas is arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder.

He insists he's innocent and that he's being set up by someone, but he refuses to say who.

He gave no other information to investigators.

Nothing else to say about what happened that night.

He was stoic.

Defense attorneys stall the judicial process for more than a year.

Then, a stunning new development threatens to derail the prosecution's entire case.

Scott Rostein, Melissa's principal law partner, was subject of a very significant criminal Ponzi scheme investigation.

One of the most significant Ponzi schemes in the history of the United States.

He was running a,

what ended up being a $50 billion criminal enterprise.

We learned Ahidi had fled the country to Morocco.

An FBI probe reveals that one of Scott's partners in the massive financial fraud is the law firm's office manager, Deborah Villegas.

Detectives are forced to wonder, could this multi-billion dollar crime be the real reason for Melissa's murder?

As prosecutors in the case, the Ponzi scheme cannot be ignored.

At the time of Melissa's murder, she was working for an enterprise that

was criminal.

There's no evidence that she was tied to any criminal behavior or activity, but the idea that Melissa's death had absolutely nothing to do with any of that, it seemed to lack credibility.

If Melissa had learned of the Ponzi scheme or was directly involved herself, Scott Rothstein may have wanted to have her eliminated.

Tony Villagas is awaiting trial for the murder of Melissa Lewis, but the case has been upended by an FBI investigation.

Melissa's law firm has been charged with financial fraud, and tangled up in the massive Ponzi scheme is her boss, Scott Rothstein, and best friend and office manager, Deborah Villegas.

Tony's lawyers suggest that Scott and Deborah may be Melissa's real killers.

Deborah being best friends with Melissa Lewis, obviously the questions started coming out about was there any connection between any of the illegal activities of Scott Rothstein, any illegal activities that Deborah may have been involved in, and the murder of Melissa Lewis.

If Melissa Lewis had found out and was to expose this very large criminal episode that was happening at the law firm, then they needed to eliminate Melissa before she exposed it to law enforcement.

The prosecutor's theory has been that Tony Viegas killed Melissa in a fit of anger.

But detectives must now examine whether Melissa was the victim of a sinister plot to keep her silent.

It would be negligent on the investigator's part.

It would be negligent on our part not to make sure that it wasn't Scott Rothstein.

We've had the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement assist us in our investigation.

Every piece of evidence, every document, every interview is picked apart, looking for any connection between the multi-billion dollar financial fraud and the murder of Melissa Lewis.

There was no evidence of that.

To think think that for all the available

people to go out and hire to commit a murder, would Scott Rostein use Tony Viegas, the estranged husband of his confidant in his Ponzi scheme, to kill somebody else in the law firm?

No.

That theory didn't hold up.

There was no connection from Scott Rostein's activity to the death of Melissa Lewis.

Melissa would have been horrified.

It was humiliating.

It was...

it was just the worst.

And

it's just a guilt that I guess I live with forever.

We were confident we had the right person arrested and we were prosecuting the right person.

The case is finally back on track.

The Tony Villagas murder trial begins eight years after Melissa's body was found buried in a backyard canal.

Prosecutors tell the jury that Tony was a controlling and obsessive husband, enraged by what he saw as Melissa's interference in his marriage.

Melissa and Deborah were best friends.

Melissa, in his eyes, figuratively moved into his spot.

He felt that Melissa had advised Deborah to get the divorce and that it was her fault.

The investigation led us to believe that that night Tony Viegas had driven to the parking lot near Melissa's neighborhood.

He walked less than a quarter mile to Melissa's house, where he waited for her to return home.

When she opened the garage,

he entered the garage.

She probably saw him coming,

used pepper spray in self-defense.

He was a strong guy.

He strangled her right on the floor of her garage.

He puts her body in the back of the SUV.

And then he drives her to the canal, takes her body out of the back of the SUV, throws her down into the canal,

drives back to where his Corvette was parked,

drives his Corvette back down to Miami.

The trial lasts a week.

It takes the jury just two hours to reach a verdict.

The verdict was guilty as charge of first-degree murder,

and he was consequently sentenced to life in prison.

She was just

a very special person taken away from us because of

an evil person who didn't get his way.

It's senseless.

I miss my sister being able to

share the excitement in my kids

and their achievements.

She was humble and kind and giving,

selfless, just

a great person.

Hi, I'm Denise Chan, host of Scam Factory.

You might remember hearing about our investigative series that exposed what's really happening behind those suspicious texts you get.

Inside heavily guarded compounds across Asia, thousands are trapped and forced to scam others or risk torture.

One of our most powerful stories was Jella's, a young woman who thought she'd found her dream job, only to end up imprisoned in a scam compound.

Her escape story caught the attention of criminals Phoebe Judge, and I'm honored to share more details of Jella's journey with their audience.

But Jella's story is just one piece of this investigation.

In Scam Factory, we reveal how a billion-dollar criminal empire turns job seekers into prisoners, and how the only way out is to scam your way out.

Ready to uncover the full story?

Binge all episodes of Scam Factory now.

Listen to Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.