Demblans takes the stand against Macauley on day-3 of double murder trial

In early November, 2015, a Miami woman was taking the route she normally ventures while snorkeling near her brother’s Key Largo house during visits from the mainland.

She likes to wend her way through the canal that flows from Rock Harbor right out to the ocean. When she reaches the ocean, she said, “I usually chicken out” and swims back to her brother Frank Resillez’s house.

On Nov. 9, 2015, she was in the canal snorkeling on the western side of the small Ocean Bay Drive Bridge, near the popular Dolphins Plus marine mammal park, when she saw something unusual on the bottom of the canal.

“I found the gun,” she said while on the witness stand Thursday during the first-degree murder trial of Jeremy Macauley. The woman found what detectives and prosecutors say is the firearm used to gun down Tara Rosado, 26, and Carlos Ortiz, 30, inside Rosado’s Tavernier house the night of Oct. 15, 2015.

She swam while holding the gun, a Colt .45 pistol, at arm’s length back to Frank’s house and dropped it in the water and told her brother what she found. He called the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. A deputy asked them to lower a bucket into the canal and place the gun in it and to keep it filled with water.

“It was fully loaded with the hammer back,” Resillez said in an interview. “It looked like if you touched it, it would have gone off.”

Hours before the woman testified, the man charged with being Macauley’s getaway driver the night of the murders, Adrian Demblans, 36, described on the witness stand how he drove Macauley away from the crime scene after Macauley killed the couple, traveled down Ocean Bay Drive and slowed his vehicle while going over the bridge so Macauley could throw the gun into the water.

Demblans then turned the car around, heading west on Ocean Bay Drive, slowed down on the bridge again, this time so Macauley could throw Ortiz’s cell phone into the water. The phone bounced off the bridge’s railing and landed on the sidewalk. Macauley had to get out of the car and toss the phone into the canal.

Regarding the murder that happened just minutes before the evidence was dumped in the water, Demblans told Macauley’s attorney Ed O’Donnell, Sr. during cross examination, “I didn’t ask what happened, and his only response was ‘It’s over now.’”

Sheriff’s Office divers found the phone days after the woman showed them where she found the gun.

But Demblans and Macauley never knew either item was found. In fact, Demblans said Thursday that he borrowed dive gear, including an underwater metal detector, and went scuba diving in the canal to retrieve the gun and the phone in February 2016.

Demblans agreed in April to testify against Macauley in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence for accessory after the fact of a capital felony. If his case went before a jury, he risked being locked up for a total of 30 years. Prosecutors say Macauley targeted Ortiz because he barraged him with a series of texts and phone calls threatening to turn Macauley into the police for dealing cocaine — up to 15 kilos detectives say Macauley found offshore while working as a charter fishing boat mate the summer before the murders.

According to the state’s case, Macauley enlisted the help of Demblans, a Key Largo man named Enos Mitchell and Ortiz to break the coke down and sell it by the ounce.

Mitchell testified on day-2 of the trial that he did indeed sell some of the cocaine for Macauley. Each of the crew was banking about $600 from every ounce they sold, while kicking $800 to Macauley. But Ortiz, who was also Macauley’s business partner in a fledgling tattoo and smoke shop, wanted more and ratcheted up his extortion attempt in the days leading up to the murders.

He made it seem in the texts that he was already a confidential informant cooperating with law enforcement and could turn the whole crew in to the police, including Macauley’s boss, Rick Rodriguez, captain of the Sea Horse charter boat. Although prosecutors say the drugs were brought to shore on Rodriguez’s boat, he’s not been charged with any crime and has repeatedly denied knowing anything about the cocaine.

Starting Oct. 14, 2015, Ortiz sent text after text to Macauley demanding thousands of dollars or up to a kilo of the cocaine. He also texted Rodriguez threats, who responded he that he didn’t know what the messages were about and demanded they stop. Finally, around 9:20 p.m., Oct. 15, Macauley responded to Ortiz that he’s willing to give him $6,800, which was half of what the two had invested in the tattoo shop. According to messages shown in court, he texted Ortiz a photo of a stack of cash with a $100 bill on top. In a subsequent text, Macauley asks where Ortiz wanted to meet. Ortiz responds, “My house.”

After 10:30 p.m. that night, all communication from Ortiz’s phone ceased. Prosecutors and detectives say that’s around the time Ortiz and Rosado were slain.

Demblans testified Thursday that Macauley called him the night of the murders and asked him to pick him up at his house on Norwood Avenue off mile marker 106, where he lived with his wife and children. There, Macauley showed Demblans the texts from Ortiz.

“He asked me to give him a ride,” Demblans told Assistant State Attorney Aleathea McRoberts. Demblans said Macauley actually only had $1,600 on him, but he really thought the purpose of the trip to see Ortiz was to give him the money hoping he would drop the extortion attempts. “He hoped Carlos would go for it.”

However, Demblans also said before the men left, Macauley loaded his pistol. Demblans, a convicted drug dealer, said the sight of Macauley with a firearm didn’t concern him because he also typically carried a weapon, especially when doing business.

According to Demblans, before going to the Cuba Road home, where Ortiz was staying with Rosado and her three young children, they stopped by Demblans’ home on Atlantic Avenue off mile marker 100. He said he didn’t want to take his pickup truck to Cuba Road, off mile marker 92, because it had recently begun to overheat.

But, O’Donnell argued the reason for Demblans not wanting to drive his truck had nothing to do with its condition.

“If that truck was seen driving away from these two brutal murders, it would come right back to you,” he said.

Demblans had two women living at his house back then, both junkies, he said, and wanted to borrow one of their cars — a Toyota RAV 4. The woman didn’t want to lend him the car, however, so he had to negotiate with her. She relented when he gave her about $100 worth of crack cocaine.

“I bribed her with drugs and she accepted,” Demblans said.

The two men headed south on U.S. 1 and turned left onto Burton Drive, east toward Harry Harris Park and finally to Cuba Road. Demblans, security video shot from the house next to Rosado’s shows, drove passed the house slightly, then backed into the driveway. According to Demblans’ testimony, Ortiz met them outside and Macauley went inside the house. Demblans, who was armed with a .45 caliber Glock pistol, stayed outside with the car. He insisted, even on cross examination by O’Donnell, who called him a “lookout,” that he merely “chauffeured” Macauley to the house and did not expect violence to break out.

“When Jeremy entered the house, it was my intention that Jeremy was going to pay Carlos the money and hopefully he would accept and we would leave,” Demblans said.

He thought wrong.

“I heard two distinct gunshots,” Demblans said. “I stepped out of the vehicle and pulled my weapon out.”

He said Macauley signaled him to come inside, where he saw the bodies of Rosado and Ortiz lying next to their bed. Macauley grabbed a phone from Ortiz’s pocket, but was nervous because he didn’t believe it was the one he used to send the threatening texts, which if seen by police, would provide motive for Macauley wanting him dead. He asked Demblans, according to his testimony, to help him look for more phones, which it turns out, were plainly visible. One was on the bed and the other on the floor next to Rosado’s body.

But Demblans said he never saw the other phones because all he wanted to do when presented with the sight of the bodies was leave quickly.

“I saw the bodies and immediately turned around to Jeramy and said, ‘We gotta get out of here,’” he said.

According to court documents, Macauley had good reason to be worried. He took an Apple iPhone 5 from Ortiz’s pocket, but police retrieved the damning text messages on the Asus Zenfone lying on the bed.

Nevertheless, Macauley reiterated his innocence Thursday. At the end of the hearing, the prosecution informed O’Donnell they’d be willing to offer a lesser charge for a plea, and Macauley told his attorneys, “first-degree murder or nothing.”

Demblans never mentioned Rosado’s children in his testimony. They were in the house that night, in another room. Nextdoor neighbor Travis Kvadus found them safe in their front yard the following afternoon.

O’Donnell argues Adrian Demblans and his twin brother Kristian Demblans, both convicted felons and drug dealers, committed the murders without Macauley’s involvement. Kristian Demblans is serving a two year state prison sentence for an unrelated cocaine and heroin dealing case.

O’Donnell said Ortiz knew the identical twins sold drugs. He bought heroin on several occasions from Adrian Demblans, so his willingness to snitch posed a danger not only to Macauley, but to them as well.

“Two of the people that Carlos knew for certain were dealing cocaine were you both,” he said.

During his testimony, Adrian Demblans explained how he and Kristian grew up in an affluent family with “great parents” in Cutler Ridge in Miami-Dade, excelled at high school wrestling and both went on to graduate with bachelor’s degrees from Florida International University. But their experimentation with marijuana in high school escalated to cocaine by the time they graduated college, and Adrian said he began dealing soon after.

“I thought I could make a little extra money and support my habit,” he said.

O’Donnell focused on the Demblans cushy upbringing and contrasted it to the life of crime the twins embarked on for most of their adulthood.

“Yet, you chose another life,” he said. “It’s a life you chose carefully. It’s the life of a gangster.”

Indeed, Adrian Demblans, who met Macauley while the two were both meeting their probation officers, and whose friendship blossomed at the docks of Whale Harbor, went so far as to name his charter boat, which he bought in 2013 from Rodriguez, the Reel G, a play on words for “real gangster.”

O’Donnell also brought up Demblans’ statement he made to prosecutors prior to making his deal to testify against Macauley that he was so close to his brother that he would lie for him to protect him.

“I would, but I’m not lying now,” Demblans said Thursday.

The trail continues Monday.

This story was originally published November 9, 2017 at 8:36 PM with the headline "Demblans takes the stand against Macauley on day-3 of double murder trial."