Source: Miamiherald.com
USA – MIAMI – Three years ago, Luis Moya was opening Hammer & Nails, a Miami sex fetish club that featured a dungeon, cages and electric-shock equipment.
On Friday, he sat handcuffed in a different setting — in a courtroom, wearing an orange jumpsuit, facing the family of Ana Rosa Moreno, his ex-roommate whom he strangled to death.
“The simple fact that I can no longer call her or text her to tell her I love her hurts me so much,” Wendy Moreno, her sister, told the court.
She called him “a monster who decided to end her life for selfish reasons.”
Moya, 52, offered no apology, and said nothing as a Miami-Dade judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison for second-degree murder.
“At your age, Mr. Moya, 45 years is going to be a life sentence,” Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez told him.
Jurors convicted Moya in June. Miami-Dade prosecutors Suzanne Von Paulus and Stewart Hedrick argued for a life sentence, saying the 21-year-old Moreno died in one of the “most horrific ways a human being can die.”
Moya’s defense lawyers said he was a father of one who had a string of businesses over the years, including a tilapia farming venture and a boat tour company. He could still contribute to society, lawyers Lauren Dawson and Alex Saiz said.
“To give Mr. Moya a life sentence is putting a huge burden on the taxpayers,” Dawson said.
Moya’s lifestyle and work were not shared with jurors.
In 2016, Moya opened the fetish club in Wynwood, which he touted as a safe space for people who enjoy “BDSM,” an acronym for bondage and sadomasochism.
“People think BDSM has to give someone pain all the time, but it has nothing to do with that,” Moya told the Miami New Times in 2016. “The majority of BDSM is about having control over someone’s feelings and beliefs and making them feel awesome. We’re humans; sex is a part of every human’s lifestyle.”
At trial, jurors heard that he strangled Moreno, who worked at a car dealership and lived for a time with him in his Kendall home. Moya had lied to her, saying he was only 37 and a wealthy Brazilian businessman.
Prosecutors said Moya became enraged with Moreno after she moved out.
Police discovered her body on the 2900 block of Southwest First Avenue early in the morning on Dec. 15, 2018. Investigators initially believed she was an overdose victim, until an autopsy revealed she had been strangled.
Moya admitted to Miami homicide detectives that she returned to his home that night. He claimed she demanded money, then asked him to drop her off in The Roads, a Miami neighborhood. At first, he admitted he drove her there, but claimed she got out, got into someone else’s car and he drove away.
But jurors saw a surveillance video that depicted him dumping her body, and him driving away in her Honda Accord. When shown the video by police, Moya changed his story and denied the car on the footage was the one he was driving.
The state also presented toll records showing him driving from Kendall to Miami, text messages outlining their angry exchanges and his Google searches that led him to disable the GPS in her car before discarding the body.
The murder devastated the Moreno family. She had planned to attend Miami Dade College, and eventually join the military. Her sister said she even hoped of becoming a police officer or a lawyer, and described her as a free spirit.
“She had the most contagious laugh you could ever imagine,” Wendy Moreno said.
The family was happy with the 45-year prison sentence.
“She saw the good in everybody, even when they didn’t deserve it,” Wendy Moreno said. “It’s just tragic that somebody she trusted did something like this to her.”
