Wife accused of having husband slain one step closer to trial

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This article was published 21/08/2018 (2221 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

JURY selection for the trial of a woman accused of murder-for-hire in the stabbing death of her Winnipeg-born husband began Tuesday in Puerto Rico.

In September 2005, real estate developer Adam Anhang, 32, was killed during a public attack in the country’s capital, San Juan. In 2007, a man was wrongfully convicted in his death; in 2008, Alex Pabon Colon was indicted.

Colon told American authorities that Anhang’s wife, Aurea Vazquez Rijos, offered him money to kill her husband, and she lured Anhang to the tourist district where he was killed — the day after he had filed for divorce. She also sustained minor injuries in the attack. (Puerto Rico is an unincorporated U.S. territory.)

A grand jury charged Vazquez Rijos with offering US$3 million for her husband’s death. She denied the charges and fled Puerto Rico, where the couple had lived, for Italy.

In 2013, she was taken into custody in Spain by the FBI.

The CBC reported Tuesday jury selection in the federal trial had begun Tuesday in San Juan, a procedure that could run to Friday, according to a clerk at the federal court house. The Free Press attempted to contact the courthouse, but was unsuccessful.

Anhang grew up in Winnipeg, and moved to New York to attend school. Later, he moved to Puerto Rico and worked as a real estate developer and as chief executive officer of a company that sold software to online gaming sites.

“We’re heading toward closure. We see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re now relying completely on the American judicial system,” his father, Abe Anhang, told the Free Press after the 2013 arrest of Vazquez Rijos.

No allegations have been proven in court.

— staff with files from The Associated Press