Day eight in the search for missing University of Florida student Christian Aguilar is growing more intense. At least 100 people have joined the search. Authorities say the missing 18-year-old freshman was last spotted at a Best Buy in Gainesville. Christian was a talented young man who had obtained a scholarship to the university to study biomedical engineering.
His brother described him as quiet and shy, saying it took him a while to open up to people, but when he did, he was incredibly funny, charming, and full of charisma. While living in Gainesville, he and his longtime friend Erica Freeman, whom he had known since school, became an item. From this point on, the pair were joined at the hip. Carlos, Christian’s father, said he had never seen his son so happy as when he was dating her. Erica described them as soulmates and believed that one day they would get married.
September 20th, 2012, seemingly started like any other day. As soon as Erica finished her classes, she sent Christian a text message to arrange a meetup. At this point, they had been dating for a little while, but their relationship was blossoming and they spent every day together. Always quick to respond, Christian’s silence made Erica a little concerned. Telling herself he must be busy, she headed back to her apartment alone. Several hours passed, however, and despite many calls and texts, Erica still had no idea where he was. She now knew something was wrong and walked to his dorm room to ask his roommate if he had seen him.
Just after 4 a.m., with still no word from Christian, Erica rang his childhood friend, Pedro Bravo. The boys had gone shopping the day before, but Pedro said they had parted ways in the afternoon and he hadn’t heard from him since. Frantic with worry, she decided to phone Christian’s father, Carlos, 300 miles away in Miami, praying he might have heard from his son.
Carlos hadn’t either. Knowing his son and how out of character this was, he and Christian’s mother, Claudia, immediately set off for Gainesville, Florida. Carlos called the authorities, stating: “My name is Carlos Aguilar and I’m the parent of Christian Aguilar. He’s a student over at the university. His girlfriend has been trying to contact him since yesterday and he’s not answering. He normally responds to his girlfriend right away, and if she’s so concerned about it, we are concerned right now. This is not his normal behavior, and I’m wondering if you guys can help us.”
Just before 10 a.m. the next day, September 21st, Erica and Pedro met with Officer Timothy Peck of the University of Florida’s Police Department to report Christian as missing. Christian, Erica, and Pedro had all known each other since attending Doral Academy together. Pedro and Erica had dated prior to her relationship with Christian. It hadn’t worked out, and she had ended the relationship shortly before going to college. Although Pedro had been upset about the breakup, he soon moved to Gainesville himself, and it appeared that the trio from school were back together. However, Christian and Erica had yet to tell Pedro about their relationship, waiting for him to be in a better place mentally before breaking the news.
Growing more concerned by the hour, Erica made the police aware that Christian suffered from depression, which rang more alarm bells. Officers wondered if Christian had attempted to hurt himself, so they headed out to his apartment. They found absolutely nothing; not a thing was out of place, and there were no obvious signs of disturbance.
Pedro and Erica were interviewed separately. Pedro stated that the previous day, he and Christian had left campus in Pedro’s car. Christian got his flu shot, and then they drove to a Best Buy store to buy a CD and grab some lunch. Recalling the encounter, Pedro told the police: “That’s like an encounter. ‘Do you want to go get something with me? Like, do you want to go get chicken with me?’ Like, that’s actually chicken. So he’s like, ‘Sure, okay.'” Around 3:30 p.m., they got a CD from Best Buy. When asked if Christian listened to it, Pedro replied: “Yeah, he did over there.”
Pedro then stated that a verbal argument ensued in the car. According to Pedro, he dropped Christian off on a street and drove home by himself. Feeling guilty about the argument, he claimed he attempted to ring him, but to no avail. “He wasn’t answering his phone. We didn’t know where he was,” Pedro later stated. “I got up and tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t because I felt kind of guilty because I dropped him off the road. I was afraid, like, what if something happened? What if he’s lost right now? What if he’s trying to get back to the dorm and he went the wrong way? Because he doesn’t have any good sense of direction.”
Carlos, Christian’s father, also rang Pedro to get the story. Pedro recalled: “She called his parents to let them know what’s going on so that they know what’s happening, and his father calls me. He tells me like, ‘What happened? Where were you? Where did you lose him? And what happened?’ all like that. And I’m like, I was like, ‘I got into an argument with him and he wanted to get out of the car, and I’m so sorry.’ It’s because, like I said, I understand he was just trying to help me because I’ve been going through a rough time and I don’t know what I’m doing myself, but if I can get him back…”
Pedro claimed he didn’t know Gainesville very well, having only just enrolled in college there, and couldn’t remember the name of the street, though he tried to describe the location as best he could. The area Pedro described was quite notorious for crime and drugs, causing police to worry that something bad had happened to Christian there. However, when police checked the CCTV cameras from Best Buy, they quickly picked the pair up. On September 20th at around 3 p.m., the footage showed them both drinking coffee, browsing the aisles, and chatting. But after this, there was nothing. Hundreds of cameras from all over the neighborhood where Pedro claimed to have dropped Christian off were checked with a fine-tooth comb, but Christian wasn’t on a single one of them.
Christian’s family, volunteers, and multiple police departments were now searching for the missing freshman. A camera from a local car wash picked up someone of interest, but it wasn’t Christian—it was Pedro. While Pedro had told police that he left Christian on the side of the road and drove straight home, the footage showed him power-washing his car at 2 a.m.
Faced with this discrepancy, Pedro suddenly changed his story. Despite Erica and Christian thinking they had kept their romance a secret, Pedro admitted to police he had recently found out they were dating, which resulted in a physical fight. Pedro stated that he hit Christian in the face, causing his nose to bleed all over the car. He said that after they fought for a while, he kicked him out of the car, leaving him on the side of the road almost unconscious, and drove away. Following this admission, on September 24th, Pedro was placed under arrest for depriving a crime victim of medical care.
This arrest gave officers more time to look into Pedro’s claims, as his story simply wasn’t adding up. During interrogation, detectives told him: “I hit him in the face and I made him get out, but there’s more to that, and I think that you need to be honest about it. You need to tell me what else happened because something else happened besides just that. We know that he’s not coming back, okay? I know he’s not coming back. I’ve been doing this for too long. You know he’s not coming back. We can help you a little bit as far as if you can explain things.” Pedro responded: “Well, actually, will I go home with my parents tonight?” The detective replied: “I’m not gonna lie to you and tell you that you can go home tonight, okay? You know it’s something we gotta work on.”
CCTV cameras still showed no trace of Christian, but one thing remained clear: the last person known to have seen him was Pedro. Combined with the blood found in the car and the 2 a.m. car wash footage, police looked to Pedro for definitive answers. Officers obtained a warrant to search his apartment, and what they found truly shocked them. They retrieved a receipt dated just a few days before Christian disappeared. Following up on the receipt, CCTV cameras showed Pedro purchasing a shovel, duct tape, and sleeping pills.
Also found in Pedro’s apartment was Christian’s backpack. Although they had yet to find his body, authorities knew Christian was no longer alive, and this officially became a murder investigation. “We have to start thinking the worst,” police stated. The evidence was irrefutable, and Pedro Bravo was subsequently charged with Christian’s murder. News reports announced: “We’ve gotten the latest information now from the authorities in Gainesville, and we now know Pedro Bravo, who had been picked up as a person of interest in the case of missing freshman Christian Aguilar, has now been charged with murder. There is no body, though, that has been found so far.”
After three weeks of searching an area around 60 miles from Gainesville, local hunters discovered human remains buried in a shallow grave. Using dental records, it was confirmed to be Christian Aguilar. An autopsy revealed that he had been strangled, and his ankles and wrists were bound with duct tape.
How had things come to this? It all started years prior when Pedro Bravo developed a dangerous obsession with Erica. He was fixated on her, and when she broke up with him, he spent months campaigning to win her back. When he found out she had moved on, he set a plan in motion to remove Christian from the picture. Erica and Pedro had begun dating as sophomores. Though things seemed fine initially, Erica became unhappy and tried to end the relationship several times. Pedro warned her that “things would never be the same” if she left him, and out of fear, Erica agreed to stay.
However, as they made plans to go to different colleges, Erica felt it was the right time to separate. She enrolled at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, where she and Christian bumped into each other and a romance quickly blossomed. But just a few months into their semester, Pedro turned up there too. He was originally set to attend Florida International University hundreds of miles away, but abruptly transferred to Santa Fe to try and win Erica back.
Pedro asked Erica several times if she and Christian were together, but Erica lied and said they were just friends. The pair were conscious of Pedro’s fragile state of mind, as he had frequently spoken about committing suicide after the breakup. They decided to keep their relationship a secret until they felt Pedro was in a better headspace. Little did they know, Pedro was already well aware of them and was completely consumed by rage.
Another item recovered from Pedro’s apartment was a journal that detailed the extent of his obsessive thoughts. Endless pages of drawings, poems, quotes, and love letters to Erica sat alongside threats directed at Christian. Paragraphs of self-motivational speeches filled the book, saying things such as: “I can do this. I believe in myself. I will do it. I can win her back. I will win her back. No one will stop me. I will get into Gainesville and get her back. I will get out of Miami and into University of Florida.” One entry from July read: “I’m scared she might end up with Chris.” Underneath, he wrote to himself: “You are overreacting again. Remember that Chris goes to University of Florida and Erica goes to Santa Fe, so limited conversation and contact. Plus, they don’t talk much and he lives on campus. They got separate classes in schools, plus you have time.”
On September 20th, Pedro contacted Christian, asking to meet up and go shopping under the guise of wanting to confide in him about his depression and suicidal thoughts. Worried that Pedro might actually want to confront him about Erica, Christian was hesitant but eventually agreed, reasoning that they would be in a safe, public place. However, while sitting in Pedro’s car in a Walmart parking lot, Pedro subdued Christian using sleeping pills dissolved in a bottle of Gatorade and strangled him with a belt.
Pedro’s phone records showed he was in that parking lot for two hours that afternoon. He then put his phone in airplane mode for five hours and drove to a swampy area to bury the body. Logs from his iPhone 4 showed that the flashlight feature had been used 9 times for a total of 48 minutes that night. On the way home, Pedro stopped for food at McDonald’s before washing his car. Investigators later found matching soil in the undercarriage of his vehicle and on the shovel he bought.
In August 2014, the trial of Pedro Bravo began. He entered a plea of not guilty. Pedro’s former cellmate, Michael Angelo, took the stand and testified that Pedro confessed it had taken him 13 minutes to kill Christian. Michael also led officers to where Pedro had hidden the shovel under a wooden walkway at his apartment complex. Michael testified: “I think originally he said that he was gonna try to poison him with a mixture of sleeping pills and pesticide and mixed with soda or something like that… and his backup plan was to have a knife, you know, to cut his throat… He said at one point Pedro panicked as he almost got caught by a security guard driving past the vehicle as he was strangling Christian.”
Erica also testified about the secrecy of her relationship, stating: “Well, he asked me and I tell him that we’re not. So I lied to him saying that we were not dating, and I think he was ready to hear that at that time—a very sensitive point in his life, I suppose. I didn’t want to, you know, throw him over the edge or anything.”
Pedro took the stand in his own defense as the sole witness for the defense team. Describing the argument, Pedro claimed: “The discussion is getting very heated now. I’m arguing with him and he’s arguing with me. I turn around and I hit him in the nose with my left fist.” When asked if it happened while driving, he said: “While I’m driving.” When asked if Christian sustained an injury, Pedro replied: “His nose started bleeding, yes. At this point, I pull over to the left and I pull into a small driveway with a building and some skinny trees.” When asked what happened next, Pedro claimed: “I went to sleep. I believe I got a call around four o’clock in the morning. Erica was calling me. She said have I heard from Chris, did I know what was going on. Chris, he hasn’t been back in his dorm room… I thought nothing. I thought probably he probably just decided not to go home… I tell her I don’t know.”
A dramatic moment in the courtroom involved a screenshot regarding the iPhone feature, Siri. Although initial rumors suggested Pedro had asked Siri where to hide a body, Gainesville police and experts disputed this, proving the screenshot had merely been viewed via Facebook. Pedro’s iPhone 4 did not even have Siri compatibility, so the evidence was pulled from the courtroom.
The defense argued that while Pedro had a physical altercation with Christian and was wrong to leave him on the roadside, he did not kill him. They claimed the duct tape was for a crack in his car window, and the shovel was bought because Pedro intended to commit suicide and dig his own grave. Pedro claimed he tried to poison himself after the fight but threw up, taking it as a “sign from God” that it wasn’t his time to go.
However, the prosecution’s case was too strong. The jury took just three hours to deliberate, returning with the verdict: “We the jury find as follows, as to the defendant Pedro Andreas Bravo in this case, as to count one, the defendant is guilty of felony murder first degree.” Pedro Bravo was convicted of first-degree murder, poisoning, false imprisonment, tampering with evidence, giving false information, and improper transportation of human remains. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Though he did not take his own life, a prison guard later found a suicide note written by Pedro in his cell. An extract read: “I’m a monster for hurting Chris.” Despite this and his jailhouse confession, Pedro still denied the murder upon sentencing, telling the court: “God knows the truth about what happened. I did not kill Christian Aguilar. I know that I will face my sentence, I will do my time, but I know in my heart that I did not do anything to hurt my friend.”
Throughout the trial, Pedro continuously attempted to contact Erica and the Aguilar family. Upon sentencing, Carlos Aguilar begged the judge to block any future contact. The Aguilar family expressed relief at the verdict. Carlos stated: “The reality is the verdict will not bring my son back, but Pedro was held accountable. I promised Christian at his burial there would be justice.”
The funeral for Christian Aguilar was held in Miami, open to the public and packed to capacity. A kind and loving young man with a life full of promise had been cut dreadfully short. Remembering him, Erica Freeman said: “He was such a good person, so kind and so compassionate. I always feel like when I describe him, I’m never describing him enough. You had to meet him.”
